Weekly Update - October 3, 2020: Meet, YouTube, Google Photos

There is something for everyone in this week’s updates, from new Google phones, speakers and Chromecast; new features in Google Meet; updates to the Google Photos editor; improved captioning tools for YouTube creators and much more.

Are you about which Google Meet features are available for different types of accounts? I’ve created a chart where you can compare user features at a glance.

Google Hardware Event

• As expected, Google announced two new phones, the Pixel 4a(5G) and the Pixel 5. There are several new camera features, including an ultrawide lens, the software driven Super Res Zoom, “Cinematic Pan” for your videos, Night Sight in Portrait mode, and an improved Google Photos editor. And the updated Recorder audio recorder app lets you easily turn audio clips into short videos. For the full specs click the link.
• The new Chromecast with Google TV comes with a remote. Google TV is a single stop for your streaming services, including YouTube TV, Disney+, france.tv, HBO Max, Netflix, Peacock, Rakuten Viki and more. The new Google TV app replaces the Google Play Movies & TV app on Android devices.
• The new Google Nest smart speakers with a bigger sound, faster assistant and pretty pastel colors.
• Google Assistant is becoming more like an actual assistant. When you call a toll free number, and are put on hold, it will wait on the line for you, and let you know when your call is picked up. The Hold for Me feature is in early preview on the Pixel 4a(5G) and Pixel 5.

Photos

• The Google Photos editor is getting a major redesign, with a tab for automated suggestions, and easier to find manual editing options. Plus a new feature “Portrait Light” Portrait Light, that “uses machine learning to improve the lighting on faces in portraits.” You can adjust the light position and brightness. Portrait Light will first be available on the new Pixel 4a(5G) and Pixel 5.
• The Google Photos movie creation tool now lets you choose between portrait and landscape orientation.
• As part of its digital wellbeing initiatives, the Google Camera app will no longer automatically retouch faces. You will be able to enable face retouching manually, and the app will provide clearer details about what the filters are actually doing. And, notably, it’s labeled as “retouching” rather than “beautification” or similar, to keep it value neutral.
• Snapchat is collaborating with Google to bring more transparency to facial retouching in their camera.

YouTube and Video

• YouTube is improving captioning tools for creators, with a new version of the captions editor in YouTube Studio that includes “smart” timing, improvements to automated captioning, and a new “Trusted Captioner” role for channels in development. While none of these is a direct replacement for Community Contributions, which were discontinued September 28, they are an improvement. And active Community Contributions users will have their free membership in the Amara captions community extended from 6 months to 12 months to allow for this development.
• If you are a YouTube gaming creator with Stadia, check out the new Crowd Choice feature. Games with Crowd Choice let viewers vote during the live stream to influence the path of the game. This requires OBS or other 3rd party streaming software. This will initially be supported for Baldur's Gate 3 and Dead by Daylight.
• The YouTube Shorts camera is now available to all Creators in India. The Shorts camera lets you create fun 15 second vertical videos that may appear on the YouTube homepage Shorts shelf.
• There will be a new Audience Retention card in YouTube Analytics that lets you easily see the spikes, drops and engaging segments of your videos. Get a sneak peek from Creator Insider.
• Soundtrack by Twitch is new rights-cleared music you can use while live streaming on Twitch. It is not licensed for video on demand (like Clips) or other platforms. Independent artists and labels can submit their music to be included.

Blogger and Webmasters

• Google Webmasters Search Console training videos are coming back with new episodes. The focus will be on how Search Console can help your business.

Communicate

• HD Screen Sharing in Google Duo is rolling out on Android phones. Android Police shows how that works.
• If you have a free Google account - like one with an @gmail email address - you can continue using Google Meet for effectively unlimited meetings. Meet meetings on free accounts were to be limited to 60 minutes after September 30, but the much longer 24 hour long meeting limit has been extended to March 31, 2021.
• In March G Suite extended premium Meet features to all G Suite customers, including meetings with 250 participants, recording and in-domain live streaming. As originally announced, these are now being rolled back and will only be available for G Suite for Enterprise customers.
• Google Meet has two new features rolling out: Q&A and Polls. These will be available for G Suite for Business, G Suite Essentials, G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education.
• G Suite Enterprise for Education is also getting an attendance tool in Google Meet.
• Google Meet’s smart noise cancellation is rolling out on iOS and Android for G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education accounts.
• Google is developing real-time automatic sign language detection for video conferencing. While it’s in early days, you can try the demo on a Mac or Windows computer.
• Google Chat got a tweak to make it easier to tell if your chat history is on or off. The history setting is now in the conversation settings.

Social Media

• Instagram is getting integration with Facebook Messenger, so that “people using the Messenger app can now reach you on Instagram without you needing to download a new app, and vice versa.” Plus there are a number of other new features, including selfie stickers, “Watch Together” to watch IGTV videos in a video call, and more
• Facebook’s new Accounts Center lets you sync your identity across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; cross-post content; and use Single Sign On to sign into your accounts more easily. It’s currently all optional.
• LinkedIn has updated their Professional Community Policies around hateful, harassing, inflammatory and racist content. And they are making it easier to report policy-violating messages.
• Twitter is reevaluating the way it automatically crops images, and “prioritizing work to decrease our reliance on ML-based image cropping by giving people more visibility and control over what their images will look like in a Tweet.”

Productivity

• You can now create and view Tasks in the Google Calendar mobile app.
• Google Sheets now offers data cleanup suggestions and column stats to help you analyze your data.
• You can now set Chrome as your default browser in iOS 14.
• There’s also now dark theme for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides on iOS.

More

• Patreon is available in more languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian) and enabling payment in local currencies.
• Google’s Tone Transfer uses AI-powered audio synthesis to transform one sound into another - guitar into flute, voice into violin, or everyday sounds into music. Thi is one to play with.
• Google Maps is improving Live View navigation, with landmark labels, integration with Location Sharing on more phones and improved pin placement.
• Plus Codes is Google’s open source digital address system that assigns a unique code to any location, even if there is no street name, no road or other identifier. Motto: Addresses for Everyone!
• Google is making it free for retailers in the US, Europe, Middle East and Africa to list products on the Google Shopping tab, plus offering more tools for brick and mortar businesses to move online.
• If you promote apps, ebooks or other digital products, Paolo Amoroso has compiled a helpful list of mockup generators for Android devices.

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.

Image: Photo by Ithalu Dominguez from Pexels