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. She 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 videos and the hateful behavior of people online is the worst part of her job. “It’s probably not even rewarding, because everybody is angry at you all the time,” she said. “But I think it’s probably some of the most important work that I will do in my career, because it’s setting a standard of responsibility for the internet.”
YouTube’s automated fact checking tool added an information box with info about the “September 11 attacks” from Encyclopedia Britannica below several news outlets’ live streams of the terrible Notre Dame fire. YouTube fairly quickly removed them, and explained "These panels are triggered algorithmically and our systems sometimes make the wrong call.” But it shows the limitations of relying on automated system to try to combat “fake” news.
If you are a YouTube Partner who had their monetization disabled for “reused content”, see the new FAQ from YouTube explaining what that means and how to fix it.
YouTube is beta testing free $2 Super Chats for some YouTube Premium subscribers. If you are a subscriber see if you have a credit the next time you watch a live stream.
Amazon and YouTube have apparently ended their long-standing feud. YouTube apps will be available on Amazon Fire TV, and the Amazon Prime Video app will be available on Chromecast and Android TV.
You can now listen to YouTube Music for free on your Google Home speakers. The music is ad-supported, unless you have a subscription to YouTube Music Premium. And yes, this helps bring YouTube Music closer to parity with Google Play Music.
Professional video platform Vimeo acquired online video editor Magisto. They will be incorporating the video editing tools to allow users to “make, edit and distribute … social media and product videos through Vimeo”.
Zoom now offers native integrations with Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Drive and Hangouts Chat. While designed for G Suite it looks like some may work with consumer accounts as well.
One of the drawbacks of using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for your website has been that in Google Search they display with a URL beginning google.com/amp. Now publishers can use Signed Exchanges (SXG) to allow display of the publisher’s domain when content is instantly loaded via Google Search.
Google My Business has started rolling out “Short Names” - a short custom URL that customers can use to easily access your business profile.
Photobooth in the Camera app of the Pixel 3 will automatically take selfie when the camera is steady, and it detects the subjects have their eyes open and have a smile, their tongue-out, kissy or duck face, puffy-cheeks, a surprised expression or are kissing. As you hold the camera you can see an indicator of the photo quality score to get a better sense of what will trigger a snapshot.
Pixel fans, Google has updated Pixel Playmoji from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with five new characters: War Machine, Thor, Black Widow, Rocket and Captain Marvel. If you don’t have a Pixel yet, Google Fi has teased a birthday deal on April 22nd “on something that rhymes with shmixel” - or you may just want to wait, as Google is teasing “something big is coming to the Pixel universe” on May 7.
If you are an Android user in Europe, in the next few weeks Google will be offering you more browser and search engine options when you open the Google Play app.
On Saturday, April 27, Pinterest will treat the first 250 visitors “to some of the most inspirational places around the world” to free admission. This includes places in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the US. See Pinterest’s post for details.
And in this week’s bad news from Facebook, it turns out they “inadvertently uploaded” 1.5 million users contacts without consent. This follows the revelation that Facebook asked some users to provide the password to their email when they signed up for an account. It was during that process Facebook imported the user’s contacts, which could include the contact details of millions of different people. Facebook is now deleting that data, which was used to recommend friends to users and “improve ads”. Meanwhile WIRED talked to 65 current and former Facebook employees to look at what happened when in early 2018, Mark Zuckerberg “set out to fix Facebook”: “15 months of fresh hell” - and record profits. Will the latest scandal hurt? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Read on for more updates for YouTubers, webmasters, Google Slides, Sheets and Calendar users and much more.

Image: Easter basket by silviarita from Pixabay (Free for commercial use no attribution required)

Made by Google, Android, Google Fi

Productivity

Presenting search app and browser options to Android users in Europe (Google)
Stable Channel Update for Chrome OS (Chrome 73) (Chrome Releases)
Easily customize theme colors in Slides (G Suite Updates)
Work smarter in Sheets with several new features for objects (G Suite Updates)
Save time with new scheduling features in Calendar (G Suite Updates)
Avoid double-booking rooms in Google Calendar (G Suite Updates)

Privacy and Security

Google to Block Logins from Embedded Browser Frameworks (Bleeping Computer)
The Bayrob malware gang's rise and fall (ZDNet)

More around the web

Notre Dame Is Burning. A Digital Archive Could Hold the Key to Restoring It. (ExtremeTech)
Notre-Dame Fire: The Wound at the Heart of Paris (The Atlantic)
As Expected, EU Nations Rubber Stamp EU Copyright Directive (Techdirt)
The dark saga of Katie Bouman (The Atlantic)
How Professional Gambler James Holzhauer Broke 'Jeopardy!' (WIRED)
The Open Heritage Alliance - CyArk, Historic Environment Scotland, and the University of South Florida Libraries - has launched the Open Heritage 3D portal (Google)
It's just in mice! This scientist is calling out hype in science reporting (STAT)

Peggy K's Creator News

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