YouTube's Topics Experiment

Back in 2010, YouTube started to test a feature that associated videos with topics. At that time, the experiment tried to improve search results pages by allowing you to find related videos.

YouTube Topics is still available as a separate page that lists the most popular topics and lets you find topic channels like this one.

There's also an experiment that shows the topic of a video next to the channel's name and lets you subscribe to the topic. The topic is an automatically generated channel. "We use many different sources to find these topics, including frequently used uploader keywords, common search queries, playlist names, and even sources outside of YouTube such as Wikipedia articles," explains YouTube's blog.

Here's how you can enable this experiment. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Internet Explorer 8+, open youtube.com in a new tab, load:

* Chrome's JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J)
* Firefox's Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K)
* Safari's Web Inspector (how to do that?)
* Opera Dragonfly (press Ctrl+Shift+I and select the "console" tab)
or
* IE's Developer Tools (press F12 and select the "console" tab)

and paste the following code:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=4sBbSJYiyUE; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Then press Enter and close the console.

A New Google+ Interface

Google+ has a new interface that brings a lot of changes. It's not yet available to everyone and that's because it rolls out over the next few days.

The new interface has a vertical navigation bar that lets you reorder and hide apps. When you mouse over an app, Google+ shows a list of quick actions. This change will make it easier to add third-party apps in the future.

There are two new pages in the navigation bar: a hangouts page that lists the invitations from the people you've added to your circles, as well as a list of popular hangouts and an explore page for "what's hot".

The list of circles is now displayed at the top of the page, the search box is larger and the chat gadget has been moved to the right sidebar. When you resize the window and there's not enough room to display the chat sidebar, it becomes a floating panel.

Google+ conversations borrowed the old card interface from the previous versions of Gmail, while thumbnails for images and videos are bigger and include captions.

The profile page now accommodates bigger photos, so it's probably a good idea to upload new photos.

Vic Gundotra, Google Senior VP, says that there are 170 million Google+ users, up from 90 million users 2 months ago. That's a really impressive achievement.

{ Thanks, Jérémy. }

Tips Main Top Eleven Be a Football Manager di Facebook

"Om Swastiastu"

Saya yakin di Indonesia pasti banyak orang yang menyukai sepakbola, entah itu bermain sepakbola, atau memainkan game sepakbola di dunia maya. Nah, ada beberapa game bagus untuk para pecinta dunia bola, misalnya, Winning Eleven, PES, Football Manager, Championship Manager, dan masih banyak lagi. Game tersebut memang bagus dimainkan plus desain interface dan gameplaynya yang bagus. Tapi IT Programmer mau memberi tahu bahwa di facebook juga ada game football manager, namanya Top Eleven: Be a Football Manager. Untuk memainkannya, Anda cukup menuju pada link ini.

Prinsip dari game ini masih sama dengan game manager sepakbola seperti FM dan CM, yaitu menjadi manager dari sebuah tim sepakbola. Game ini dibuat untuk mengatasi kurangnya game sepakbola online di social media seperti Facebook. Kita dapat mengundang teman-temen kita di Facebook untuk ikut memainkan game ini dan melawan mereka pada kompetisi yang diadakan. Untuk lebih jelasnya, kita mulai dari awal saja.

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Simplified Google Account Switching

Google's navigation bar widget that shows information about your account has been updated and now makes it easier to switch to a different account. All the accounts are automatically displayed, so you no longer have to click a link to see them.

It's nice to see that Google went back to basics and removed the extra click. Multiple sign-in supports a lot of Google services, including Web Search, Google+, iGoogle and YouTube, so you don't need to use a different browser or the incognito window to sign in to another Google account.

{ Thanks, Filipe. }

A New Window Manager for Chrome OS

Chromebook users who install the latest Dev channel release of Chrome OS will be surprised to notice that Chrome OS looks more like a desktop operating system.

Google has been working on a new window manager called Aura that brings many features of a desktop OS. Chrome OS now has a desktop, a taskbar, apps are placed on the desktop, there's support for wallpapers and overlapping windows.

According to Chrome's engineers, Aura is a hardware-accelerated "user interface framework for Chrome UI" that offers "rich visuals, large-scale animated transitions and effects that can be produced only with the assistance of hardware acceleration". Aura is cross-platform and should "provide the foundation of a flexible windowing system and shell for Chrome and ChromeOS on a variety of form factors".

The latest Chrome OS release is only available for Samsung and Acer Chromebooks as Cr-48 Chromebooks will skip Chrome 19.

Gmail's People Widget Shows Recent Photo Attachments

Gmail has never included an option to manage the attachments from the messages you've received. You can't see a list of PDFs received this month or a list of photos sent by one of your friends. Gmail's advanced search features let you find the messages that include PDF files or photos, but you have to open each message to see the files.

The people widget now shows more information about a contact: thumbnails of recent photos your contacts sent you. Clicking on a thumbnail opens the corresponding message.

For now, Gmail only shows the most recent 3 photos from a contact and doesn't let you see all of them. Maybe Gmail will integrate with the upcoming Google Drive and all the Gmail attachments will finally be searchable, easy to organize and share, just like Google Drive (Docs) files.

{ Thanks, Daniel. }

Google Music Labs

If you're looking for more features for Google Music, try the new Labs page. Google informs that "Google Play music labs are a testing ground for experimental features that aren't quite ready for primetime. They may change, break, or disappear at any time."

Right now, there are three experimental features available: desktop notifications for Chrome, HTML5 audio and 5-star ratings. If you enable 5-star ratings, thumbs ups and thumbs downs will be converted to 5 stars and 1 star. HTML5 audio "works in all browsers that support MP3 playback with HTML5 audio: Chrome, Safari 3.1+, and IE 9+" and replaces the hidden Flash player that's currently used.

After enabling desktop notifications, you should see an infobar that asks for permission. Click "allow" and Google Music will show a nice notification enhanced with a cover art thumbnail when a new song starts playing.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }