YouTube

YouTube Creator Studio is YouTube’s app through which creators can manage their accounts on the go. Now the company is creating a “Trusted Tester” program through which passionate Creator Studio users will be able to receive new updates to the app prior to their public release, and in return provide feedback and insights that will help YouTube improve the app.

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In a recent video uploaded to the YouTube Creators channel, employees from the video platform outlined changes and new features coming soon across mobile and desktop including a new channel card. The purpose of the card is to add a heightened level of interactivity to videos by allowing creators to embed an inline link in the video player to another channel they may want to promote — maybe because they’re featured in the video, for example.

According to a tweet from YouTube, that card just went live for creators today.

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The Internet has changed the way we access, view, ingest, and share knowledge, and Google has played a big part in that, with its mission from day one being to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. Now through a new project called Google Camp, the company will train kids to utilize their services as early as possible — starting from the ages of 7-10 years old, specifically. The program seems to focus on online project-based science lessons…

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Update: The premium version is on sale today (July 2nd) for $1.49, or 50% off its regular price. Just press the Google Play icon from within the phone app to upgrade.

Have you ever found yourself standing in line at a coffee shop and thought to yourself, “Man, I really wish I could watch that video of the squirrel playing a tiny violin”? Me too! Fortunately for both of us, our prayers have been answered: Wear Video Tube will stream videos from your Android smartphone to your Wear watch.

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Amongst those who regularly publish content to YouTube, the video site is known for picking favorites and being a black box in terms of the communication it holds with the community when it comes to anyone other than the site’s biggest stars. The company has as of late been trying to change that perception, though, by using the YouTube Creators channel as an outlet to recognize and acknowledge the feedback and concerns of its users. Today it published a new video outlining changes and new features coming soon to the video platform.

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The United States Supreme Court ruled today in favor of the union of same-sex couples, effectively giving new civil rights to LGBT couples by declaring that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, and Google is going all-out in its celebration.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF3QVeR9d1Q]

Halfbrick Studios announced today that it is teaming up with YouTube to produce a new series of animated shorts centered around the characters from their hit game Fruit Ninja. The studio already has a number of clips on the video channel including trailers and gameplay clips, but says the Fruit Ninja animated series will be aimed at children age 6-10 with the YouTube Kids app in mind…
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Project Jump is Google’s committal to making virtual reality go mainstream by making it cheaper and easier for anyone to produce VR video, and as reported by TechCrunch it’s going to let a lucky few take a Jump rig for a spin this summer. The company has a form up where interested creators can explain why they deserve to be one of the lucky few – it’s two pages long with some basic biographical questions and an essay section.

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Recognizing the high-profile role that ‘citizen journalist’ video can play in news stories, YouTube has announced YouTube Newswire, a curated feed of eyewitness videos which have been confirmed as genuine.

In partnership with Storyful, a social news agency we’ve worked with since protests broke out in Tahrir Square in 2011, we’re rolling out the YouTube Newswire, a curated feed of the most newsworthy eyewitness videos of the day, which have been verified by Storyful’s team of editors and are embeddable from the original sources.

The initiative is supported by The First Draft Coalition to provide materials which help journalists and others verify eyewitness media and consider the ethical implications of using it in reporting. A full website will follow, but YouTube has kicked things off with a collection of blog pieces on Medium … 
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Google has officially unveiled its plans to take on Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch, confirming earlier rumors that the company was working on a game streaming service of its own. The site, called YouTube Gaming, was finally announced today (via TechCrunch).

YouTube Gaming will feature… (Read More)

No, we’re not talking about Pied Piper here: Google is being sued by Max Sound Corporation over patented technology which allows for “far more economically efficient transport of digital content due to greatly optimized data capacity.”

The District Court of Mannheim in Germany has scheduled a December 8th hearing for the video streaming patent case against Google and YouTube, which was filed this past December. The whole case will be heard that day and a decision is expected to be brought down a few weeks later.

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Update: Google responded to our request for comment by saying that 8K video has been supported since 2010, but that labeling for 8K video (the 4320p/8K quality setting like pictured above) was added “earlier this year.” We’re not sure how long ago they really mean, but a simple search on Reddit shows threads about the new label surfacing just over the past few days (Marques Brownlee also noticed it today), so there’s reason to believe it was a recent change.

It may seem a bit excessive to most of us, but it seems that playback of 4320p, 8K video is now possible on YouTube. The playback works in Chrome (although most consumers can barely play 4K at 60fps as it is), but YouTube doesn’t have any official announcement yet mentioning 8K video playback support…

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Life is about seeing the wonders of the world for yourself, but Google thinks that the experience you get from reliving these moments later on through the tiny windows that today’s cameras produce is pretty limited. Which is why the company today at its I/O conference announced the release of an open-source VR camera rig specification called “Jump” which will make it much easier for creators to capture, process, and share 360-degree virtual reality video for the whole world to enjoy.

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While Google’s ad business is definitely in a transition phase, largely due to the shift away from personal computers towards mobile handsets, Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy says that the company is handling this move well. Selling ads to advertisers may be harder with more of those ads ending up on mobile devices with smaller screens than notebooks and desktops, meaning more difficulty for customers to complete purchases, but Google is definitely taking steps toward slowing the rapid decline in ad prices.

According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, while Google is making several moves to make advertising more valuable, the market’s more recent move to larger-screened devices has helped significantly…
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Have you ever seen a product or service in a YouTube video ad and wished it were easier to learn more or purchase it? Me neither, but Google believes its new TrueView for shopping ad format will result in stronger results for advertisers looking to drive increased interest and sales. 
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YouTube has had support for 60fps video for quite a while now, but now the Mountain View company says it is introducing 60fps video for live streaming in browsers that support HTML 5…
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Google’s family-friendly YouTube Kids app has been hit with a second complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, this time accusing it of containing inappropriate content, including sexually-explicit language and “jokes about pedophilia.” This follows a complaint last month that the app was “deceptive to children” in the way it mixed ads into the programming.

The WSJ reports that the complaint was sent by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy.

Examples of what the non-profit groups found include: explicit sexual language in cartoons; jokes about pedophilia and drug use; activities such as juggling knives, tasting battery acid, and making a noose; and adult discussions about family violence, pornography, and child suicide.

The group created a video (below) illustrating the inappropriate content found … 
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The basis upon which many Consumer Reports ratings are set may seem insane to the technology savvy among us. For a long time they would not recommend the iPhone for its lack of removable battery, for example. But the site still holds weight among older generations and so it’s worth taking a look at what they have to say about the top smartphone manufacturers’ newest flagship devices. Like how they recommend the last-gen Samsung Galaxy S5 over the newer Galaxy S6…

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