Peggy K's Creator News

While this holiday week has been mostly quiet here in the US (other than the flood of emails promoting Black Friday Deals), there are a few updates for photographers, YouTubers, live streamers and more. FeedBurner sent out a notice to users who still have a feed in an old legacy FeedBurner account. Any such feeds need to be moved to a Google account before the end of the year.As the original deadline was February 2009, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. During the migration process it’s suggested the feed be set up for AdSense for Feeds; note that isn’t actually possible, as AdSense for Feeds has not been available since late 2012. The Google Photos mobile app’s image editor now has a basic markup tool that lets you draw lines, highlight and add text to your photos. Google Photos is also rolling out a manual face tagging tool (yay!), but there is a limitation: Google needs to detect a face before you can add a name. If you upload your photos to Flickr, you can submit your best

If you have an old legacy FeedBurner account, you need to move your feeds to a Google account by December 31, or you will lose access to them. FeedBurner is Google's RSS feed management service that lets you customize and promote your feeds, and send out updates to your feed by email . Blogger's "subscribe by email" service uses FeedBurner, so if you have ever enabled email subscriptions for your Blogger blog, you have a FeedBurner account . The migration of FeedBurner accounts to Google began in 2008, and the original deadline was February 28, 2009 . If you have been putting off migrating your feeds to a Google account for the past decade, now is the time to do it. If you do not move your feeds to a Google account by December 31, 2019. you will lose access to them. If you created your FeedBurner account after that date, or long-ago moved your feeds to Google, you don't need to worry about this change. You can always check your current feeds in your FeedBu

Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday in the US, and I’m very thankful for all of you who read my posts! Now is the time we usually see the last flurry of updates before the end of the year. There are updates for AdSense Publishers, video creators, and webmasters; new productivity features for G Suite users; and new creative tools for storytelling, choreography and mapping. This week AdSense sent out two email announcements to Publishers. If you are an AdSense Publisher,and didn’t receive them, check your email notification settings . The first email from AdSense was a reminder that they will “ stop supporting the AdSense mobile application over the next few months .” AdSense isn’t bad as a mobile website, so the best alternative is using www.adsense.com in your mobile web browser. The second email announced new options to help AdSense Publishers comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which goes into effect January 1. The easiest way to comply is to restrict da

If you are an AdSense publisher, you should see a notification in your account about the California Consumer Privacy Act. Google offers two options to help you comply with these new regulations: enable restricted data processing for California users or use publisher ad tags to restrict data processing when a visitor to your site clicks a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" link. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect on January 1, 2020. The regulations are meant to  provide privacy protections , with the aim of ensuring Californians  own ,  control,  and secure  their personal information. Which businesses does CCPA apply to? Under the California Consumer Privacy Act only businesses that earn $50,000,000 a year in revenue, sell 100,000 consumer’s records each year or derive 50% of their annual revenue by selling your personal information must comply. All businesses must comply if they collect or sell Californian’s personal information, whethe

Canva has added the option to create designs with a video clip, using either stock video or uploading your own. This is an easy way to create clips for social media, a promo video or title to incorporate into your YouTube video. I have long used the  Canva  graphic design site to make my YouTube thumbnails and blog graphics. While you can pay for advanced Pro features , I am using the free service, which is sufficient for my needs, and it works great on my Chromebook. The free tier includes up to 1GB storage for photos and other assets, including video clips. As  Canva owns stock image sites Pixabay and Pexels,  those free images and videos are available within Canva to create your design, with no upload required. And once your design is complete, you can download it to your computer for use anywhere you like. Note that Canva isn't a full-fledged video editing tool. You can't assemble multiple clips or add an audio track. What it does let you do is create a design tha

This past week I was in Boulder, Colorado at the 2019 Google Product Expert Meetup . It was great to see my fellow PEs from the US and Canada, and learn about and provide feedback on Google products. Now that I’m home again, I'm only just getting caught up, so hopefully I didn't miss any big news. I can tell you that this week there were major updates for YouTube creators, Android users, business owners, webmasters and much more. This week YouTube announced that creators need to indicate whether their videos or channel is “made for kids” (YouTube will also automatically review content to help ensure compliance). This is the outcome of a settlement with the US FTC to ensure YouTube complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). That requires getting permission from parents before any personal data is collected from young children. When changes are rolled out in January, channels “made for kids” will be missing many of YouTube’s features, including

Starting today, all YouTube creators need to indicate whether their content is "made for kids" in order to comply with the US FTC's  Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). This is the case whether you  make content aimed at kids or not, and whether you are in the US or not. Note: updated November 29 to include additional guidance from the FTC. In September, YouTube announced they would treat all "children's content" as if children were watching in order to comply with COPPA .  COPPA limits the personal information that can be collected from children online without parental consent. To comply, Creators must declare whether their Audience is kids or not. You can set the audience at the channel level or on individual videos. YouTube also uses machine learning to identify content that appears to be aimed at a young audience. If you believe YouTube has gotten that automated automated designation wrong, you can send feedback (see below

Pour yourself a big cup of coffee, because there are a ton of updates this week. From YouTube there is a redesigned home page and new ways to make money. Adobe announced a slew of new features, apps and tools. Plus there are updates for webmasters, businesses and much more. Coming up this week is the Chrome Developer Summit , where you can learn the “latest techniques for building for the modern Web”. You can watch live on the Chrome Developers YouTube channel . YouTube has rolled out a new home page design on desktop and tablet s. The most noticeable change is that the thumbnails are larger. That allows display of the channel icon and full title, plus higher resolution video previews. There are fewer special content shelves, but you may see sections for breaking news, community posts, music mixes and more. You can help fine-tune what you see by clicking the 3 dot menu icon by any video and selecting “don’t recommend channel.” And “soon” you will be able to customize your home f

The new YouTube Partner Program setup page in YouTube Studio has new features and an updated application process to make it easier to see when your channel is eligible for monetization. Now only public watch time is shown, you can opt-in to get an email notification when your channel reaches the eligibility requirements, and you don't link an AdSense account to your channel until after it reaches the minimum 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours public watch time. Read on for details. How to check your channel's YouTube Partner Program status 1. Sign in to YouTube , and switch to your channel if need be 2. Open YouTube Studio ( studio.youtube.com ) 3. Click the $ Monetization icon on the left menu ( https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UC/monetization ) If your channel is eligible for monetization, you will see the Grow with YouTube page. That shows your channel's subscriber count and public watch hours. Update August 11, 2021: this page now includes active Communi

The internet was born 50 years ago this week, and everyone is reminiscing. You can learn how it all started , read Vint Cerf’s top moments in internet history and argue about the 50 most important websites of all time . T he question is how long it will take until we have a truly “invisible internet” ? This week, on our still “visible” internet there are tips and updates for webmasters, YouTubers, podcasters, and much more. Site Kit, Google’s official WordPress plugin, is now available. Install the plugin and you can see metrics and insights on your WordPress dashboard from Search Console, Google Analytics, AdSense and more. The end is nigh for Flash. Google Search will start ignoring Flash later this year. It’s already disabled by default in Chrome 76, Firefox 69 and Microsoft Edge browsers and Adobe will officially end support in December 2020. Flash has been dying for a long time, and as the announcement says “most users and websites won't see any impact from this cha