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There’s little question the White House is one of the most familiar buildings the world over and they always go the extra mile decorating for the holiday season. That’s why it’s so notable that the White House just held a streaming Google+ Hangout to show off some of the decor that has the White House looking all festive for the first family and tourists alike.

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Grabbing the attention of customers in the wireless industry these days requires some slick moves and a creative mind. Well, Motorola has done exactly that with a brand new interactive ad in January’s Wired magazine.

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Google just dropped a few more updates for Glass via Google+ to help end 2013 in the best way possible. Included in this shiny new update are the Wall Street Journal, Weather Alerts, Winkfeed (different from yesterday), Upload to YouTube and Hangouts. All in all, it’s a pretty hefty update for Glass fans and offers a few more reasons to consider shelling out $1500 courtesy of the money you got from returning all those ugly sweaters your grandparents are preparing to give you on Christmas day.

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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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Google today officially released its latest update for Google Glass, XE12, alongside the news that its MyGlass for iOS app will arriving later this week. The app briefly made an appearance on the App Store today but was quickly removed. The update also includes a number of new features including enhancements to the Google Play music feature it first started rolling out earlier this month, a new screen lock security feature, improved integration with Hangouts and YouTube, and brand new winking gestures.

For those times you might miss a shot, try capturing the moment with a wink. The Wink feature is a exploratory feature that lets you take a picture with a wink. It’s even faster than the camera button or voice action and it even works when the display is off…Wink is a exploratory feature. To use it, you’ll need a device purchased or swapped after October 28th, 2013. If that’s you, give it a shot and tell us what you think in the Explorers Community.

Also new in the update is a new “Listen” action menu for Google Play Music, new YouTube options, the ability to set up a unique pattern as a screen lock much like on Android, and Hangouts Glassware for sending and receiving video calls.
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Everyone loves a good surprise and that’s why we’re happy to see YouTube arrive on the Roku 3. The arrival happens simultaneously in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland. The surprise arrival of YouTube includes features like:

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Google does a lot well during the year, but perhaps one of the things Google does best is its year-end Zeitgeist. For the unfamiliar, Google’s Zeitgeist wraps up all the top searches for various categories during the 2013 calendar year in combination with a video, dedicated set of web pages and enough information to keep you interested for hours.

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A big NSFW warning for all of you watching this anywhere you don’t have a little privacy as College Humor shows just how far Google will go to get you on board with Google+.

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Google has announced the winners of the 2013 Players’ Choice awards for top Google Play apps and games. The awards are given based on user popularity, unlike the apps featured last week in the Play Store for a similar award,  which were chosen by Google themselves. There were six categories spanning apps and games. The winners of each respective category are listed below, as chosen by the Android community.

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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.

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Samsung is back on YouTube with Santa, the Galaxy Gear, Mrs Claus and a whole lot of screaming elves. So what’s the “next big thing?” Why the Galaxy gear of course.

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This “new” Verizon video includes Edward Norton and a whole lot of silly situations someone can get into during a 48 hour period. The video, which actually went live at the tail end of November is making the rounds this morning after a teaser earlier in November hinted at something relating to 48 hours.

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Samsung’s new YouTube video courtesy of their Taiwan channel is teasing something elegant, fast, simple and something just for us. There’s plenty of rumors we could fan with this one as the boys from Android Central point out upon their discovery of the video.

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Imagine my shock and surprise as yet another anti-Chromebook advertisement hits the YouTubes courtesy of Microsoft. The latest in the company’s anti-everything-Google campaign attacks the notion that a Chromebook has “everything you need” as a laptop.

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Google has updated its Google Wallet application for the iPhone with a few notable enhancements. First, like it has added to its other apps on iOS as of late, Google now allows single sign-on for Wallet. This means that if you are signed in via Google to YouTube, Gmail, Adsense, or other compatible Google apps, you can be automatically logged in to the Wallet app. More interestingly, you can now use your iPhone’s camera to capture the data from your debit card or credit card to connect it to the app. Google added that feature to the Android app last month. Google Wallet recently launched a physical card program for Wallet. The update is free in the App Store.

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Chrome OS users take note, a brand new camera app is on its way offering a host of new features. The announcement came via Google’s “Happiness Evangelist” Francois Beaufort who suggested that while the current Chrome OS camera is good, the team can do better.

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We’ve been hearing rumors of a subscription music service from YouTube for awhile now, but according to a new report from AllThingsD, we are still a little ways off from seeing it launch. The blog reports, citing “people familiar with the company’s plans”, that the music service will not launch this year, but rather sometime in Q1 2014. Reportedly, YouTube has already secured the licenses with music labels, which is not an easy task nowadays, but is not satisfied with the actual service. Reports of the subscription service began appearing back in October, with the project supposedly nearing its final stages then.

There are still a lot of questions surrounding the service, as well. Such as, how it will differentiate itself from Google’s All Access service and how it handle user content, like lip syncs and mashups. Last week, an update to the YouTube for Android app revealed code that hinted at a “Music Pass” service that supported offline playback and was entirely ad free for “millions of songs”.

Since there’s no pinpoint launch date within Q1, it could be that we see the service launch relatively early in the quarter, which would mean we are not too far away from seeing it.

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Oh Microsoft, when will you ever learn? The latest in the company’s Surface line of “attack” ads forgets about Apple and turns its attention onto Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. The ad highlights  video output, a full size USB port and the ability to charge “while getting stuff done” on the Surface.  Then it turns its attention on the Galaxy Tab’s lone microUSB port which must be used both for hooking up to a monitor, transferring documents and for charging. Ooooo slick burn Microsoft!

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Amazon’s never shied away from quietly mocking Apple’s iPad and that’s why this new Kindle Fire HDX and its distinctly British voice has us laughing. Calling it the “magical new iPad Air” in proper British tongue, this new commercial discovered via YouTube is offset with the American accented intro of the 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX.

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Today a new version of the YouTube app for Android started rolling out on Google Play. The update includes revamped search results with videos, playlists and channels grouped together, new tabs on channel pages, and other fixes and enhancements. The update might not be all that exciting, but new code in the app discovered by AndroidPolice points to some big new features potentially coming to the app in the future.

Several references to “Music Pass” in the app’s code have many speculating that YouTube could be gearing up to launch its rumored subscription based music focused streaming service. Back in October, Billboard reported that YouTube was developing a streaming service that would allow users to stream music videos along with regular audio tracks.

Some other clues from the code include references to “offline playback”, “no ads on millions of songs”, and the ability to play music in the background. We can only speculate that the no ads would be for some type of premium service, much like on Google Play Music, but it’s clear YouTube has at the very least offline streaming and background audio features in the works. It will be interesting to see how Google positions the YouTube service against its own Play Music streaming service. 
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