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 shot of the year to the Your Best Shot 2019 Group starting December 2nd. Flickr will showcase their favorite shots on their blog and social media, and there are prizes for the winners.
- The Google AI blog has an article about how Night Sight astrophotography mode in the Pixel 4 camera works. They’ve also put together a list of tips and tricks on how to take good astrophotography photos (pdf in Google Docs).
- If you are confused about the requirement to mark your YouTube channel as “made for kids” or “not made for kids”, the FTC has provided some additional guidance that should make it a bit clearer and hopefully alleviate some concerns.
- There is a new “watch later” sticker for YouTube Stories that lets you promote a video. You can only use the sticker once a week to link to your own videos, or more often to link to videos on other channels. Stories are only available to channels with at least 10,000 subscribers.
- If you have been cropping the images your YouTube Community posts into a square, because the previewed image is square, that’s no longer necessary. There is a new “Reposition” option that lets you adjust the preview to your liking.
- StreamYard live streaming platform is officially out of beta. At their launch party, they announced that free accounts will remain, but will be limited to 20 hours per month. They are also introducing the ability to moderate the guests joining you in the studio and the ability to go live on Twitch.
- If you ever used Google Translator Toolkit, you have until December 4th to download your data. Google Translator Toolkit was a more than decade-old online translation tool for amateur and professional translators. Over the years Google promoted it as a way to translate your YouTube video captions, website, apps, and ad campaigns. The Toolkit has been replaced with more modern tools, including Google Translate.
- Patreon held creator panels across the US. You can learn about the highlights and watch the panels held in San Francisco, Hollywood, Seattle, Chicago and New York.
- Twitter sent an email to owners of inactive accounts with a warning they needed to sign in before December 11, or their account would be deleted and their username eventually would be become available to others. This process is starting in the EU (thanks to the GDPR). However, Twitter apparently didn’t realize that people would be upset by the thought deceased users would disappear from the platform. They have announced that they won’t actually start deletions until they implement a way to memorialize accounts. Meanwhile, if there is an account you want to be sure is preserved, the Archive Team has a submission form to request archiving.
- Facebook Viewpoints is a new market research app that rewards people for taking surveys and doing tasks. Facebook says they “won’t sell your information from this app to third parties”. Take that as you will. Currently this is only available in the US.
- Take a look back at how webseries The Guild "beat Hollywood". YouTube was new, crowdfunding platforms didn't exist, and a niche series about a gaming guild found its audience online. Watch the first episode.
- Finally, this week Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web foundation launched the Contract for the Web, which is meant to focus on developing and maintaining the web as a “force for good”. Principals include keeping the web accessible and affordable, building respectful communities, while protecting user privacy. Developed by representatives of more than 80 organizations, there is a core group that meets regularly to “coordinate and plan” for the contract’s success, representing Government (France and Germany), Civil Society (Wikimedia, Avaaz, CIPESA, World Wide Web Foundation, The NewNow) and Business (Pango (formerly AnchorFree), Google, Microsoft). The principals and goals seem excellent to me, but it remains to be seen if they can be broadly implemented. Read the new Contract for the Web.
Read on for more news, updates and tips for video creators, webmasters, business owners and more.
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Image: Milky Way image by Rene Tittmann from Pixabay (free to use)
Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.
Image: Milky Way image by Rene Tittmann from Pixabay (free to use)
Upcoming
- December 4: Google Translator Toolkit shutting down
- December 4: YouTube FanFest Japan
- December 5: Public Liked video playlists on YouTube will be made private
- December 10: YouTube new Terms of Service go into effect
- December 14: Yahoo Groups data deleted
YouTube and Video Creation
- Creators – New sticker on Stories lets viewers add videos to their Watch Later playlist (TeamYouTube)
- Made For Kids Update, Upcoming Features to YouTube Studio, and Memberships Recognition Experiment! (Creator Insider)
- YouTube Comments: Replying, Filtering and Moderating (YouTube Creators)
Go Live
- StreamYard launch party (StreamYard on YouTube)
Social Media: Facebook and Instagram
Social Media: Twitter
- Twitter will remove inactive accounts and free up usernames in December (The Verge)
- Twitter Now Has Better Two-Factor Authentication, So Use It (Wired)
Other Social Media
- Former Facebook employees are creating Cocoon, a social media network for your family (Quartz)
- Why Discord is dropping support for Android 4 (Discord)
- Celebrating small businesses on Pinterest (Pinterest)
- A leaked excerpt of TikTok moderation rules shows how political content gets buried (Technology Review)
Google Photos and Photo Sharing
- (Update: Official) Google Photos is getting a markup tool in the image editor (Android Police)
- Google Photos rolling out manual face tagging feature, but with a caveat (9to5Google)
- [Update: More print sizes] You can now get same-day Google Photos prints at CVS and Walmart (Android Police)
- Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones (Google AI Blog)
Google for Businesses
Bloggers and Webmasters
- Move your legacy FeedBurner feeds to a Google account
- Google Search News for November 2019 (Webmaster Central blog)
- English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from Nov 26, 2019 (Google Webmasters on YouTube)
- Intro to Google Search Console - Search Console Training (Google Webmasters on YouTube)
Hangouts, Meetings and Messaging
- Google Messages rolls out Verified SMS to protect you from spam and phishing (APK Download) (Android Police)
- Google Duo redesigns call screen w/ less cluttered UI using a bottom bar (9to5Google)
Made by Google, Android, Google Fi
- Watch Google Assistant’s new Ambient Mode in action for the first time (TheVerge)
- Android Dev Summit 2019 - Watch all of the talks now! (Android Developers)
Privacy and Security
- Protecting users from government-backed hacking and disinformation (Google)
- Mozilla to Block Fingerprinters by Default in Firefox 72 (BleepingComputer)
More around the web
- How The Guild beat Hollywood, one webisode at a time (National Museum of American History)
- Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished (BBC News)
- Ads promote vacation for nonexistent place called ‘Eroda’ (Daily Dot)
- Rev transcribers face low pay and disturbing recordings (The Verge)
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Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy