Starting today, YouTube is rolling out (via Wired) a new native sharing and messaging feature in its Android and iOS apps. While the video network is already a popular destination, YouTube wants to keep people in the app by having conversations about popular videos start and remain there.
Google is adding the ability to set expiration dates for access to documents across Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides apps. The idea is that you can limit a contributor’s access to a document for a specific time period, which Google points out will come in handy for companies and organizations that often share files with third-parties temporarily:
Google has highlighted new features for Google Drive apps today that it says make it easier to search for files on Android, iOS, and web.
Among the improvements to search in the app, you’ll now be able to narrow your search by file type and open advanced search from the search box. For iOS specifically, users can now get quick access to recent files and search from the Home screen icon using 3D Touch and the ability to search from iOS’s Spotlight feature.
Here’s a full list of improvements courtesy of Google:
Google says the improvements for Drive will roll out to the Android and iOS apps over the coming weeks.
After adding gameplay recording features to mobile apps alongside its new YouTube Gaming platform launch earlier this month, Google is today updating its Google Play Games app for Android with similar features.
The update will allow users of the Play Games app to quickly hop into gameplay recording with the ability to share their own commentary simultaneously using their device’s front facing camera and microphone.
It’s simple. In the Play Games app, select any game you want to play, then tap the record button. You can capture your gameplay in 720p or 480p, and choose to add video of yourself and commentary via your device’s front facing camera and microphone. When you’re done recording, you can quickly edit and upload your video to YouTube.
Google notes that the feature should come in handy for some of the content creators contributing to the roughly 144 billion minutes of gaming videos and live streams viewed on YouTube each month.
The updated Google Play Games app for Android is rolling out to users in the US and UK starting this week with users in other countries getting access in the near future.
Google Hangouts on the web now lets users drag and drop images directly from their computer or web browser. That goes for the little chat window within your Gmail inbox and through the standalone Hangouts Chrome app. Googler Mayur Kamat shared the news and the image above demonstrating the new feature through a post on Google+ today.
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Google has made a couple of updates to its Drive and Docs editors that deliver smarter sharing and make it easier for collaborating with others. Starting today, after adding an email address to the sharing dialogue on either service, you will see profile pictures for each person you’ve added and, after adding two collaborators, suggested recipients based on who you frequently share emails or files with.
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Google has updated Drive for Android with a Material Design facelift and three new features in improved search, better sharing and an enhanced PDF viewer that make it easier for users to find, view and share through the app. The update will be rolling out on the Play Store for Android devices over the next several days.
The new search bar in Drive is easier and more predictive at finding content by updating results as each letter is typed into the field. Meanwhile, the app has improved sharing functionality that allows for users to write a custom comment on shared files so that all collaborators know why they sent it.
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Twitter announced a change coming to its mobile apps today that allows users to play music directly from a tweet. The new Twitter Audio Card will allow certain users (there’s a list on Twitter’s blog) to share audio uploaded to SoundCloud with users in-line. Users will be able to listen to these embeds while they continue browsing their timelines.
Twitter says it’s just starting to test the feature right now and plans to roll it out to more content creators and partner audio sites in the future. You can try it out in Twitter for Android right now.
Google is investigating an issue for a number of Google Drive users this morning after rolling out an updated UI for the service earlier this year. Google confirmed the problem on its app status website noting that users on the old Google Drive interface are unable to share documents externally.
Google is marking the issue as a service disruption, which means you should still be able to access all of the service’s other features while it looks for a fix. While the new user interface is being rolled out to users already, users still on the old UI have the ability to manually opt-in to the updated Google Drive.
Google continued its April Fools tradition with a long list of pranks yesterday, one of which included announcing a new “Shelfies” feature for Gmail that let users snap and share selfies to use as background in Gmail. The feature, which was completely functional within Gmail yesterday, was clearly just a bit of fun for April Fools day, but Google announced today that it will actually stick around as a new custom theme sharing feature.
While Gmail has allowed users to create custom themes since 2012, it will now provide an option to “Share your theme” within settings. The Gmail team will also be sharing some of its favorite themes shared by the community through its Google+ page. Here’s how it works:
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Twitter has announced a few new features for its Android app today. Users with the latest update to the Twitter for Android app will soon see the ability to select up to four photos at a time to upload when composing a tweet. These photos will be displayed as a collage on the tweet’s detail screen.
Along with the multi-photo support, users are also now able to tag other people in their photos. A new “who’s in these photos?” button allows you to add the username of other people in the picture. Photo tags won’t take up any characters in the body of the tweet, so the full character count will be available for composing a message.
Adobe has announced the immediate availability of its Revel photo manager for Android devices. The software allows users to not only manage their own photos, but to create group albums to be shared with others users. Group albums can be updated with new photos by any participating users, much like Apple’s Shared Photo Streams on iOS 7.
According to Adobe’s announcement, Revel will allow users to…
- Invite friends and family to join a Group Library, where you and your inner circle can create a huge collection of everyone’s photos and videos. You control who can view, add, organize, and edit the memories in a Group Library.
- Create albums to keep your photos and videos organized.
- Share albums with loved ones in private web galleries.
- Share photos and videos on your favorite social networks.
- Edit your photos to make your memories look their best.
Adobe says the new app is integrated with its latest Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements software to enable quick photo imports.
You can grab Revel for free on the Google Play Store.
It’s pretty difficult these days not to have a Google+ account. Sign up for almost any Google service, and you find you’re on Google+ whether you wanted to be or not. But this aggressive approach of pushing accounts on people doesn’t appear to be paying off: a new report by Gigya cited by Marketing Land shows that only two percent of social media sharing takes place on Google+ …
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Google today announced two new features for its +1 social button that web site owners can embed on their pages. Google’s senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra explained in a blog post that the +1 button (Chrome extension here) can now broadcast posts to your Google+ circles and do so with custom layouts. Previously, clicking the +1 button would only share web content with your contacts in their search results and on your Google Profile. Beginning today, you can choose the scope of sharing by clicking the +1 button and select the new “Share on Google+” option. You’ll be presented with options to choose a circle on Google+ to share with and write an optional comment.
Also new is the ability for publishers to customize a link, an image and a description (so-called +snippets”). Google writes over at the official Google Webmaster blog that “+Snippets let you put your best face forward by customizing exactly what appears when your content is shared”. An example includes Rotten Tomatoes, a popular movie review site where +1 posts include the movie title, poster and a brief synopsis (see the above screenshot). The new features will be rolling out over the next week so be patient. Another little nugget: The +1 button is today doing four billion daily views, twice as much it did back in July. The button is installed on more than a million web sites, which is not bad at all for yet another social button a little over two months old.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvJrfwuIRa4]
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MPIZKPhfDY]
[UPDATE July 14, 2011 10:08 Eastern]: The official, invite-only Photovine for iOS app has just landed in the App Store. We are expecting Android app shortly]
In anticipation of a smartphone app for the Photovine service which was announced Tuesday, Google posted this little teaser on the official Photovine page. Beginning today, people can also request an invite. You’re advised to hurry up because invitations for Google’s recently launched products have been in high demand (Google+, anyone?). By the way, don’t you find it weird they would feature an iPhone 4 app on both the website and in the video clip rather than a Nexus S?
For those uninitiated, Photovine is Google’s attempt at social photo sharing that takes clues from Flickr, Facebook photos, Picasa and other services. “Photovine is a fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people and share your world like never before”, says the official blurb. You begin creating a vine by taking a photo and creating a new caption. Other people will see your vine and join in by adding their own photo, showing their own take on the caption. Google explains:
A vine is like a constantly growing family of photos connected through a common caption created by you, your friends, and people all over the world. Some examples of vines could be: “What Weekends Are Made Of”, “Secret Stuffed Animal”, “Party People”, or, “Love of My Life”. As people add photos to vines, they tell their own stories about the moments, images, and ideas that define our lives in a way that’s social, creative, and fun.
