Google Video Stops Borrowing Metacafe's Videos

Last month Google Video started to index videos from third-party sites like Metacafe. The most interesting part was that the site offered "previews" of the videos, but they were more like the full videos. The practice was beyond fair use because Google served the entire video in a Google Video player inside the search results page. Google even hosted the FLV files, probably for performance reasons.


Now Google Video shows 15 thumbnails from the videos indexed from third-party sites and the only way to watch the video is to go to the original source.


Blinkx, another video search engine, shows a 25 second preview for most of the videos, while Yahoo Video shows only one thumbnail for third-party videos.

FeedBurner Is a Part of Google

You can replace FeedBurner with Google and Blogbeat with FeedBurner in the image above. The rumors turned out to be true: Google acquired the Google of feeds, FeedBurner. The reasons are many, but the most important ones were to improve Google's analytics tools and to add a new medium for AdWords advertisers.

"[FeedBurner's] web-based tools, including an extensive feed and blog advertising network, help publishers promote, deliver, and monetize their content on the Web and make feed-based content more accessible and manageable for its end users. (...) Google believes that feed-based content and advertising is a developing space where we can add value for users, advertisers and publishers."

FeedBurner's team is optimistic and it doesn't seem to be scared by the fate of some of Google's acquisitions (like Measure Map, Dodgeball, JotSpot) that are barely visible right now:

The fact is that there is an immense amount of work to do in order to a) continue to provide our customers with the best feed analytics, b) begin to provide a more comprehensive 360-degree view of audience and reach, and c) enable publishers to most efficiently determine the best ways to distribute and monetize their content.

We like our chances. We are confident that we are going to be a part of the company that can best deliver the most comprehensive suite of services to publishers. We are confident that we're going to continue to have fun and innovate for customers as rapidly as possible. We are confident and hopeful that you'll look at your feed dashboard soon and say to yourself "Well, *that* was a good idea!"

Moreover, Feedburner could provide a lot of useful information to Google Reader to filter the most popular/interesting/relevant posts and could enhance Blogger's feeds without having to "burn" them at feedburner.com.

If this isn't a good news for you and you're using FeedBurner, you can opt-out of allowing Google to get your data by sending an email to accountx@feedburner.com until June 15. "Opting out will terminate your user agreement with FeedBurner, permanently delete your FeedBurner account, feeds, and all related statistical data and history, and prevent the transfer of your data rights to Google."

Declutter iGoogle

If your Google personalized homepage has a lot of feeds and gadgets, it may become hard to organize them or to make room for a new gadget.

To clear some space, add related gadgets as tabs in the compound Google gadget. For example, you could group the gadgets for Gmail, Google Calendar and the to-do list. You can only add one instance of the compound gadget in a tab, but it's very easy to select the gadgets you want to include.


If you read many feeds, use the "feeds in tabs" gadget that groups up to four Atom or RSS feeds in a single gadget.

Or you could use Google Reader to manage your favorite feeds. If you decide to that, you'll need to export your feeds from iGoogle in an OPML file that could be easily imported in Google Reader if you go to Settings > Import/Export.

Now you can delete the feeds from iGoogle and use the Google Reader gadget to read them. You can even add multiple instances of the Google Reader gadget, each one showing posts from a different folder.

Full-Featured Gadgets for Google Services

Gadgets are essentially mini-webpages that are customizable and show only the essential information. But sometimes you want to see the whole homepage of Google News or Gmail inside iGoogle.

Google accepted the challenge and developed gadgets for some its services. The Google News gadget displays news from the most important sections inside tabs.


There's also a gadget for YouTube that shows videos from sections like "most viewed today", "most discussed today" or "recently featured" and allows it to play the videos inside the gadget.


Another gadget lets you browse Google's directory of gadgets and preview them without opening a new page. It's cool that you can preview more than one gadget at the same time, so you can use it to compare similar gadgets.

It will be interesting to see if Google builds mini versions for other services that go beyond showing a bunch of links. For example, the Gmail gadget could let you preview your messages, reply to a mail inside the gadget or show the recent messages for each of your labels.

YouTube Signed a Content Deal with EMI

EMI Music signed an agreement with YouTube that will allow the video sharing site to distribute music videos produced by the label. "In addition to making available clips from acts like Coldplay and Norah Jones, EMI and YouTube plan to develop a system that provides for consumer-created content that uses EMI music and video," reports MediaPost.

"They've demonstrated the content management technology, and we're satisfied with its efficacy, and we look forward to using it", said an EMI representative about YouTube's technology for filtering content.

Last year YouTube negotiated deals with other three music labels: Universal, Sony Music and Warner before it was acquired by Google.

It's interesting to see that if you search on Google for the name of a popular song, a YouTube video is almost always in the top 10 results. Moreover, the result includes a thumbnail and a video plus box that offers an easy way to play the video on the same page. The embedded video players will capture more attention and record labels want to be a part of this new ecosystem.

Apple TV Will Play YouTube Videos

Steve Jobs announced that Apple TV, Apple's set-top box that allows you to play digital content from your computer on high-definition TVs, will receive an update that will enable it to play videos from YouTube. "This is the first time users can easily browse, find and watch YouTube videos right from their living room couch, and it's really, really fun. YouTube is a worldwide sensation, and Apple TV is bringing it directly from the Internet onto the widescreen TV in your living room," said Steve Jobs. The free update will be available next month.

Apple TV will connect to a custom YouTube site that contains a selection of popular and recent videos. YouTube will convert the videos to the H.264/MPEG-4 video compression standard so you can watch higher quality videos on your widescreen TV. "New content will be added every day and the entire YouTube catalog will be available by the fall."

Google Gears - Offline Functionality for Web Apps

Web applications bring your data online and make it available anywhere there's an Internet connection. But happens when you're on a plane or when you can't find a WiFi hotspot?

Google launched an open source browser extension for IE and Firefox called Google Gears that enables web applications to be available offline.

"Gears is an incremental improvement to the web as it is today. It adds just enough to AJAX to make current web applications work offline. Gears today covers what we think is the minimal set of primitives required for offline apps. It is still a bit rough and in need of polish, but we are releasing it early because we think the best way to make Gears really useful is to evolve it into an open standard. We are releasing Gears as an open source project and we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and Opera and other industry partners to make sure that Gears is the right solution for everyone," explains Google.

Once you install the extension, every Gears-enabled web application will ask your permission before storing data offline.


Depending on the functionality implemented in the application, Google Gears caches resource files so they're available offline, stores data in a SQLite database that has powerful search features and synchronizes data in the background.

Google Gears will enable you to read the most recent messages from Gmail while offline or to edit your documents in Google Docs even without a network connection.

Google Reader is the first Google application powered by Gears. To enter the offline mode, just click on the small arrow and all the recent feed items are downloaded to your computer. You can disconnect from the Internet or click on "work offline" in your browser and you will still be able to read your favorite feeds in Google Reader. Like in any feed reader installed on your computer. Well, almost, because Google Reader doesn't download images or other multimedia files embedded in the posts.




You can even close Google Reader's tab and try to load the site again: it will instantly show the cached data. Try to add tags to a post or star it; once you go back online, Google Reader will synchronize the data.


P.S.: Another nice update in Google Reader is that you can see the exact number of unread posts for each feed. Google Reader learned to count beyond 100.

Update: Here's a presentation from Google Developer Day Sydney that explains the motivations behind this project and shows some demos:

Sounds in Google Earth

As promised, Wild Sanctuary has released a layer for Google Earth with more than 30 sounds collected from all over the world.

You can hear the sounds of the Kenyan savannah, a sudden rain in the forest, a mysterious spring chorus of loons and peepers, the bells of Notre Dame de Paris. My favorite is a soundscape from Hawaii, "an aural voyage beginning at a beach along the Maui coast, and descending below the surface into the depths of the sea, before emerging to the shore, once again. The sea pulsates with biological sound."

The layer can also be displayed in Google Maps, where the sounds are played using an embedded audio player.

Visualize Google Desktop Results on a Similarity Map

GDS Images and Document Maps is an add-on for Google Desktop that creates a map from your pictures, documents and email messages. The files are placed on the map by calculating their similarity, so it's likely that related files are close. For images, the similarity is based on the distribution of colors.

You can pan the map, zoom in or focus to a specified area of the map by defining a rectangle using the right button of the mouse.

This is especially useful to see the big picture if Google Desktop returns a lot of results and also to visually determine clusters of related files.

Visually Rich Homepage for Google Korea

Google continues to try to increase its local presence in countries where its market share is small. After localizing many products in Russia, building special services for China, now Google focuses on Korea.

One of the first changes is a new homepage for Google Korea (English version) that uses icons to represent the services and provides more information if you hover over the icon. The homepage includes links to search services (images, news, blogs, groups), but also to Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar, Notebook, Toolbar, Desktop and Picasa.

"It was important where our classic minimalism wasn't working that we adapt," explained Marrissa Mayer to Search Engine Land. Asian Internet users want a more visual experience and Google's plain text pages aren't very appealing.

Bring the Mashups to Google Maps

Google Maps API was the most successful API ever created by Google and the tool behind a lot of cool mashups available on the web today. There are sites that collect the most interesting mashups (like Google Maps Mania), but it's still difficult to remember all of them. Google introduced My Maps last month, a simple way to build custom maps, and now they let you mix your favorite mashups.

How to add the mashups to Google Maps? With mapplets, mini-applications similar to Google Gadgets. "Mapplets are mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site. You can put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Google provides a Javascript API that gives the Mapplet access to services such as manipulating the map, fetching remote content, and storing user preferences."

There's already a test page that features some mapplets and they're pretty impressive: real estate search powered by Google Base, distance measurement, movie showtimes, weather, earthquake information and more.

The nice thing is that you can activate more than a mapplet at a time, so you can see the movie showtimes for Shrek 3 in your area and measure the distance between two locations, like in the screenshot below.


Find more about the new "mashup of mashups" from this demo:

The Earth is Closer: Street Views in Google Maps

Google Maps launched a new way to explore our geography: at the street level. In a limited number of locations, you'll find a button that says "Street View". Once you click on that button, watch the street marked with blue lines and click on one of them to see a street view for that location. To navigate along the street, click on the white arrows or use the arrow keys. You can also rotate the image and see a complete a panoramic view.

The feature is available only for Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area, but it will be extended as soon as Google has more street-level imagery.




And here's a short demo from Google:



Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped thinks "this looks & feels amazing, albeit there's potential privacy issues due to the level of detail (you can make out individual faces, license plates and so on)". Now all we need is some real sound and a way to integrate information about different places.

Jeopardy Google Daily Challenge

What is Jeopardy? A very popular quiz show created in the United States 43 years ago where each answer must be formulated as a question.

Sony Pictures Television, the company that produces Jeopardy, teamed up with Google to enhance the online version of the game.

"The Jeopardy! Google Daily Challenge Sweepstakes features an extra clue from one of the categories in that day's Jeopardy! Visit Jeopardy.com each day from June 4th to July 13th, to play a new clue and you'll have a chance to win one of the daily $100 giveaways. By entering every day, you'll increase your chances of winning $5,000, $10,000, or the $25,000 Grand Prize! Remember, you must enter the correct response for your sweepstakes entry to be valid. Not sure what it is? That's where the powerful Google Search engine comes in."

There's also a gadget that reminds you to participate, but the competition is open only to the US citizens.

Google Buys GreenBorder, Web Sandbox

Google bought GreenBorder, a Mountain View-based company that creates security software designed to protect a computer as you surf the web. According to Silicon Valley Watcher, GreenBorder developed "an easy solution to virus, spyware, and trojan threats by isolating each Internet session from the rest of the PC and earlier Internet sessions. The beauty of the Green Border Pro software is it doesn't need to be updated to guard against new virus signatures or new types of malware. It creates a secluded, virtual Internet session and when you are done, it flushes everything away, in your cache and in temporary files."

The application was initially a sandbox for Internet Explorer, but now it also supports Firefox and lets you open files downloaded from the Internet in a virtual environment. Each application protected by GreenBorder has a colored border around the window, so you know you're safe.


Other features include:

* Keeps your PC from getting infested by "drive-by" downloads.

* Blocks theft of your private identity information.

* Prevents thieves from stealing your confidential files.

* Protects your applications from hijacking.

The Windows software is still available as a trial version at Download.com, but the full version used to cost $29.95 / year. Hopefully, Google will release a free version.

{ via Googlified }

Gmail Filters

Gmail's filters are a simple way to organize your messages automatically by providing a set of rules. Like most email clients, Gmail applies the rules to the messages you receive and to the sent mail.

Here are some of the most common Gmail filters:

1. Categorization filters

If you receive a lot of messages that need a distinctive category, create a filter that attaches them a label and archives them.

To separate your messages, you could share a different version of your email address that adds some information after the plus sign. So you could put this email address in your blog: daniel+blog@gmail.com, instead of daniel@gmail.com. All the messages are sent to your address, but now you can create a filter that labels the messages sent to daniel+blog@gmail.com.

2. Search filters

You can create filters for frequent queries. Just type in the "has the words" box your query (this list of Gmail operators should help):

has:attachment - messages that include attachments
filename:.mp3 - messages that include MP3 attachments
is:unread - collects all the messages you haven't read yet (or you marked as unread)
label:voicemail - the voicemail from Google Talk

3. Separate your identities

If you forward messages from other mail accounts or use Gmail's mail fetcher, create filters that attach labels to these messages. Just enter the appropriate mail address in the To field when you create each filter.

4. Newsletters

Newsletters save you time and bring (sometimes) useful information, but they also clutter your inbox. If you receive daily newsletters, create filters that label the messages and archive them, so they don't stand in your way.

5. Blacklists

If you don't want to read messages from a bunch of people, create a filter that sends to trash each and every message received from them. Just enter their email addresses separated by OR in the From field. I made a small script that makes it easy to build a blacklist.

6. Anti-spam

Gmail's spam filters are pretty good for most people, but that doesn't mean you won't see false positives. If most of the spam mail that reaches your inbox has some easy to identify traits (for example, it contains "lottery"), create a filter that sends these messages to the trash. Because you won't mark these messages as spam, you won't be improving Gmail's spam filters. Also you may lose some genuine messages if you don't build your filter carefully.

7. No more spam counters

If you don't like to see how many unread spam messages you have, create a filter that marks as read all your spam.

Type in "Has the words": is:spam
Check Mark as read
Click OK to Gmail's warning

You should check the messages marked as spam from time to time because you may lose important messages incorrectly classified by Gmail.

8. Backup filters

Create a filter that forwards some of your messages to another account. You could send all the messages that include attachments, so you could easily delete them when you reach Gmail's storage limit.

This Greasemonkey script (that requires Greasemonkey and Firefox) lets you create filters from each message by filling the email address of the sender and the destination address.


Also when you create a new filter, Gmail provides an option to apply the rules to the existent messages (you can't forward existent messages using filters, though).