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Weekly Update - October 16, 2021: YouTube Creators, Google Cloud Next, Twitter Spaces

This was a busy week, with updates for Meet, Chat and Docs announced at the Google Cloud Next conference, more features available to YouTube Creators; a number of updates to Twitter Spaces, including a “Spark Program” for audio creators, and much more. 

If you are a live streamer, web publisher or Chromebook aficionado there’s an update for you this week!

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This week I joined Michael Daniels on the Tinkering with Tech show.

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Upcoming 

Google Cloud Next

This week was Google Cloud Next ‘21, a conference aimed primarily at businesses using Google Cloud services and Google Workspace. The conference videos are available on demand. You can learn about all of the updates that were announced on the Google Cloud blog, and the Google Workspace updates in particular.

The updates I’m most interested in:
Google Cloud Next '21 presentations are still available to watch. Here are a few I recommend:

Top updates

  • A reminder that the Discussion tab was removed from all YouTube channels on October 12. This is part of the expansion of availability of the Community tab, which is now available to channels with at least 500 subscribers.
  • YouTube is expanding eligibility of @mentions in video titles and descriptions to channels with at least 500 subscribers. Previously channels had to have at least 1000 subscribers to @mention another channel or be @mentioned.
  • The Team YouTube Support channel has been rebranded as the YouTube Viewers channel. It will be focusing on news and tutorials for video viewers, and will include tips for YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV and YouTube Kids.
  • If you use Google Calendar, a new feature is rolling out that lets you easily create a meeting notes document in Google Docs. The doc is linked to the Calendar event making it easy for all participants to find the notes.
  • Canva is launching a new Video Editing Suite, a free video editor available on the web, desktop and mobile. It has a “scene-based editor” and single layer timeline for easy editing. It also supports multiple audio tracks and has built-in screen recording. Canva has nice templates and is easy to use, so I’m excited to try this.
Be sure to see the list of Live Audio updates this week. 

YouTube and Video

Live Audio

Social Media

Web Publishers

Chromebooks

  • There are a number of new accessibility features for Chromebooks. There are improved more human-sounding voices for “select-to-speak”, which reads text from your screen. There are updates to the screen magnifier. And there are new in-product tutorials for using accessibility tools.
  • Google has launched a free Chromebook Accessibility training program. Pass the test and you will earn a Chromebook A11Y Digital Badge.
  • Chrome Apps for Chrome OS were supposed to lose support in June 2022. That deadline has been extended, and Chrome apps will continue to be supported on Chrome OS until at least January 2025. That is a reprieve for developers who have not yet migrated their apps to PWAs, and for users who won’t lose access to their favorite apps (yet).

More

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

Image: A cloudy sky by Jan Kopřiva at Pexels. Free for commercial use.

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