A Collection of YouTube Error Pages
For some reason, reading a message like “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group. Sorry about that.” when trying to watch a YouTube video is no longer disconcerting. YouTube’s new error pages are so endearing and quirky that you’ll forget you can’t watch certain videos. They remind me of Chrome’s sad tab and Apple’s sad Mac or sad iPod icon.
Top Google Apps in 2010
Here’s a subjective list of Google services that were launched or were significantly improved in 2010:
10. Google Scribe – a service that shows autocomplete suggestions as you type. It will probably become as popular as Google Suggest and Google Translate once its integrated with other services.
9. Voice Actions for Android – an application that lets you control your phone using your voice. You can call your contacts, send email, get directions, listen to music, write notes and go to a website.
8. Gmail added many business-related features (Priority Inbox, email delegation, turning off conversation view), improved Gmail Chat (calling phones, video chat for Linux), added a new contact manager, more ways to attach files, Gmail for iPad, Buzz integration, search autocomplete, YouTube previews and rich text signatures.
7. Google Buzz – despite the initial privacy brouhaha, Google Buzz is the best Google service released in 2010. Even if it’s less than one year old, Buzz already has an impressive set of features, a powerful API, it’s integrated with many services and has a cool factor that’s missing from other Google social products. Unfortunately for Google, Buzz is not yet very popular.
6. Blogger added a lot of important missing features: comment management, comment spam filtering, dynamic templates, a new post editor, better post preview, real-time stats, static pages and much more.
5. Google Docs – a new document editor, faster Google Spreadsheets, a collaborative drawing editor, a new equation editor, mobile editing, a more consistent interface, uploading any kind of files.
4. Google Maps – vector-based maps for Android, Google Latitude for iPhone, a new local search service (Google Places), social local business reccomendations, biking directions, walking navigation, Google Earth as a tab in Google Maps, search suggestions.
3. Chrome – 5 major versions released, support for Mac and Linux, a simplified interface, faster browsing, autofill, sync, Google Translate integration, bundled sandboxed plugins for Flash and PDF files, Chrome Web Store.
2. Google Search has changed a lot this year and there were many user interface changes: from Google Instant to Instant Previews, from interactive doodles to custom backgrounds for the homepage, from vertical navigation menus to a consistent interface for most Google search services. Google also launched a completely new interface for image search that lets you explore more images and a new search index with real-time updates.
1. Android – two important releases (Froyo, Gingerbread), huge growth (from 1.4 million smartphones sold in the third quarter of 2009 to 20.5 million phones one year later – according to Gartner) and a lot of new devices, including tablets, TVs, consoles, media players and e-book readers. It’s probably the fastest growing product released by Google.
Facebook deprecating some APIS from 07 Jan 11
According to a post on Facebook ”
Facebook Platform Roadmap Update
We announced a number of new products and updates to Facebook Platform at f8 in April, including the Graph API, social plugins, and support for OAuth 2.0. Over the next few months we will be making upgrades and removing infrequently used parts of Platform to support these new technologies at every level of the stack, while trying to minimize the amount of changes required for existing applications. To keep you posted on the latest efforts to simplify Platform, we’ve updated our developer roadmap and will continue to communicate upcoming changes through it.
Unifying Platform Tools for Applications and Websites
We have a vision for Facebook Platform that is powerful, standards-based, and easy to use across Facebook.com, the Web, and mobile devices. As part of this, we are unifying the Platform technologies used to build on Facebook.com — OAuth 2.0, the Graph API, and the JavaScript SDK — with the technologies used to integrate Facebook into external websites.
First, we are upgrading the authentication mechanism we use for all callback URLs to be based on OAuth 2.0. You can read more about the new signature scheme and can test it out in your own applications by turning on the “OAuth 2.0 for Canvas” migration in your application settings. This setting will become the default for all new applications during the next couple months.
We are also moving toward IFrames instead of FBML for both canvas applications and Page tabs. As a part of this process, we will be standardizing on a small set of core FBML tags that will work with both applications on Facebook and external Web pages via our JavaScript SDK, effectively eliminating the technical difference between developing an application on and off Facebook.com.
We will begin supporting IFrames for Page tabs in the next few months. Developers building canvas applications should start using IFrames immediately. By the end of this year, we will no longer allow new FBML applications to be created, so all new canvas applications and Page tabs will have to be based on IFrames and our JavaScript SDK. We will, however, continue to support existing implementations of the older authentication mechanism as well as FBML on Page tabs and applications.
Finally, due to low usage rates, we will remove application tabs from user profiles in the next couple months. Application tabs will continue to be supported on Facebook Pages.
Simplifying Platform
In focusing on optimizing APIs that are broadly used by developers, we are deprecating the following features and will no longer support them at the end of the year:
- Infrequently used REST API methods
- <fb:editor>, <fb:board>, <fb:wall> and <fb:feed> functionality
- Data Store API
See the roadmap for details.
Cleaning House
We’ve also spent some time cleaning up some of our developer tools and documentation. We’ve simplified the Developer application by removing obsolete settings and tabs, and we have finished migrating the Developer Wiki to our new and improved developer site.
We have a lot of work to do, but we hope these changes will get us significantly closer to our goal of making Platform standards-based and easier to use. We appreciate your feedback in the Developer Forum as we move ahead.
”
The following API methods are deprecated and will not be available:
Infrequently Used REST APIs
admin.getMetricsauth.getappPublicKeyauth.getSignedPublicSessionDataauth.promoteSessionauth.renewOfflineSessionconnect.getUnconnectedFriendsCountconnect.registerUsersconnect.unregisterUsersfbml.deleteCustomTagsfbml.getCustomTagsfbml.registerCustomTagspermissions.checkAvailableApiAccesspermissions.checkGrantedApiAccesspermissions.grantApiAccesspermissions.revokeApiAccessprofile.getFBMLprofile.getInfoprofile.setFBMLprofile.setInfosms.canSendsms.send
FQL Tables
Metrics FQL– Please use the insights table instead.
Datastore API
data.createObjectdata.createObjectTypedata.defineAssociationdata.defineObjectPropertydata.deleteObjectdata.dropObjectTypedata.getAssociatedObjectCountdata.getAssociatedObjectCountsdata.getAssociatedObjectsdata.getAssociationDefinitiondata.getAssociationDefinitionsdata.getAssociationsdata.getHashValuedata.getObjectdata.getObjectPropertydata.getObjectsdata.getObjectTypedata.getObjectTypesdata.getUserPreferencedata.getUserPreferencesdata.incHashValuedata.removeAssociatedObjectsdata.removeAssociationdata.removeAssociationsdata.removeHashKeydata.removeHashKeysdata.renameAssociationdata.renameObjectPropertydata.renameObjectTypedata.setAssociationdata.setAssociationsdata.setHashValuedata.setObjectPropertydata.setUserPreferencedata.setUserPreferencesdata.undefineAssociationdata.undefineObjectPropertydata.updateObject
Google Tests a New Layout for iGoogle
There’s a new iGoogle interface that’s only available to a small number of users. Google dropped the rounded corners and only shows the controls when you mouse over a gadget. Another change is that gadgets have a small icon next to the title.
Avery M., who sent this tip, noticed the new interface when visiting iGoogle Japan, but that could be a coincidence.
{ Thanks, Avery. }
Picasa Web’s New Zoom Viewer
Picasa Web Albums has a new zoom viewer that uses Flash. If you click on the magnifying glass icon next to a photo, you can select a rectangular region from the image and zoom in or zoom out. The feature is called “microscope zoom” and it doesn’t fall back to the old version for users who haven’t installed Adobe’s Flash plugin.
Another new feature lets you view all the EXIF tags that are available by clicking on “full details page”. You’ll find a lot of tags that offer more information about white balance, orientation, exposure, color space, brightness, light source and more.
{ Thanks, Bogdan. }
A Chrome Extension for YouTube Activity Feeds
Slave Jovanovski, an engineer at YouTube, has put together a Google Chrome extension that should be of interest to the YouTube API community. It’s called
YouTube Feed, and after installing and authenticating with your YouTube account,
it automatically will fetch your YouTube social activity stream (both
subscriptions and friends’ actions) while you use Google Chrome. When a new
event, like a YouTube friend uploading or commenting on a video, takes place,
the extension will notify you and provide details on the activity, as well as
links to view the actual video. You have control over which types of activities
you’d like to be notified about, as well as how frequently you’d like the
extension to check for updates.
While you’ll hopefully find the extension useful on its own merits,
the fact that the source code has been released as part of an open source project means that the extension’s code can serve as inspiration (or a
jumping off point) for writing your own JavaScript code that interacts with the
YouTube API. Curious as to how to use OAuth to authenticate YouTube accounts
from a Chrome Extension? Or request JSON data with a JavaScript callback? The
answers await you in the source code!
Cheers,
–Jeff Posnick, YouTube API Team
Dashing through the snow… with NORAD and Google
Every Christmas Eve, children all over the world ask themselves—and their parents—questions about Santa’s magical journey. How does Santa visit so many children in one night? Will he eat the cookies I left out? How does he fit all those presents into his sleigh? These childhood mysteries are part of what makes the Santa tradition so special.
There’s one timeless question that we’re proud to say we can help answer: Where in the world is Santa at this very moment? Thanks in part to recent advances in warp-speed GPS technology and some very clever elves (elveneering?) NORAD Tracks Santa is once again prepped and ready to go.
Starting tomorrow, December 24 at 2:00am EST, visit www.noradsanta.org to follow Santa as he journeys around the world delivering presents to children in more than 200 countries and territories. There are a few different ways to find the jolly old man in his unmistakable red suit over the course of the day, so feel free to track him using any of the following methods:
- See Santa on a Google Map: On your home computer or laptop, visit www.noradsanta.org and choose your preferred language. You’ll see a large Google Map on the page displaying Santa’s current location and his next stop. Click the video icons to watch “Santa Cam” videos, and click the gift icons to learn more about each city.
- Watch Santa fly with the Google Earth Plug-in: From www.noradsanta.org, click on the link Track Santa in Google Earth. You’ll see Santa steering his sleigh right on the webpage. If you don’t have the Google Earth plug-in, you can get ready by downloading it ahead of time.
- Follow Santa on your phone: Track Santa from your mobile phone by opening Google Maps for mobile and searching for [santa]. Or, visit m.noradsanta.org on your phone’s browser.
- Subscribe to his YouTube channel: Santa’s home on YouTube is at http://www.youtube.com/noradtrackssanta. That’s where you can find videos from his journey throughout the night.
- Get real-time information about Santa’s location: Use Google’s Realtime Search to get updates from social networks, news and micro-blogs like Twitter at @noradsanta, and keep up with news about his journey on this Facebook page.
For any techie questions you might have, we’ve also put together some helpful tips and tricks about all the cool ways you can experience Santa’s journey. Now that you know how to follow Saint Nick on Christmas Eve, it’s our tradition to tell the story of how this all started…
NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) first began to track Santa in 1955 when a misprinted advertisement in a Sears & Roebuck catalogue mistakenly led callers expecting a Santa-hotline to the NORAD commander-in-chief’s telephone. Embracing the spirit of the season, NORAD used its satellite and radar capabilities to offer callers sleigh-location updates, and has tracked Santa’s whereabouts on Christmas Eve ever since. Then in 2004, Google started tracking Santa on Google Earth as a 20% project, which in 2007 grew into a partnership with NORAD, adding the mapping technology of Google Maps and Google Earth to the NORAD experience. Over the years, other Google teams have also joined in the holiday fun (YouTube, Google Voice’s www.SendACallFromSanta.com and Google SketchUp).
As we approach this year’s Christmas Eve adventure, Santa was able to take a break from the preparations to visit the New York Stock Exchange this past Monday. His helpful elves kept everything at the North Pole on schedule while folks from Google and NORAD attended the Closing Bell ceremony, and stood alongside Santa from Macy’s going over last minute details about tomorrow’s big ride.
So don’t forget to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning starting at 2:00am EST when Santa embarks on his flight. From all of us here at Google, happy holidays and here’s to a very happy New Year!
Posted by Brian McClendon, Original Google Engineering Elf Permalink
Microsoft launches HTML5 labs
HTML5 Labs a test and sandbox site got launched yesterday by Microsoft which simplifies the work of developers to research with early draft specifications of emerging HTML5-based technologies.
The site of HTML5 Labs has been designed to enable Microsoft to prototype early Web standard specifications from standards bodies such as World Wide Web Consortium, which is shepherding HTML5. HTML5 Labs site is taken care of and managed entire by the Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Group. The credit for gaining standards-based mechanisms so as to make an addition of multimedia capabilities to Web applications along with functionality such as bidirectional communications by the developers is entirely given to the HTML5 specification and associated technologies, as stated by Paul Krill from InfoWorld.
Latest from the Google Lab
Over the last couple of weeks, lots of apps have debuted on Google Labs, a laboratory where our more adventurous users can try our experimental products and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them. Teams at Google are gearing up to deliver more and more cool innovations to users, and this month alone, we’ve launched six new products on Google Labs. Here are the highlights of our recent releases.
App Inventor for Android
App Inventor for Android makes it easier for people to access the capabilities of their Android phones and create apps for their personal use. Until now, it was only available to a group of people who requested and received invitations. Last week, we announced that App Inventor (beta) is now available to anyone with a Google account. Visit the App Inventor homepage to get set up and start building your own Android app—and be sure to share your App Inventor story on the App Inventor user forum!
Body Browser
Body Browser is a demo app that allows you to visualize complex 3D graphics of the human body. It works in the latest beta version of Google Chrome and uses WebGL, a new standard that enables 3D experiences in the web browser without any plug-ins. Using Body Browser, you can explore different layers of human anatomy by moving the slider to rotate and zoom in on parts you are interested in. Not sure where something is? Try the search box. You can also share the exact scene you’re viewing by copying and pasting the corresponding URL.
DataWiki
DataWiki is a wiki for structured data, extending the idea of a normal wiki to make it easy to create, edit, share and visualize structured data, and to interlink data formats to make them more understandable and useful. The project is inspired by the need to create customized data formats for crisis response, for example to quickly create a person-finder application after an earthquake, or share Internet and cellular phone connectivity maps from an affected area. DataWiki operates as a RESTful web-service, is built on AppEngine and is completely open source.
Google Books Ngram Viewer
Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares the historical usage of phrases based on the datasets comprised of more than 500 billion words and their associated volumes over time in about 5.2 million books. Last week, we released this visualization tool along with freely-downloadable phrase frequency datasets to help humanities research. You can find interesting example queries (e.g., “tofu” vs. “hot dog”) and more information about the effort in our blog post.
Google Earth Engine
Google Earth Engine, which we announced at the U.N. Climate Change Conference Cancun earlier this month, is a technology platform that enables scientists to do global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment. It provides an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data online for the first time, as well as our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google “cloud”—to analyze the imagery. We’re excited about the initial use of Google Earth Engine to support efforts to stop global deforestation, but the platform can be used for a wide range of applications, from mapping water resources to ecosystem services. It’s part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future.
Google Shared Spaces
Google Shared Spaces is an easy way for you to share mini-collaborative applications, like scheduling tools or games, with your friends or colleagues. By creating a Shared Space, you can share a gadget with whomever you want by simply sending the URL. Once your friends join the Shared Space, you can collaborate with them in real-time on the gadget, and you can chat with them, too. This product is built on some of the technology used in Google Wave.
Those experimental products have been developed by many teams across Google. Some products were born in 20% time, and some were built by start-up-like teams inside the company. But all of these products were created by passionate, small teams just because they cared about them so much.
You can find more Labs products on googlelabs.com. Please play with them and give us feedback. And stay tuned for experiments coming in the future.
Posted by Riku Inoue, Product Manager, Google Labs Permalink
Some cool Android tips and tricks
Tips
- Visual cue for scrolling: When you are in a scrollable list (like your Gmail inbox) and you reach the end of the list it shows an orange hue—a visual cue that you can’t scroll anymore.
- Notification bar icons (Wi-Fi, network coverage bars, etc.): Turn green when you have an uninhibited connection to Google, white when you don’t. Hint: if you’re in a hotel or airport using Wi-Fi, the bars won’t turn green until you launch the browser and get past the captive portal.
- Voice actions: Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass. You can tell it to send an email or text message (“send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7”), call someone (“call mom”), navigate somewhere (“navigate to pizza”), or listen to music (“listen to Mamma Mia”).
- Find things you’ve downloaded from your browser: Your downloads are now neatly collected in a Downloads manager, which you can find in the apps drawer.
- Turn a Gallery stack into a slideshow: In Gallery, when you are looking at a stack of photos, put two fingers on the stack and spread them. The stack spreads out and the pictures flow from one finger to the other, a moving slideshow that lets you see all of the photos.
- Walk, don’t drive: Once you’ve gotten directions within Google Maps, click on the walking person icon to get walking directions.
- Easy text copy/paste from a webpage: To copy/paste from a webpage, long press some text, drag the handles around to select the text you want to copy, and press somewhere in the highlighted region. To paste, simply long press a text entry box and select paste. Gmail is a bit different: you need to go to Menu > More > Select Text.
- Turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot: Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Tethering & Portable Hotspot. (You may have to pay extra for this feature.)
- Look at Maps in 3D: With the latest release of Google Maps, you can now look at 3D maps. Tilt the map by sliding two fingers vertically up/down the screen, and rotate it by placing two fingers on the map and sliding in a circular motion, e.g., from 12 and 6 o’clock to 3 and 9.
- Cool shutdown effect: When you put the phone to sleep, you’ll see an animation that resembles an old cathode tube TV turning off.
Keyboard tricks
- Shift+Key to capitalize a word: In Gingerbread (and supported hardware), you can Shift+Key to capitalize a letter instead of going to a separate all caps keyboard.
- Auto-complete: The space bar lights up when auto-complete can finish a word.
- Quick replace: Tap on any previously typed word, then tap on a suggestion to automatically replace it with the suggested word.
- Easy access to special characters (like numbers, punctuation): Press and hold any key to go to the special character keyboard. You can also press and hold the “,” key for an extensive punctuation keyboard.
Applications
- Angry Birds: Popular game that lets you knock down blocks by slingshotting birds.
- Astro: Awesome file explorer app. Browse and access the directories on your phone, and take full advantage of its capabilities. Great if you’re a power user.
- Chrome to Phone: This one is really useful for Chrome users. You can send anything you browse on your computer to your phone. So if you are heading out to a restaurant or party and look up directions on your computer, just click the “send to phone” button (requires Chrome to Phone extension) and that exact page will open on your phone. Same with virtually any webpage.
- Flash: Install from Android Market to watch Flash videos embedded throughout the web. Runs even better on Gingerbread.
- Fruit Ninja: A juicy action game that tests your ability to smash flying fruit. A fun time-killer on the bus or train.
- FXCamera: Popular photo sharing app with slick effects and filters.
- Google Maps: Use your device as a GPS navigation system with free turn-by-turn voice guidance, and take advantage of other Google Maps features like Street View, Latitude and Places.
- Instant Heart Rate: Measure your heart rate using your camera.
- Phoneanlyzr: Track your phone usage: who you text most, call most, average call length distribution, etc.
- RemoteDroid: Control your computer from your phone. Gives you a mobile wireless mouse and keyboard. Great if you’re using your computer for music or movies.
- Shazam: Identifies virtually any song you are listening to.
- SoundHound: Record a snippet of a song and get it identified instantly. You can even hum (if you can carry a tune!).
- Tango: A free, high-quality video call app that works on both 3G and Wi-Fi. If your device has a front facing camera (e.g., Nexus S), you will love this app.
- YouTube: New UI. Plus, portrait-mode player, and view comments and drop-down box video information
Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management Permalink
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