Weekly Update: February 6, 2021 - Meet, Chat, Super Bowl Sunday

This weekend is the all-American holiday Super Bowl Sunday. It’s centered around beer and snacks, intentionally watching ads, and football I’ll be watching.

This week’s updates include a new option to check your audio and video before joining a Meet meeting, improved video calls in both Meet and Zoom on Chromebooks, and the announcement that Google Chat app for Mac and Windows will stop working next month (to be replaced by the Chrome PWA).

Plus there are tips for website publishers, YouTubers and web surfers.

Upcoming

• On Sunday, join OnEBoard for the Premiere of the collaborative movie “Winter Festive”.
• Sunday is the Super Bowl. If you want the ads, check out YouTube AdBlitz. Or you can watch sports content on YouTube’s updated sports portal at www.youtube.com/sports. And Facebook Messenger has big-game-themed camera filters and stickers.
• February 17-18 is Learning with Google, a global live stream event where you can learn about G Suite for Education, Google Classroom and Google Meet.

YouTube and Video

• If your YouTube channel is on a Brand Account, you can move from using Brand Account managers to Channel Permissions in YouTube Studio. There are pros and cons to doing that. Channel permissions have more granular access levels, so you can add managers, editors or just viewers. The downside is that they only have access to YouTube Studio on desktop, so no way to create Storys or Community Posts, commenting only in Studio, no access to Live Control Room, and no ability to manage the channel on mobile devices.
• TikTok is putting warnings on videos that may contain misinformation to make people think twice before they share.

Webmasters & Publishers

• Google Search Console now includes data for your site from Discover in Chrome.
• Google’s Web Stories for WordPress plugin now has AdSense integration for monetization, plus animations, new page layouts and a pre-publication checklist.
• If you have a website or blog with AdSense ads, watch this video to learn why your site should have original content and how to manage duplicate content. This is part of the “Sustainable Monetized Websites” series on the Google Search Central YouTube channel.
• AdSense also has a video that shares five tips to increase your ad click through rate.

Video Meetings

• Google Meet has a cool new preview feature that lets you check your microphone and camera before a meeting. Click “Check your audio and video” to check your device settings and record a short test so you can see how you will look and sound to others in the meeting.
• Google has updated Chrome OS for improved video calling with Google Meet and Zoom on Chromebooks. Enhancements included improved camera feed performance, adapting to your device by adjusting frame rate and resolution, and adapting to the speed of your network by temporarily turning off video feeds to reduce congestion. And Google’s engineers are working directly with Zoom’s engineers to make this happen.
• A recent study suggests that most “zoombombing” incidents are an inside job. It’s less hijackers discovering links, and more like students sharing their class video call details. Password protection doesn’t appear to help, and it’s recommended to require all participants to be signed in to account. Wired has the details.

Communication

• The Electron-based Google Chat app for Mach and Windows will be shut down in March. The replacement is the Chat Chrome Progressive Web App (PWA). The drawback? You have to have Chrome open for it to run - not an issue on a Chromebook, but maybe not great if Chrome isn’t your browser of choice.
• Facebook Messenger is now available on the Oculus VR headset.

More

• Google is adding context to Search results on mobile devices. That may include information about the site from Wikipedia or other contextual information, and the source of data in informational results.
• Google currently has two Google Drive desktop sync options: Drive File Stream for business and Backup & Sync for consumer users. Later this year those will be unified into one service, Google Drive for desktop. It looks like that will keep the best features from each service, including backup to Google Photos, integration with Microsoft Office and more.
• Teespring - the eCommerce site where creators get their merch made - is now just Spring. It’s not just a rebrand.They also announced custom stores for creators, partnering with design service 99designs, new support channels, and higher garment quality.

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 by Peter H from Pixabay (Free for commercial use Pixabay License)