A week ago, I reported that YouTube tests a new border based on Cosmic Panda. The most important attribute is the redesigned homepage that helps you find new channels and explore the videos from your subscriptions. YouTube started to post extra information about the new interface and it's now obvious that it will replace existing UI in the near future (the link only works after you've enabled the new interface).
"We've given YouTube a refresh. When you log in, you'll be greeted with fresh activity from your subscriptions. You can also browse and add new Channels to your homepage. Connect with Google+ and Face book to share your favorites with friends. There's plenty to discover, so login and give it a spin."
There's also an article about the new border for channels.
This new look and feel makes it easier for viewers to find and observe content. It also makes it easier for Channel creators to systematize and showcase exactly what they want. We incorporated your Feedback from the "Cosmic Panda" Channels and Watch experiment, and are eager to present:
* A more streamlined and consistent design
* An easier way to find and view videos
* New, more flexible layouts for featured content, and
* A way to keep your audience engaged even when you don't have new uploads
It's interesting to observe that the new homepage and the new channels are built around feed views and activity streaming to make YouTube even more social.
The new channels are less customizable: you can only choose an avatar, a background image, a background color and a template (creator, blogger, network, everything).
Update: The new interface is accessible for everyone.
We consider that technology can be a force for good; one that builds and binds community. As a Googler, my proudest moments are when we take that technology and put it in the hands of people who can use it to communicate, collaborate, build and explore.
Today, on Veterans Day, I am conceited to share a few Google tools and platforms for the military veteran community. They can be accessed on our website, Google for Veterans and Families, which was created by veterans and their family and friends, who work at Google. This single border brings together Google products and platforms for service members and their families. We believe it will be useful to all veterans, whether still in the service, transitioning out, or on a new path in their civilian lives. Here are some examples of what you’ll find on the site:
* Vet Connect - This tool helps service members connect, communicate and share their experiences with others who have served using the Google+ platform.
* Google Veterans Channel - A YouTube channel for discussion concerning military service for veterans, their families and the public. Veterans can share their experiences with each other as well as with civilians to help shed light on the significance and complexity of service. If you have not served, this is a great place to offer your thanks by uploading a compliment video.
* Resume Builder powered by Google Docs - We originate that Docs can be a particularly helpful tool to transitioning service members seeking employment. Resume Builder generates an auto-formatted resume that can be simply edited, saved and downloaded to share with potential employers.
* Tour Builder powered by Google Earth (coming soon). A new way to tell your military story, Today, you can view some sample “tours”— 3D maps of veterans’ service histories, complete with photos and videos. Stay tuned for more facts and updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.
It’s been a proud month for those of us here at Google who are veterans or family of veterans.
In October, 100 Googlers visited the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at West Point to conduct resume writing workshops for members of the Warrior Transition Unit. And, just two weeks ago, we traveled to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to teach wounded, ill and injured service members how to use Google tools to continue in touch with their loved ones while in recovery.
Finally, this week, we introduced the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Job Bank is a modified job search engine in the National Resource Directory (NRD), which is powered by Google Custom Search technology and crawls the web for Job Posting markup from Schema.org to recognize veteran-committed job openings.
Even playing a little part to serve those who have served has been an honor.
Every October marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time when organizations and persons around the world come together to raise awareness to support the fight against breast cancer.
This year, Google joined in and partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure on the Pink Pin scheme, which challenged local businesses in New York City to rally their customers, friends and families about breast cancer awareness. Using Google’s products, including Maps, YouTube, Picasa and Google+, we made it easy for local businesses and New York residents to show their support for the cause. On an interactive website, pinkpin.com, people might register their businesses on the Pink Pin Map, share their experiences by uploading their own videos and photo stories, as well as donate to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
More than 300 businesses signed up to contribute in the first 24 hours, and we saw an outpouring of public support from both businesses and individuals, demonstrating how small, random acts of participation can interpret to larger scale impact. In fact, some businesses took it upon themselves to take Pink Pin a step further. One New York business offered $100 of free services for every $100 donated. A Brooklyn restaurant hosted a one-day “Dine-out” for Pink Pin, where a percentage of their earnings for that day went to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Pink Pin was a wonderful demonstration of what people will do if you give them the tools to use technology for good. We’re delighted that Pink Pin has been so positively established by New Yorkers and hope to carry on and expand our efforts next year.
Googlers also celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness month in 23 of our offices about the globe. In addition to health talks encouraging Googlers to learn more about breast cancer prevention, we heard a panel of survivors speak in Mountain View, held walk/runs in California, New York and Washington, and participated in flash mobs to raise awareness in Dublin and London. On Wednesday, October 19, we renowned a global “Wear Pink, Think Pink Day.” We also encouraged donations (and gift matching!) to organizations like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. You can see a photo album of all our activities below:
YouTube tests a new border code-named Cosmic Panda. There are many cosmetic changes: videos are centered, player's wheel are now black, video thumbnails are a lot bigger, suggestions are displayed below the video, profile photos are displayed next to the comments, channels and playlists have a totally new layout.
Probably the most attractive thing about the new interface is a Chrome-only feature that lets you play a video in the background while you visit a channel. YouTube is more fluid and I wait for to see a similar feature when you perform a search and when you click "view all comments".
The new border can be enabled and disabled at youtube.com/cosmicpanda.
YouTube added a new feature that lets you alter the standard video licensing and switch to the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows other people to reuse your videos. "Others may copy, distribute and create unoriginal works from your video — but only if they give you credit."
The new feature is used in YouTube's video editor, which lets you search for Creative Commons videos and use them to create a new video. YouTube says that there are already more than 10,000 videos from organizations like C-SPAN and Al Jazeera, but that's just the beginning.
YouTube will surely become the largest library of Creative Commons videos, but it's strange to see that it took so long to add a license that encourages creativity. The first Google service that included with Creative Commons was Google Web Search (2005) and it was followed by Picasa Web Albums (2008) and Google Image Search (2009).
If you want to find Creative Commons videos on YouTube, click "Filter & Explore" after performing a search and choose "Creative Commons". You might also add ", creative commons" to your query and search for [paris, creativecommons].
Google created a new Web page that explains users why it's a good quality idea to create a Google account. "One name, one password. That's all you need. Its free. Take a look at how you can personalize and optimize your knowledge across all Google products and services."
Using a Google account, you can share photos, track your favorite stocks, get more storage for your email, share your schedule, create web pages and work together on documents, make free phone calls and chat face to face, get modified search results and personalized news, create custom maps and get the same experience on multiple devices. There's a lot you can do if you have a Google account.
While most of the new Google services and skin require an account, back in January 2005 Google didn't have many services that necessary authentication. As the Wayback Machine shows, the initial services obtainable with a Google account were Google Groups, Google Alerts, Google Answers and Google Web APIs, but Google promised that "in the future, your Google account will give access to all Google programs requiring sign in including: Google AdWords, Google Store and more." One year later, Google previously offered Froogle, Personalized Search and a Personalized Homepage and it was preparing to launch Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheets, Google Writely and to obtain YouTube.
This is the newest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you usual updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your viewers on YouTube. Just look for the label “YouTube Highlights” and give to to the series.
Music, Mother Earth, flash mobs and royalty were all celebrated on YouTube in the past two weeks. Read on for extra details.
A front row seat to the royal wedding
The much predictable royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is finally here, and you have a front seat. Tune into the Royal Channel, the official YouTube channel of the British Monarchy, on April 29 to see the whole wedding celebration live. The live stream will begin at 10:00am BST (9:00am GMT, 2:00am PT, 5:00am ET) on Friday, April 29, and will pursue the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. The Royal Channel will also trait live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. If you can’t watch the live event, footage will be revealed in its entirety directly following the celebration and will be obtainable in full on the site to view afterward.
From Brazil to the California desert, a festivity of music
Earlier this year, we took on the task of capturing the festivity, passion and celebration of Brazil’s famed Carnaval. We live streamed six days of unbelievable festivities for the world, resulting in more than 11 million channel views to date. Continuing in that spirit of sharing world events more generally, we helped expand the reach of California’s Coachella Festival by live streaming the event. YouTube streamed more than 65 bands and three days of music on three separate channels, generating more than 60 million views during live and re-broadcast events. If you missed the events, you can still check out the magic of Carnaval or your favorite artists’ Coachella performances at www.youtube.com/Carnaval and www.youtube.com/Coachella.
The Official Google Blog - Insights as of Googlers into our products, technology and the Google culture
YouTube highlights 4/28/2011
This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product skin, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “YouTube Highlights” and pledge to the series.
Music, Mother Earth, flash mobs and royals were all celebrated on YouTube in the past two weeks. Read on for more facts.
A front row seat to the royal wedding
The much probable royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is finally here, and you have a front seat. Tune into the Royal Channel, the official YouTube channel of the British Monarchy, on April 29 to see the entire wedding celebration live. The live stream will begin at 10:00am BST (9:00am GMT, 2:00am PT, 5:00am ET) on Friday, April 29, and will pursue the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the incident to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. If you can’t watch the live event, footage will be shown in its total directly following the celebration and will be obtainable in full on the site to view afterward.
From Brazil to the California desert, a festivity of music
Earlier this year, we took on the task of capturing the festivity, passion and celebration of Brazil’s famous Carnaval. We live streamed six days of unbelievable festivities for the world, resulting in more than 11 million channel views to date. Continuing in that spirit of distribution world events more broadly, we helped expand the reach of California’s Coachella Festival by live streaming the event. YouTube streamed more than 65 bands and three days of music on three separate channels, generating more than 60 million views during live and re-broadcast events. If you missed the events, you can still check out the magic of Carnaval or your favorite artists’ Coachella performances at www.youtube.com/Carnaval and www.youtube.com/Coachella.
It’s easy being green
In conjunction with Earth Day on April 22, we introduced YouTube Live Green, a guide to eco-living. With sponsor Garnier Fructis, we’ve curated videos on usual beauty tips, healthy menu options, recommendations on how to live a more sustainable lifestyle and other eco-friendly content to inform and inspire you. New videos will be featured each week from some of our top eco-friendly partners including Ehow, Planet Green, HGTV and National Geographic, so check back often!
This week in trends
Some quick things to see from YouTube Trends:
* T-Mobile's "Royal Wedding Entrance" is averaging around 1 million views per day! Last week it was among our most common videos, and just two weeks after it was posted, it's clocked 13 million views
* In Syria, video captured incredible footage of reported violence and widespread protests
* Tornadoes carry on to ravage parts of the United States, and the footage continues to pour in. The latest comes from Tuscaloosa, Ala.
* The flash mob phenomenon continues to be popular. We recently compiled the 10 most viewed flash mobs of all time
We’ve always jumped at the chance to bring the wonders of space a little earlier to home. We’ve announced a Moon office, a Moon race and an voyage to Mars and brought many nooks and crannies of the universe to Google Earth—Sky, Moon, Mars, NASA images and a Hubble tour, to name a few.
On Friday, April 29, the crew of STS-134 will open into space for the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour and we want to give you the chance to attach with them. On May 2, NASA Commander Mark Kelly and his crew will take your questions live from space on YouTube. PBS News Hour will live stream the interview from its YouTube channel with veteran space journalist Miles O’Brien curating and asking your questions to the crew.
Starting today, you can visit www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour to present a video or written question for the crew of STS-134 to be used in the live interview and vote for your favorite questions. You can also submit questions on Twitter with the hashtag #utalk2nasa. Don’t be shy—if you’re most inquisitive about how to prepare for a spacewalk or wondering if the astronauts have a speech ready for an extra-terrestrial encounter, this is your chance to find out. Here’s a video from PBS and Miles O’Brien to inspire you:
A few suggestions before submitting your questions:
* Video questions are favored, and should be a max of 20 seconds long
* Speak clearly and film in a place with least background noise. Keep the camera as still as possible and ask the question straight to the camera
* Look through NASA videos on YouTube about STS-134 to learn more about the task and crew
You have until Saturday April 30 at midnight ET to present your questions. The top ranked questions will be used in the live interview on Monday, May 2 at 2:15pm ET / 11:15am PT.
To get the full skill of STS-134, you can also watch a live stream of the shuttle launch on Friday April 29 starting at 3:47pm ET at www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour. Both the start and the interview will be available for archived viewing.
What began with auditions from approximately the world uploaded to YouTube, millions of video views, and hours of rehearsals, finally comes to life this Sunday, March 20. It has been an strange experience for the 101 winning musicians of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and in just a pair of days their joint experience will come to life at Sydney Opera House.
Here’s a preview of what’s to come:
The week-long YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 festival includes melodic collaboration between orchestra members and world-class mentors, outdoor performances, local Aussie experiences, band concerts and more. In just a few days, the creativity and technology that have motorized this journey will literally light up Sydney Opera House—with animated visuals on the interior and exterior projections on the iconic sails, all synchronized to the music of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011’s performance.
You’re invited to skill this wonderful event, whether you’re inside Sydney Opera House, out around Sydney Harbour, or watching from your computer elsewhere in the world. The Grand Finale will be live-streamed on youtube.com/symphony beginning at 8:00pm Australian Eastern Standard time, and rebroadcast until the concert presentation is uploaded in full, so tune in on Sunday, March 20.
This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch, and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “YouTube Highlights” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.
In past weeks, we’ve featured two more YouTube interviews with leaders through the World View program and seen more footage come in from across the Middle East as unrest there continues.
David Cameron and John Boehner on YouTube
In YouTube World View’s second interview, YouTube and Al Jazeera English sat down with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Ten thousand people submitted questions, and in the interview, the Prime Minister shared his thoughts on what should be done in Libya, and talked about increased taxes for banks in the U.K. and Britain’s role in Afghanistan.
And as the budget debate rages on the U.S. Capitol Hill, we asked viewers from across the U.S. and around the world to submit questions to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH). The final interview will be posted to YouTube on Friday, March 4.
We’ll have another interview in the coming weeks—check YouTube World View for more details soon.
Join us on YouTube for Carnaval in Brazil
An estimated 100 million people travel to Brazil each year to experience Carnaval, the iconic celebration on the streets of Salvador, Bahia. This year, you can join the festivities on the Carnaval YouTube channel via computer or mobile phone. Watch live feeds of Salvador’s multi-day street fest from Thursday, March 3 through Tuesday, March 8. If you’re lucky enough to be there in person, find out how to buy a pass to Google’s street-side camarote (cabin) at the celebration at www.youtube.com/carnaval.
February’s “On The Rise” winner
After tens of thousands of votes, D-trix from theDOMINICshow has been named February’s “On The Rise” contest winner. He beat out tornado chasers, graphic artists and pop stars for the honor. When D-trix isn’t spoofing Justin Bieber, he’s dancing or teaching people how to rap. Congratulations!
Making YouTube seven times faster
To help you better enjoy all the great content that’s uploaded to YouTube every minute, we recently increased speed for uploads and playback. Google’s cloud computing capabilities help us process videos in chunks on different machines—making our video-processing seven times faster than in 2008.
Ad Blitz winner
Super Bowl ads are always a big draw of the game. This year, we added Super Bowl spots to the Ad Blitz gallery so you could vote for your favorites. More than 2.7 million votes were cast, and 3.5 million views took place on mobile devices. This year’s winner, Chrysler, was featured on the YouTube masthead for the Saturday following the game.
This week’s trends on YouTube
Here are a few recent highlights from YouTube Trends:
* Britney Spears built up anticipation for her latest music video.
* Dramatic footage poured in from across the Middle East: Libya, Iran, Algeria and Yemen.
* A funny moment from "Family Feud" got "passed around."
We’ll have another update for you in a couple of weeks. Until then, visit us at the YouTube Blog.
Voice Search is a Google Chrome addition that lets you search using your voice. It's not urbanized by Google, but it uses an untried Chrome feature called form speech input. The feature is enabled by default in the dev channel builds, but it can be physically enabled by adding a command-line flag.
"Voice Search comes pre-loaded with the subsequent default services: Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Wolfram|Alpha. You can also add your own user-defined search engines. It also integrates a speech input button for all websites using HTML5 search boxes. This addition requires a microphone. Speech input is very experimental, so don't be astonished if it doesn't work. Also, try to speak clearly for best speech credit results," suggests the author.
Speech gratitude is limited to English and it doesn't work very well, but this addition is a good way to test a feature that will be enabled in the prospect Chrome releases. If you have a website, it's quite easy to add support for speech input, but it may take a while until Google's Speech Input API requirement becomes a standard and all browsers apply it.
YouTube added support for playing the videos that are bigger than 1080p. "Today at the VidCon 2010 conference, we announced the support for videos shot in 4K (a reference resolution of 4096 x 3072), meaning that now we support to original video resolution from 360p all the way up to 4096p. To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet; IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution of projectors," explains YouTube.
There aren't many 4K videos uploaded to YouTube, but you can find some of the examples in this playlist. To switch to 4K, select "original" from the list of versions that are available. YouTube says that you need an "ultra-fast high-speed broadband connection" and it's probably a good idea to play the videos in the fullscreen on a big-screen TV.
For now, the support for 4K videos doesn't mean too much, but it's nice to see YouTube pushing technological boundaries.
When Google announced WebM, an open video format is based on the VP8 codec, Opera and Firefox were the first browsers that released nightly builds that supported WebM. Google released a Chromium build that are integrated with WebM a day later.
Opera 10.6 is the first stable version of a browser that lets you to play WebM videos. Opera added support for many HTML5 features (geolocation, Web workers, offline storage), has improved JavaScript performance and fixed a thousands of bugs since releasing Opera 10.54. The Norwegian company claims that Opera is "the fastest browser on Earth", but I think it's not really important to see which browser is the fastest. Chrome, Safari and Opera are been extremely fast, Firefox is still pretty fast, while Internet Explorer continues to improve. It's important to constantly improve a browser, and to learn from other browsers, to innovate, to support the latest technologies, without neglecting that a browser has to be fast, usable and to secure.
Probably the best source of WebM videos is YouTube. The first thing you need to do is to join the HTML5 experiment. Then you can restrict the YouTube search results and to WebM videos, by clicking on "Search options" and selecting "WebM".
Other browsers that include support for WebM videos: Google Chrome 6 Dev Channel and the upcoming Firefox 4 beta.
Even if HTML5 and WebM are important for Google, YouTube takes a pragmatic approach. YouTube says that the browsers need to improve the native video support and provide features like robust streaming, content protection, fullscreen video, camera and microphone access. "We're very happy to see such active and enthusiastic discussion about evolving web standards - YouTube is dependent on the browser enhancement in order for us to improve the video experience for our users. While HTML5's video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don't support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs. Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube's video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it," explains YouTube.
YouTube added a clever option for those who want to see a better video quality in full screen. If a video is available in a HD format, you can view it in HD when switching to the full screen mode.
Just click on the drop-down menu for switching between formats, click on "Settings" and enable "Always play HD when switching to fullscreen (when available)". You can also change playback quality settings from this page.
Unfortunately, when you exit the full screen mode, YouTube doesn't switch to the previous format. As YouTube's help center explains, "if you play HD video in a small player, the computer works overtime to scale down the video to fit within the player, which may result in choppy playback. It's always best to play the video size that best fits the size of the video player."
YouTube has a new video editor that lets you create videos using excerpts from the videos you've already uploaded. You can also add a music file from the AudioSwap library, but YouTube mentions that it might display ads if you use some of the audio files.
In 2007, YouTube launched a more advanced Flash-based video editor called YouTube Remixer, but it was discontinued. The service was based on Adobe Premiere Express and, despite offering features like transitions, captions, adding images, it was slow and buggy.
Here are some videos created using YouTube's new video editor.
