YouTube Video Editor

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.

Bringing sixteen more apps to the Google Apps Marketplace

We created the Google Apps Marketplace to make it easier for businesses and universities to benefit from the rapidly growing ecosystem of apps in the cloud. Apps in the Marketplace come in many sizes, from bite-sized apps that focus on providing a single feature to larger standalone apps that run major business systems and processes—and they’re all conveniently integrated with Google apps.


We believe it should be as easy to discover and purchase cloud apps for your organization as it is to get mobile apps for your smartphone. And, once you install and evaluate an app, it’s easy for your administrator to deploy them to users with just a few clicks. (Check out this video to see how it works).

We’ve added some great new apps since we launched in March and today we’re bringing you 16 new apps to the Marketplace. They represent a cross-section of the innovation happening on the web around integrated applications, where information is shared between applications allowing people to get their work done, faster:

• Jive: Jive Social Business Software combines collaboration, community and social networking software, allowing you to engage employees, customers and the social web.
• Harvest: Harvest is a simple time tracking application that makes it fast and easy for businesses to track billable hours and create invoices.
• Floorplanner Pro: Floorplanner Pro provides a quick and easy way for real estate agents and facilities professionals to create and share interactive floor plans in both 2D as 3D.

Check out our post on the Enterprise Blog for more information on all 16 apps, or go right to the Marketplace.

What's Still Missing in Google Chrome?

When Google released Chrome almost two years ago, many people complained that Google's browser lacked basic features that were available in all the other browsers, it didn't support extensions and could only be installed in Windows. Since then, Google Chrome has added many missing features (bookmark manager, form autofill, options for disabling cookies, images and scripts, full-page zoom, themes, extensions), the browser has been ported to Mac and Linux and it continues to be fast and to evolve rapidly.

While Google Chrome focuses on implementing useful features for improving the transition to web apps (HTML5 features, cloud printing, desktop notifications, extensions for web apps, Native Client, WebGL), many basic features are still missing. Google Chrome still can't print selected text and lacks print preview (both features should be available in Google Chrome 6), you still can't drag text from a tab to another tab, there's no way to find the size of an image or to automatically clear the cache when closing the browser.

What other basic features would you like to see in Google Chrome? Please keep in mind that Google Chrome is a minimalistic browser and it shouldn't include features that would be used by a small number of people or features that could be implemented as extensions.

YouTube Play: searching with the Guggenheim for the world’s most creative online video

Do you ever look at a YouTube video and think, "That's a work of art?" Yep, so do we—and now, so does the Guggenheim.

In five years, YouTube has redefined media culture by changing the way the world creates, distributes and watches video. Online video is exploding not just as a medium, but as an art form, and we’re proud of the originality and innovation that YouTube has fostered among our users. Our community has produced some of the most creative and celebrated works on the Internet, videos that have been viewed by millions of people around the world.

We want to celebrate phenomenal video-makers and recognize the creative potential of the medium. So today we’re collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum to discover the most creative video in the world, and showcase exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of digital media: YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. This global online initiative is presented in collaboration with HP.

We’re looking for animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and entirely new art forms—creations that really challenge the world’s perceptions of what’s possible with video. We want to elevate the debate. This presentation, we hope, will garner some of the finest creative work from every corner of the globe—not only to showcase it on one of the biggest stages online, but also in one of the most iconic artistic venues in the world, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and throughout the Guggenheim network of museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin.

Participants must submit their videos to YouTube Play to enter. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010, after which the Guggenheim will assemble a shortlist to be evaluated by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Up to 20 videos will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin. The presentations will also be viewable to on the YouTube Play brand channel at youtube.com/play.

As we did with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, we hope to build an aspirational place for some of the world’s best artists to showcase their works and talents. For more information about how to enter, go to youtube.com/play.

Google Doodle Notifier

If you picked a background image for Google's homepage, you probably noticed that Google uses a special white logo. Unfortunately, the customized homepage can't show the regular Google logo and Google doodles for special events.

That's the reason why Google shows a small notification icon next to the logo when there's a doodles you can't see.

When you click on the colorful icon, Google shows the doodle on a white background.

I wonder if Google will use full-page doodles for users who picked a background image.

Follow your football team in South Africa, wherever you are

Whether you’ll be in South Africa in person this month, or simply cheering your team on from back home, our new tools for football fans can help you soak up the atmosphere and follow your team wherever you are in the world.

You can check out the brand new Street View imagery for South Africa which includes amazing pictures from seven of South Africa’s new football stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane and Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. Each one can be explored from pitch-level in 360 degrees, both inside and out—see a preview on the Lat Long blog. These detailed images were collected over the last few months, using the Street View Trike and some serious pedal power!

You can also zoom around the host cities and stadiums in 3D. Simply turn on the 3D buildings layer in Google Earth or switch to Earth View in Google Maps, and zoom in to the chosen destination. All 10 of the football stadiums have been modelled in amazing 3D detail, as well as the South African cities of Rustenburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

To make it easier for people to find all these great places, South African Tourism have provided information on the most important sights. Visit maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica to start virtually exploring South Africa.

If you’re staying back home but want to find a great place to watch the match with your friends, take a look on Google Maps and look for the special football icon—that tells you that the location is one of tens of thousands of businesses who have added themselves to Google Places as a football viewing location.

Our first global Doodle 4 Google competition is well underway, with tens of thousands of children in 17 countries around the world sending us their amazing designs for a doodle around the theme of “I Love Football.” The winning doodle will be displayed internationally on the Google homepage for a day on July 11, 2010.

To make it easy for you to customize your photos to show the world which team you’re cheering for, we’ve launched a set of football-themed photo effects in Picnik. With just a few clicks, you can add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers and team flag overlays, customized for each of the 32 qualifying teams.

Finally, it’s not just the professional players who’ve been put through their paces ahead of kick-off. In the run-up to the games, fans from around the the world have joined the legendary Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids on his Street Soccer Tour for Charity from Amsterdam, London and Paris and to eight cities in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Edgar and his team of Street Soccer Legends have been competing against local players as they make their journey to South Africa and you can watch them on YouTube.

May the best team win!

Woody and Buzz star in a Google Search Story

Hopefully some of you have seen one or two of our Search Story videos. We’ve been blown away by the creativity and brilliance of everyone that shared their own search story using the Search Stories Video Creator. It’s been a pleasure to see how all kinds of people use search to tell tales—whether silly, inspiring, true or imagined.

It seemed like the next logical step was to ask the world’s best storytellers to get involved, so I called up my friend at Pixar. He liked the idea, the writers at Pixar were into it—and a few days later, we were brainstorming with the minds behind WALL-E, Finding Nemo and, of course, Toy Story. We’re huge fans of their work, so getting to explore what the Toy Story gang would discover using Google has been pretty special. Together, we ended up creating a short video that looks at Google through the eyes of Andy’s toys and how they deal with the fact that Andy’s about to leave for college.

A big thank you to the nice folks at Pixar for their spirit and their sense of collaboration. Check it out now online and in theaters nationwide kicking off Toy Story 3, opening June 18.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it.