Google has consistently beefed up its licensing agreements with content providers. It added over 1000 titles from Paramount Pictures and MGM to both YouTube and Google Play rental services earlier this month. Today, it announced on Google+ that movies are now available to Australian Google Play users:
YouTube must implement filters to stop Germany-based users from uploading videos that contain content held by music-royalty collector GEMA.
GEMA represents over 60,000 German artists. The organization sued Google’s video-sharing platform over 12 temporarily uploaded music videos that failed to pay a licensing fee for their content, but YouTube claimed it holds no legal responsibility. Hamburg’s state court found YouTube not in violation of copyrights on Friday, but said the service bears responsibility for the uploaded content.
YouTube currently offers copyright holders software that allows them to identify recordings for which they hold copyright, enabling them to flag the content as infringing their rights. The Hamburg court ruled that once an alleged violation is flagged YouTube must now apply the software to the recording to prevent further copyright infringements. The court also told YouTube to install a new program that filters uploaded videos for possible copyright infringements according to key words — such as musicians’ names and song titles — to catch versions of a song that only sound somewhat different, such as live recordings.
It is currently unknown if the ruling will be appealed.
Google released Gmail Meter today, which is a tool for analyzing your inbox that is similar to the Google Account Activity feature launched last month.
The Google Team announced Gmail Meter on the Official Gmail Blog. Google Apps Script Top Contributor Romain Vialard developed the Google Apps Script-powered feature after looking at his sent mail one day and noticing there were many things he wanted to know about his email habits.
The video above explains the tool, but here is a quick run-down: Gmail Meter sends an email on the first day of every month containing statistics about an Inbox for detailing a user’s emailing habits. Some of the data measured regards volume statistics, daily traffic, traffic patterns, email categories, times before first response, word count, thread lengths, and top senders and recipients.
YouTube is quickly making its video-sharing platform an all-in-one editing tool with its built-in 3D graphics button and other attractive features, but now Google has taken the service up another notch with its new audio editing and mixing options.
The video above explains it all, but here is a quick run-down:
Google offers a variety of services, but its technical support is—well—lacking.
Until now, that is. The ever-popular search engine just debuted 24/7 technical support for Google Play users only. The most interesting part is that Google will now call you to provide answers. That’s right, no more are the days of automated support lines and endless waiting. Just fill out a form on the website, submit the form, and then wait for the phone to ring.
Unfortunately, Android devs are out of luck. They need to use ‘ole Help Center if questions should arise.
Wieden + Kennedy’s Iain Tait is leaving his executive creative director gig behind and opting for a role that promotes Android, Google+, Chrome, and other Google-branded services. Aside from the slue of YouTube slapstick Old Spice videos, he is also known for his advertising work at Levi’s, Coke, and Nike.
“I’m going to be an ECD at Google Creative Lab in New York,” announced Tait in a blog post. “I can’t believe that I’m leaving W+K. And I can’t believe that I’m about to join Google Creative Lab. The whole thing is kind of unbelievable.”
Many Google Glasses parody videos are swirling around the Web, but two Israeli-based filmmakers decided to up the ante with a take on “Battlefield 5.”
Nadav Pessach and Uzi Mor created the video above and hosted it on the “There is a Canal” YouTube channel. It features “Battlefield 5” in a much-idealized version of how some gamers expect Project Glass to one-day change the gaming industry. The Battlefield franchise is a series of FPS video games developed by the Swedish company EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts.
A leaked video suggests Microsoft’s world-renowned productivity suite will soon feature cloud-like options in an effort to curb Google Apps’ growing market share with its alternate offering.
The 30-second promo above is hosted on YouTube by Within Windows. It emphasizes “Office 15” as the suite’s newly re-branded name. It also focuses on the accessibility of the next iteration through remote access to documents, which is enabled by a normal sign-in procedure. The cloud options will tracks and store all of a user’s virtual papers in Microsoft’s cloud-based Sky Drive service.
Microsoft Office is dueling many cloud-based productivity suites, such as Google Apps, and it is steadily losing market share. The downward spiral even caused the once-great Word processing giant to embark on a smear campaign against Google, where it lambasted the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company as a shady advertiser with alternative motives.
Earlier this month, Google announced an agreement with Paramount Pictures to bring over 500 new movies for rent to YouTube and Google Play. Today, Google is once again continuing its promise to beef up Hollywood content with the announcement that Metro Goldwyn Mayer signed an agreement to bring 600 titles for rent to both Google Play and YouTube for users in North America. With MGM, Google has now signed up five of the six major studios with only 20th Century Fox holding out, and the rental service on YouTube continues to roll out internationally in the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and elsewhere.
If there’s one consistent opening image moviegoers around the world know and equate with great cinema, it’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Roaring Lion (a clip that has over 1 million views on YouTube). For nearly 90 years, MGM has brought some of the best and most memorable films to the silver screen. Today, through a new partnership with MGM, we’ve started adding more than 600 titles for rent to YouTube and Google Play users in the U.S. and Canada. MGM joins five of the six major studios and over ten independent movie studios, currently offering movies for rent on YouTube and Google Play.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/rgZuUTRvzso]
YouTube announced it is live-streaming “Coachella 2012” all weekend long on its video-sharing platform.
“Since 2001, the the Coachella Music and Arts festival has brought thousands of fans to southern California to kick off the music festival season in style. For the second year, YouTube will be live streaming the action, with a three day broadcast of the festival, presented by State Farm,” explained Google’s Music Marketing Manager Tim Partridge on the Official YouTube Blog.
Up until now, only some of the most popular videos on YouTube reaching millions of viewers had the opportunity to become a member of the partner program. The privilege provided content creators the ability to monetize their videos through advertising and access to features exclusive to partners. Starting today, YouTube is allowing anyone in 20 supported countries to instantly join the partner program by opting-in here. The only requirement is one piece of qualifying content that can be monetized.
While this is definitely a huge development for content creators looking to earn money from their YouTube videos, initially new partners will not have access to all features of current partners. For example, new partners will not have access to the custom thumbnails and banners, which are among the most popular features exclusive to partners. YouTube confirmed it is working on making these features available in the near future.
As of today, the Partner Program will roll out to everyone in the following 20 countries:
YouTube Live added new features to its live-streaming video platform today to celebrate its first birthday, but the most notable update it the ability to monetize live events.
“You can now monetize your live events with advertising or paid options. A live event can be claimed in the new video manager like any other video and monetized with instream ads or paid options where you can set price by country,” explained YouTube Partner Product Manager Varun Talwar on the official YouTube Creator Blog.
Other improvements to the service include Wirecast for YouTube Live and a new publishing flow with real-time analytics.
The SVAndroid Hackathon is taking place at Google TV headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and tickets are $20, but purchasing options end April 17.
Team ideas will be announced April 20, and the following day is “devoted to building, with breaks for demo sessions, Q&As, and a hangout with Google TV developers,” according to the Official Google TV Blog. The teams will present ideas to judges April 22 for the chance to win tickets to Google I/O and other prizes.
The Londroid Hackathon is occurring at the Google Campus in London, United Kingdom. It will run concurrent with the Mountain View event to gather Android devs throughout Europe.
“We will kick things off bright and early on Saturday, April 21, with introductions and background information on developing for Google TV. Teams will power on through Saturday night so that we can do a round of presentations and prizes at lunchtime on Sunday,” explained Google TV Senior Developer Advocate Paul Carff on the Official Google TV Blog.
According to The New York Times’ blog, the dinner is a large Hollywood affair equipped with buffets, banquets, and after-parties, where entertainment stars, media moguls, and famed celebrities alike gather to party the night away and mingle with the country’s most powerful politicians.
Google’s Eric Schmidt is a fresh face on this year’s guest list, but many show business executives, still scorned by the defeated antipiracy legislation earlier this year, are perturbed that the executive chairman plans to appear.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company’s role in conquering the hotly-debated legislation, coupled with Schmidt’s co-hosted pre-event party with The Hollywood Reporter in Washington on April 27, is just salt on the wound for many media executives.
Besides the Scobelizer spotting Google Glasses on co-founder Sergey Brin (above), we are hearing some additional information about the project. First, the brand was changed from “Project Wingfront,” which was the name of the project in the [x] labs. As it graduated to public knowledge, Google needed a more general-purpose name. I am told this decision was made in the past month.
Additionally, my understanding is that there has been a lot of strife in the Wingfront group over the past few months. Product people complain that they need time to iterate and perfect the experience, while management wants to get these into the outside world as soon as possible. Some strong tensions in the group are getting even more heated as more people are brought in.
The glasses shown off in the video and on the Plus page is only one of many prototypes worn in the [x] labs. I am told that there are clip-on models that attach to normal glasses, as well as ones built into full-fledge sunglasses that I previously detailed (here and here).
On the Google Investor Relations website, Google’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Page just published his “2012 Update from the CEO” to give an update on the state of the company since taking over as chief and “reorganizing the management team” around the company’s core products.
In the letter, Page talks a lot about one of his biggest efforts during the last year: Google+. While noting, “We have a long way to go,” he said the service now has 100 million active users and the company has implemented more than 120 Google+ integrations with services like search and Android.
Last April, I began by reorganizing the management team around our core products to improve responsibility and accountability across Google. I also kicked off a big clean-up. Google has so many opportunities that, unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin and don’t have the impact we want. So we have closed or combined over 30 products, including projects like Knol and Sidewiki. In addition, we gave many of our products, such as Google Search, a visual refresh, and they now have a cleaner, more consistent, and beautiful look.
Addressing concerns over changes made to privacy policies and search in recent months that have “generated a lot of interest,” Page explained the company’s incentive to “do the right thing”:
We have always wanted Google to be a company that is deserving of great love. But we recognize this is an ambitious goal because most large companies are not well-loved, or even seemingly set up with that in mind. We’re lucky to have a very direct relationship with our users, which creates a strong incentive for us to do the right thing… We have always believed that it’s possible to make money without being evil. In fact, healthy revenue is essential if we are to change the world through innovation, and hire (and retain) great people..
YouTube now automatically allows short 1080p videos to convert to 3D.
The video-sharing platform just announced on the official YouTube blog that it is expanding a beta feature released last year, which gives users the option to convert YouTube videos to 3D with just a click of a mouse. Since the beta launched, creators have converted hundreds of thousands of videos to 3D.
The popularity of the feature encouraged YouTube to implement 3D viewing in the Quality settings under the gear icon on the YouTube player.
“Then pop on your 3D glasses and see YouTube in another dimension (like the video above),” explained Technical Staffer Deb Mukherjee and Software Engineer Chen Wu in the blog post.
The Googlers even recommended watching “YouTube Rewind 2011” to get the full YouTube 3D experience (below).
YouTube announced a new licensing agreement with Paramount Pictures today that will bring 500 new rentable movie titles to its video-sharing platform and Google Play.
“With the addition of Paramount, we now have five of the six major studios and over ten independent movie studios offering nearly 9,000 movies for rent to millions of people around the world,” announced Director of Content Partnerships at YouTube Malik Ducard on the official YouTube blog.
The United States and Canada will have access to the new catalog over the next few weeks. A sampling of Paramount Pictures’ featured movies through Google include “Hugo” for $3.99, “Transformers” for $2.99, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” for $2.99, and “The Godfather” for $2.99.
“Many of you, like me, use Google Contacts to manage your personal address book. If that’s the case, then starting today we’ll include this contact info on your friends’ Google+ profiles — for your eyes only, of course,” announced Product Manager Sean Purcell on Google+.
Thus, Gmail and Android users’ Google Contacts are now integrated with the social network. For example: If a coworker has a new number recently stored in Google Contacts, it will automatically sync with Google+ in the “Details from Google Contacts” section. Purcell also provided a visual example of the new feature in the above image.
Samsung is making headlines this quarter with show-stopping commercials that critics claim vastly surpass all of Apple’s advert offerings.
Television analytics firm Ace Metrix dubbed the Galaxy Note’s “The Best of a Phone and Tablet” commercial by Samsung (above) as the “Most Effective Ad” in Q1 2012.
“Q1 is arguably the most important quarter for advertising, as the Super Bowl, Oscars, and awards season in general drives the advertising agenda,” said Ace Metrix Chief Executive Officer Peter Daboll in a press release. “[…] Samsung’s top-ranked ad was particularly brilliant because it conveyed innovation and information without a narrator.”
The Android-based device’s ad garnered a 686-point score, which gave Samsung the No. 1 spot on the Top 10 Most Effective Ads list. Samsung released nine ads in Q1, and three were heralded as the most effective technology ads for the quarter, earning between 686 and 636 points each.
Sony plans to expand Google TV-based set-top-boxes to Europe starting this September.
According to GigaOM (via machine-translated Les Echos), Sony France Marketing Director Stephane Labrousse said a set-top box will sell in France for €200 ($266 USD) and another box with a built-in Blu-ray player will go for €300 ($399 USD).
Aside from a France launch, Les Echos indicated a simultaneous release in Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Google TV is currently only available in the United States, but Sony announced at Las Vegas’ 2012 Consumer Electronics Show that two Google TV-compatible set-top boxes would go international within the year.
In case you were worried that 8-Bit Maps were the only new release today, fear not. Google is releasing the Google Racing Autonomous NASCAR racing team in a variety of flavors, including Android, YouTube, and Chrome. Expand Expanding Close
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