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Showing posts from April, 2019

Weekly Update - April 27, 2019: Google Earth, News on YouTube, Simplify Gmail

Earth Day was celebrated this week , and we have a better view of our home planet and - hopefully - better resources for keeping track of what’s going on in the world. There are updates on YouTube, Google Earth, Google Docs, Gmail and much more. YouTube is expanding features in Europe to make authoritative news sources more prominent . Top News and Breaking News highlights videos from verified sources are available in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, and the Netherland, and will be coming to more European countries in the coming months. YouTube will also be a dding publisher transparency labels to videos from news sources that receive government or public funding in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland. Google is also improving the quality of news reports in Europe in Google Search and highlighting the upcoming EU elections in Google News. ( Facebook is also making changes to protect the upcoming elections from misinformation campaigns.) YouTube wants...

Weekly Update - April 20, 2019: Photobooth, YouTube Music, Google My Business

Happy Easter weekend to those who celebrate, and happy Earth Day to everyone! This weekend you can explore right from your desk or phone, visiting the US National Parks on Google Earth and, if you are in the mood for music, check out YouTube’s Coachella channel for curated and live performances. This week there were updates for YouTubers, G Suite users, business owners, Pixel photo takers, and G Suite users. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is reaching out to creators and Facebook had another “inadvertent” privacy issue. Plus much more. Read on for this week’s news and updates. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has been in the news. S he has been meeting with big creators to discuss their concerns, including Shane Dawson, beauty guru James Charles and Indian comedian Prajakta Koli (MostlySane) . Meanwhile, the New York Times ran a profile describing her as “the most measured person in tech” who is “running the most chaotic place on the internet”. “Ms. Wojcicki said that seeing harmful video...

Weekly Update - April 13, 2019: Cloud Next, Hangout Chat & Meet, Currents

This week was Google Cloud Next ‘19, a three day conference showcasing updates and features for G Suite, Google Cloud Platform, developers, businesses, and educators. It’s both promotional - look who’s using Google Cloud! - and informational. I was particularly interested in the updates for communication and collaboration, including Google Docs, Google+, Voice, Hangouts Meet and Chat. But that’s not all - there are updates this week for YouTubers, webmasters and more. The successor to Google+ for G Suite customers is Currents . While G Suite users will be able to access their Google+ content in Currents, it will be something new. Google+ features like public posts, Circles, Collections, and even +1s will be gone. New features will include tags, topic streams, starred posts and more . Watch the presentation “Engage Employees with Currents” for a peek at what it will look like. It will be available by the end of the year. Hangouts Meet is rolling out a utomatic live captioning in ...

A final farewell to Google+

Yesterday at Google Cloud Next '19 Google announced Currents , 1  the successor to Google+. For G Suite users, all their existing Google+ Content will still be available, but there will be new features, a new design and a totally different look and feel. The new app will not have Circles , or Collections , and going by the screenshots Google has shared , the +1 button will be replaced by a Facebook-like thumbs up. New features like tags, topic streams, and detailed analytics actually look pretty sweet, 2 but it's not Google+. That is gone for good. Screen capture from Google Cloud Next '19: Day 2 Collaborate Channel Ever since the shutdown of Google+ for consumer users (like me) was announced, 3  I've been trying to figure out how best to sum up my feelings. I was a bitter ender, posting right up until the shutdown on the morning of April 2nd. I was focused on creating tutorials to help other users confused by the shutdown process, backing up my own data...

Weekly Update - April 6, 2019: Google+ & Inbox RIP, YouTube Live, Gmail Birthday

No fooling, this was a brutal week for some of us Google users. Consumer Google+ with its passionate  fans is gone and Inbox with its die-hard users is gone. I catch myself thinking I should check my Google+ notifications. I’ll have more thoughts about the Plus next week, but I feel like this is also a time of growth and new beginnings. There are updates this week, for video creators, live streamers, webmasters and so much more. April 1st arrived with a few jokey videos and company announcements. It’s toned down compared to previous years. It may be that big companies like Google and Facebook understand that with privacy breaches, revelations that platforms often recommended extremist and fake news to maximize engagement, and breaking news when really bad actors (from pedophiles to terrorists) post content, jokes might not be that appropriate. Or maybe that’s just me. I do like fun updates, rather than “gotchas”, like Reddit’s collaborative GIF-based movie , the addition of Tul...

YouTube raises eligibility requirement for mobile live streaming to 1000 subscribers

If you are a live streamer with fewer than 1000 subscribers, you can no longer go live from the YouTube app on your mobile device. In 2017 YouTube mobile live streaming was made available to all users with a verified channel with no live stream restrictions in the past 90 days, so this is a notable change. We’re regularly reevaluating our eligibility requirements and decided to raise the threshold for live streaming on mobile. Creators who have less than 1,000 subscribers will still be able to live stream through desktop and webcam: https://t.co/c4JASS89hq — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) April 5, 2019 YouTube hasn't explained why they made this change, other than that they are "regularly reevaluating our eligibility requirements and decided to raise the threshold for live streaming on mobile." If your channel has fewer than 1000 subscribers, and live streaming is enabled, you will still be able to live stream on  desktop and using your  webcam . Source...