Friday, January 22, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Sundance Shorts in the Screening Room

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 08:36 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Sundance Shorts in the Screening Room

Yesterday, it was feature films for rent.  Today, it's shorts for free.



Every year, the shorts programmers of the Sundance Film Festival have the privilege of selecting the creme de la creme of the world's short films for their official selection.  This year, we're proud to announce that we've partnered with the Festival to bring a selection of these films to your YouTube player, courtesy of Verizon.



For the next six weeks, you can watch this eclectic mix of comic, tragic, documentary, animated and experimental shorts in the Screening Room. The first four films cover a wildly diverse range of subjects and stories, including a very out-there take on opera; a celebration of a man's life on his hundredth birthday; a young wolf who decides to confront his father; and a coming of age tale for two high school graduates.



More films to come, so stay tuned.



Nate Weinstein, Entertainment Marketing Associate, just watched "Glottal Opera"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/l_O38uaKFUE/sundance-shorts-in-screening-room.html

[G] FCC broadband plan to call for access to real-time energy info

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 08:36 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: FCC broadband plan to call for access to real-time energy info

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel

Over the past six months we have been providing you with periodic updates and comments on the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which is scheduled for release in mid-March. Earlier today FCC energy and environment director Nick Sinai gave a sneak preview of one of the Plan's key components: how broadband will facilitate smarter energy usage.

He told an audience at the Clean-tech Investor Summit that the FCC will call on States and the Congress to give consumers and consumer-authorized third parties access to real-time energy information. This kind of information could have a huge financial and environmental impact. Studies show that access to real-time usage data results in energy savings of up to 15%. He talked about how, combined with other measures, this information could create a platform that could lead to new products and services to help consumers manage energy. Picture it: a smart phone apps store for home energy management.

Sinai singled out for praise technologies like "smart" electricity meters and recent efforts in California to include consumer data access policies as part of a statewide smart meter roll out. (Learn more by reading Google's comments.) While encouraged by state-led initiatives like this, Sinai said if state efforts don't work, the FCC could recommend that Congress consider national energy data accessibility legislation.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/01/fcc-broadband-plan-to-call-for-access.html

[G] The Video Page Gets a Makeover

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 11:35 AM PST

YouTube Blog: The Video Page Gets a Makeover

From the Queen of England to the queen of your 'hood, from aspiring filmmakers to Hollywood studios, from high school graduation videos to citizen reports of revolutionary moments in Iran, it all has a home on YouTube. This creates a really big challenge: how do we design a site that reflects so many different users, experiences and videos? This is a question we've thought about a lot since we launched in 2005. The result of some of this thinking (some might say over-thinking) is a video page chock-full of features that reflect a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but can feel cluttered and a little overwhelming. We've spent a lot of time over the last 10 months asking ourselves some tough questions about this page and posing some of those questions to you in blog posts, roundtable discussions, one-on-one conversations with the community and even on forums like our Product Ideas for YouTube page.




Today, we're excited to unveil the first major example of our efforts to simplify and streamline the video page to offer the best possible watching experience to you. To check out this new look all you have to do is opt-in. Click on this link to try it out (anyone can opt-in, but for now page elements are only in English). To revert back to the old video page, use the opt-out link at the top of the new video page or opt out here. We'll be making the opt-in more easily accessible soon, but we wanted to give our most passionate users a chance to experiment with it early.




Below are some highlights of some of the things that have changed and why. You can also check out our "Getting Started Guide" in the Help Center.




Streamlined look and functionality -- the video is the star: This concept is at the heart of the redesign. YouTube is about creating and watching the world's biggest video collection; therefore, the design should make the video the star. To that end, the new look is more subdued, stripped down and simple than before. The design should help ease users into advanced features, while providing power users with all the functionality they want.




New "next up" video list: We'll be smarter about queuing up other videos for you to watch on the right side of the page that will take into consideration how you found a video. For example, if you arrived at a video through Search, the rest of the search results will follow you to the playback page so your can continue to browse search results on the video page. The same goes for playlists and recommendations; if that's how you found a video, then that's what will show up on the right side of the page. Again, this is about creating a consistent viewing experience -- and a relevant one when we include context about your viewing intentions.





Description and stats areas united: More specific information about the video you're watching is now in one place on the page: underneath the video. Click on the "Description" snippet or the Views to see more. This new expand capability works on multiple elements of the page so you won't have to learn a new trick to view each piece of data. The result: less clutter, especially on the right side where you look for the next video to watch.




Cleaned up actions bar: Actions like sharing, rating, saving or flagging a video are now all grouped in one place, with a cleaner, simpler "button bar." We thought a lot about practicality here, choosing to expose only the most commonly used actions and language for you. And, "Playlists" can now be built via the "Save to" pulldown menu.




Simplified binary ratings: As we noted in an earlier blog post, the rating system on YouTube doesn't really work that well (e.g. only the 1 and 5 star ratings were ever really used). So we moved towards a simpler "Like / Don't Like" model. Liking a video will also save it to your Favorites to make it easy to find those videos again.




New player sizing and video quality controls: We're adding a new size control into the player that allows you to pick a larger size to watch your video (formally above the player). When you pick the size, we'll serve you the ideal quality. For those of you hungry for more control, you can pick the specific video quality (for example, SD, HD or 1080p) in an associated drop-down menu. We'll warn you when we think there may be a better quality choice, but the control is in your hands.




Search results within the page: Now you can now search while you're watching a video and results will appear on the right side of the video page, without interrupting the viewing experience.




More prominent channel/subscriber placement and a new "see more videos" feature: Subscriptions are important to many of you, so we've made it more noticeable by moving the "Subscribe" button to the top of the video right near the title. This also gives anyone the ability to quickly peek at more videos from the creator's channel. (Just click on the arrow next to the number of uploads on the person's channel to see more videos from that user.) You've told us that making you hunt for this information on the page is confusing and many of you wanted this data in one place. This should make it easier to discover more content from videographers you like.




So those are just a few things you'll find in this new video page experience. As with all things on the Web (and in life?), change is hard and can take some time to get used to. That's why we did a lot of research, talked with so many of you and incorporated your thoughts into this latest back-to-basics playback page. So go on and "opt-in" to give it a whirl, and let us know what you think either in comments down below or enter feedback via this survey. Who knows -- you might see some of your own suggestions in future iterations of the page down the road.




Julian Frumar, User Experience Designer, recently watched "WTF Collective," and Igor Kofman, Software Engineer, recently watched "Zion-I featuring K. Flay - "Coastin'" [The Takeover]."



URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/z4tA4o4ob4g/video-page-gets-makeover.html

[G] New countries, new countrysides in Street View

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 11:35 AM PST

Google LatLong: New countries, new countrysides in Street View


When people visit the UK, they often head for the often the historic buildings that are dotted all over the country. Whether well preserved ruins or perfectly complete, these buildings and landscapes evoke scenes from classic novels and famous period movies.

Now, even without a tightly laced bodice or a top hat you can take yourself on a tour of some of these remarkable places in Street View and take a trip back in time.

Thanks to the National Trust - a charity with a love for preserving historic places and spaces across England, Wales and Northern Ireland - our Trike riders were given access to a whole host of beautiful places up and down the country. Last summer (fortunately able to ride this modern technological marvel wearing Google T-shirts, rather than chainmaill and medieval boots) they pedalled around a collection of the National Trust's iconic castles, country houses and outstanding landscapes, all 20 of which can be viewed here on our special guide.

Locations include iconic sites such as Corfe Castle in Dorset, Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, Plas Newydd in Wales and Downhill Demesne in Northern Ireland. Others include Lyme Park (where Pride & Prejudice starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy was filmed) and Castle Drogo, the last castle built in England.


Lyme Park

We hope you enjoy this combination of hundreds of years of history with our newest, quirkiest mapping technology.

Fountain's Abbey

But course that's not all you can find to explore today - we're also announcing two new countries where Street View is available: Sweden and Denmark, two countries with their own share of beautiful historic landmarks.

Let's take a stroll past Copenhagen Townhall:
Now let's head to Denmark and visit the home of Hans Christian Anderson:

In Taiwan and Italy, you'll find areas with new imagery as well. Our trike riders have also been pedaling around the United States. You can now visit all of the exotic creatures found at the San Diego Zoo:


If seeing a giraffe habitat isn't right up your alley, you can also see the home of the Nittany Lions -- the campus of Penn State, including its stadium, received a visit from the trike:


We've also added the University of Pennsylvania, and several theme parks including Busch Gardens, Sesame Place, and Water Country USA.

Posted by Laura Scott, Google London
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-countries-new-countrysides-in.html

[G] The Google Docs for students page

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 09:06 AM PST

Official Google Docs Blog: The Google Docs for students page

We recently launched the Google Docs for students page which highlights how various student populations can use Google Docs in their daily life. For example, Marie, a resident assistant, plans fun trips for her whole dorm using forms, while Christine, a math major, powers through her Probabilistic Systems Analysis class using the equation editor in Google Docs to collaborate with classmates.

These characters use Docs to enhance and manage their academic and social lives. We hope their stories will help our student readers discover what's possible with Google Docs.

To read more about these and other characters – and to keep up with news especially for students – check out the Official Google Students blog.

Posted by: Joelle Fornengo, Google Docs User Operations
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-docs-for-students-page.html

[G] Google Docs guy talks cloud computing at Brookings

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 09:06 AM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Google Docs guy talks cloud computing at Brookings

Posted by Adam Kovacevich, Senior Manager, Public Policy Communications

If you've ever posted a video on YouTube, shared a photo through Flickr, or used web-based e-mail service, you're a cloud computing user. As more computing shifts from the desktop to the Internet "cloud," what do policymakers need to know about the cloud? That question and many more were the topic of a Brookings Institution talk yesterday on cloud computing (full audio here).

Google's Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager for Google Docs, was on the panel and took a minute afterward to break it down:

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-docs-guy-talks-cloud-computing.html

[G] Secretary Clinton to address Internet freedom

Posted: 21 Jan 2010 09:06 AM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Secretary Clinton to address Internet freedom

Posted by Mistique Cano, Public Policy Communications Manager

Like many people interested in technology, diplomacy, and free expression on the Internet, we look forward to hearing Secretary of State Clinton's speech today on these topics. The speech will be streamed live here.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/01/secretary-clinton-to-address-internet.html
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