College Humor is back by popular demand with a yet another look at the far too realistic personification of the search engine in the sequal to its “If Google Was a Guy” video. Certain questions prompt a camera appearance by the ominous NSA. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing makes a guest appearance as a pristine but vacant office employee. The parallels drawn are undeniable. Watch it below:
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Google today announced on its DoubleClick blog that it has acquired spider.io, a company that has been developing technology to fight online fraud related to advertisements. While noting that it has also been investing in developing its own technologies to fight fraud, Google said it would first implement spider.io’s technology into its video and display ad products to help detect fraudulent activity:
Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts.
Google adds that the long-term goal for the technology it acquired is to provide advertisers and publishers with more accurate methods of measuring a campaign’s results. “Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.”
More on the DoubleClick advertisers blog here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nupabf5zsGg
For those of you that aren’t going to make it to CES this year, Qualcomm has released several videos to its YouTube channel, showing off some of the features of its Snapdragon 805 processor. The videos focus mainly on the enhancements the chip can make to camera technology and styluses (via Engadget).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUL4d4t17j4
Keeping up with the year-end videos, Google has just released another video, highlighting the best ads that appeared on YouTube this year. The company says that 2013 was the year in which “brands re-invented ads on YouTube – by making ads people chose to watch.”
To celebrate this amazing year, and gear up for what’s sure to be an even bigger 2014, we created this video to celebrate just some of the great work done by brands. Do you remember all of these? Which was your favorite?
The video shows off twenty ads, many of which ended up going viral. The ads are for a variety of things, such as the Honda, Oreos, Kmart, and Samsung.
Check out the video above.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPuCmfhzgbg]
While it doesn’t seem to be as big of an issue as it was with the glass-backed Nexus 4, there are many reports that the Nexus 5 display isn’t holding up to even minor impact. If you’d rather go the DIY route than going through a repair company (both of which will void your warranty) ETrade Supply points us to an instructional video from LE55ONS that will walk you through every step of replacing the display assembly. You’ll of course need to pick up a Nexus 5 replacement screen, but otherwise the tools required are pretty standard: Phillips and flathead drivers, pry tools, tweezers, etc. The video goes over other parts of the Nexus 5 as well, but there is a step-by-step guide focusing only on the display here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7jtC8vjXw8]
YouTube’s Reward 2013 is a mashup year in review of all the hottest videos that took the world by storm. So, YouTube did the only thing that made sense and invited a whole bunch of YouTube stars to appear in one giant mashup of the most popular moments since January 1st.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vT0AWDq3DE]
PhoneBuff has put together an interesting video showcasing fifty things Google Voice Command can do, and we think there’s a pretty high chance you won’t be aware of all of them. It’s getting on for eight minutes long, but well worth a look if you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of Google’s virtual assistant.
The video includes examples of linked queries, where Google knows who or what you are referring to based on your previous question.
PhoneBuff did a similar thing with Apple’s Siri, and although they don’t use the same questions – each video designed to illustrate their respective capabilities rather than a head-to-head challenge – it does make for an interesting comparison. Siri video below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-W66HINFLg&w=640&h=360]
We’ve already had a look at LG’s official video showing off the G Flex “self-healing” technology but this time around we’re getting a true hands-on. Recognizing that LG’s official video happened in the most optimal conditions using the very best in camera angles…this new video video courtesy of YouTube star Marques Brownlee shows off “self-healing” in the real world.
Netflix and YouTube between them account for more than half of American traffic on the Internet, according to data from broadband company Sandvine, totalling 50.31 percent of peaktime downstream usage.
The numbers need to be viewed with a certain amount of caution, measuring data transmission rather than number of people watching. For example, Netflix sits well above YouTube not because it attracts more eyes, but because people watch longer, higher-quality videos on Netflix.
By this measure, companies would also be penalised for more efficient data-transmission protocols – squeezing more video into the same amount of data, so it’s possible that Amazon Video and Hulu are a little more than the also-rans they appear here – but with those kinds of numbers, the overall picture is clear.
YouTube’s share may further increase this month when offline viewing is introduced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nwuk90Gc2A
Samsung has aired some interesting new ads for its Galaxy Gear and Note 3 since the launch of the two devices, and today it’s posted perhaps its most creative yet with a new musical short film starring footballer Lionel Messi. The ad, titled “The Developer”, is “a dramatic retelling of actual projects completed by the Messi Foundation” and stars Messi using his Note 3 and Galaxy Gear to mastermind the construction of a new football field for neighbourhood kids:
Told from a child’s perspective, “The Developer” is a musical short film by Samsung featuring Lionel Messi and the hit single “Royals” by Lorde.
A mysterious stranger arrives in a low income neighborhood and captures the imaginations of the children who live there. He is “The Developer” and the children view him with a deep suspicion.
Together with his Samsung GALAXY Note 3 and GALAXY Gear, the Developer effortlessly masterminds a secret construction project. Using the latest in Samsung technology including Action Memo, Pen Window, Scrapbook and hands-free call capability on the Gear, the Developer orchestrates and executes his mysterious mission.
The children watch in awe. They reflect on their current situation by singing Lorde’s breakout hit “Royals,” a song about overcoming her own humble beginnings.
The spot concludes with a beautiful new pitch that has been constructed in the toughest part of town. The Developer is revealed to be the world’s reigning football star, Lionel Messi, fulfilling his personal mission to help under privileged children.
Earlier today, Google announced its upcoming Android 4.4 KitKat software update. In tandem with the announcement, Google posted a video that showcases the unveiling of the KitKat statue at the company’s headquarters.
At about 38-39 seconds into the video (embedded below), a Google employee is seen taking photos or video recording the statue with an unknown Nexus device (on the left).
<em>Close-up shot, click for larger</em>
The backplate seems similar to that found on the new Nexus 7, and the camera lens appears to be larger than the current-generation Nexus 4. Speaking of the camera, Google executive Vic Gundotra previously hinted at major advances in the Android camera department:
The unannounced phone also appears larger in size, so perhaps the new device will sport a bigger screen.
The next Nexus phone is rumored to debut in Q4. The video below has been pulled since this report was published, perhaps indicating that this was a true leak.
Here’s a copy of the video:
And here’s the new phone blown up:
YouTube has announced on its YouTube Creators blog that it will be retiring the video response feature that allowed users to leave a video response in the comment field instead of the usual text comment. It’s likely not something that many users will even notice, as YouTube notes that video responses currently only have a click-through rate of about .0004%. That means only around 4 out of every 1 million users that see a video response actually click it. The feature will officially come to an end on September 12, but YouTube says it has plans to implement even better fan engagement tools in the near future:
So, on September 12 we’re going to retire this little-used feature as we work to develop more effective fan engagement tools for creators. The team is focused on enabling you to share video links in comments. Doing this in comments will let creators and viewers add more context to a video, and more context should drive more engagement.
Until the new fan engagement features for video comments roll out, YouTube provides a couple tips for finding and sharing video responses from fans:
In the meantime, you can continue to encourage fans to upload videos with specific titles, hashtags or descriptions (e.g., Video Response To Taylor Swift’s Video “22”), so you can find these by searching for them. If you want to highlight them, you can use playlists and channel sections instead of displaying these videos below yours. Any video responses you or your fans have made will still be available and discoverable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8CHyOTOnSS4
Verizon has just released a new video teasing its new Droid MAXX, Droid Ultra, and Droid Mini devices announced this morning. The video, in typical Verizon/Motorola fashion, is very robot-like. The video teases that “WHEN IT MATTERS, DROID DOES.”
The moments that matter offer no time to pause or stop, no room for bulk or bloat, and no chance to refuel. In those moments, the new lineup of DROID phones delivers.
The DROID Ultra and MAXX will be available on August 20 and the Droid Mini on August 29, with pre-orders starting today.
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While LG is not officially set to unveil its G2 flagship until August 7th, Engadget has just gotten its hands on clear, detailed images of the device, as well as a video that basically take all the suspense out of LG’s official event next month. According to the leak, the device will feature a 5.2-inch 1080p display with an incredibly small bezel that makes it appear edge-to-edge. Visually the G2 looks a lot more like the Nexus 4 than the original Optimus G. It has a more rounded design, as opposed to the blocky design on its predecessor. On the back is the volume rocker, which we saw in leaked images last month.
AllThingsD reports that Amazon has been quietly testing a way to offer Flash video on Kindle Fire tablets.
Since February, some Kindle Fire owners have been seeing an option to use an “experimental streaming viewer” when trying to watch video on sites such as NBC.com, CBS.com and Fox.com.
The effort is made possible by the fact that the Kindle Fire browser, known as Silk, divides work between the device and Amazon servers in the cloud.
Adobe stopped supporting Flash on mobile devices back in 2011, with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) the last version to offer Flash. While most sites have now switched to HTML5 for mobile video, there are still some that require Flash, causing frustration for those accessing the sites on smartphones and tablets.
Although getting a server to convert Flash video to a format that can be viewed by a device without Flash is an approach used by a number of browsers, it has so far mostly been the preserve of geeks. If Amazon opens the service to all Kindle users – as seems likely from the company’s comments – it will turn it into a mainstream option.
“Because this feature is built on the AWS cloud, expanding our list of available sites is as simple as a configuration change that immediately propagates to customer devices and we can scale out elastically based upon customer demand,” said Kufeld, who heads Amazon’s Silk browser team. “It’s still early days but we’re very excited about this feature.”
YouTube announced in a blog post today that it will be live streaming the 2013 Wimbledon tennis tournament. The event kicks of on June 24th and this will mark the first time that it has been streamed on YouTube. The two plan to offer interviews, behind the scenes footage, exclusive live look-ins, and more for the two-week tournament.
Catch the key moments of the tennis, interviews, behind the scenes and press conferences throughout the Wimbledon fortnight. You can also relive all the glory days of Wimbledon’s golden moments, such as one of the greatest matches ever played, the 2008 Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final: Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer.
Tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands has also been taking Google Glass for a spin and was featured in the company’s latest “Explorer Story” video. You can watch it down below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_iMA-y_4KwA
AT&T has officially announced that it will carry the Galaxy S4 Active on its network starting June 21st for $199 with a new two-year agreement, though pre-orders will start tomorrow, June 14th. We’ve known the device was coming for a while, as press images of the phone leaked back in May and a teaser video for the device was released by AT&T yesterday.
The Galaxy S4 Active will be available in two colors, Urban Gray and Dive Blue, and packs a 5-inch TFT display with Gorilla Glass and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The device is powered by a quad-core processor and has an 8MP rear facing camera.
The main selling point of the Galaxy S4 Active is its rugged design. AT&T touts that the device is “built for life,” as it is IP67 certified to be water-resistant and dust-proof. It also offers an Aqua Mode camera feature, which lets you snap pictures and images while you are underwater:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SR1tCDxqS2Y
The much-rumored Galaxy S4 Active was finally announced by Samsung one week ago, but without any sort of United States carrier information. We’d seen press images of the device leak with AT&T branding, and on Wednesday, the carrier released a teaser video that all but confirms the Galaxy S4 Active for its network.
The video shows someone dropping a phone into a bucket of water, but then receiving a call and having to pull it out to answer. At the very end, he holds the phone up to his ear and you can clearly see the top of the Galaxy S4 Active’s design and the same AT&T logo that we saw in the leaked press shots a few weeks ago. The video teases that we will “find out more” tomorrow, June 13th.
The Galaxy S4 Active’s main selling point is obviously the water and dust proof design. It will be protected in those substances for up to 30 minutes of submergence at a depth of one meter:
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With each instalment of the popular FPS Modern Combat series on iOS and Android, Gameloft seems to be getting a little closer to matching the quality of gameplay we expect from the top of the line console games in the genre such as Call of Duty. While it’s no secret the Modern Combat series has borrowed a lot from COD (as have many other FPS games), the latest trailer for the upcoming Modern Combat 5 title looks to be the closet thing to an immersive, action-packed COD-like shooter that we’ll have on mobile devices. Note: On top of the gameplay, the logo towards the end of the video (including the animations) is little too close to the Call of Duty Modern Warfare series for my liking. Gameloft has been accused several times of knocking off games from big developers in the console world, most notably with its Gangstar (aka GTA clone) and NOVA (aka HALO clone) series.
We don’t learn a whole lot from the trailer itself, but it does appear much of the action will be taking place in Venice, Italy this time around. Despite the shameless similarities to other big franchises, those excited for the upcoming Modern Combat 5 will seemingly have to wait until E3 to hear more about when and for how much it will be coming to iPhone, iPad, and Android.
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YouTube has been adding a lot of new options and tools over the last year, most recently adding the ability for the majority of content creators to live stream right on their channel. Today yet another tool is rolling out to users and this time it comes in the form of a new Enhancement tool that allows creators to add a slow motion effect to their videos to give the impression “it was filmed with a high-speed camera.” You can try out the new effect now:
To create a slomo video, visit the Enhancements tool or the YouTube Editor and apply it to one of your existing videos. You’ll get a smooth, slomo video that makes it look like it was filmed with a high-speed camera.
Google made available today an introductory video to Glass featuring a brief tutorial on how to navigate its controls.
Using Glass certainly doesn’t seem to come naturally, but the controls are basic enough that Glass should be fairly easy to learn.
It seems the more of this kind of thing I see, the more I want to try Google Glass for myself, which is probably exactly what Google is trying to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vetiQ9JFRws#!
Last week, we reported that the Explorer’s Edition of Google Glass would begin to ship out next month. However, today, units became available for pick up. Google Glass users Matt Abdou, Brandon Allgood and Cecilla Abadie have posted some photos on Google+.
The Google Glass packages include one power cord, two visors, one carrying bag and the actual Google Glass hardware.
Interestingly, Matt Abdou uploaded to footage of himself GoKarting while wearing Google Glass. While he does seem to adjust Glass near the beginning in the video while driving, the glasses seem to stay on well and the video quality is up to par with what you would find on a common smartphone. Yesterday, we reported that the camera is capable of shooting 720P footage. The sensor comes in at 5 megapixels.
Another unboxing video follows:
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YouTube announced on its official blog today that YouTube star PSY will be hitting YouTube this weekend to perform his second single “Gentleman” live for the first time ever following the success of his massively popular Gangnam Style video:
This Saturday at 6:30 p.m. Korean Standard Time (2:30 a.m. PST), PSY will kick off a live streamed concert from the Seoul World Cup Stadium and share his new single with the world. You can check out the action atwww.youtube.com/officialpsy, where the concert will be rebroadcast for 24 hours after the live event.
Back in December PSY’s Gangnam Style video became the first to hit 1 billion views.
