Google TV Gets A New YouTube App

Last month, Google began showing the new versions of Google TV at CES, giving the press a taste of what was in store. One particular panel discussing Google TV’s new capabilities led Rupert Murdoch to take to Twitter, bemoaning the pirating ways of the search behemoth. Forbes has the backstory here. Google TV posted on its Facebook page yesterday, saying that it has some big announcements in store for Monday.
Today, it announced that it is upgrading the YouTube experience on Google TV with a new, revamped app. The YouTube app for Google TV is available for download on the Android Marketplace. The initial drive behind Google TV was to create a user experience that seamlessly blends web video with the boob tube, to change the way consumers interact with TV, but the first Google TV fell flat. Matt Burns reviewed the version, saying that, while it’s getting closer, it still has a long, long way to go.
In its announcement today, Google is promising some “big improvements” to its new YouTube app, among them that navigation is smoother and faster, along with some much-needed additions to its UX, like the new “Discover” feature, which basically just brings YouTube channel categories to Google TV, enhancing their browse-ability within the app. They’ve also brought its new channel pages, enabling users to navigate playlists and videos and subscribe to favorites.
Google says that users can also now view related videos from the same user by pressing the up and down arrows on their remote controls, or to find the “Info screen” to leave a thumbs up, add to your playlists, or to leave a comment.
The new app looks good, and this certainly stands to improve the YouTube experience on Google TV, though it’s certainly not the “big announcement” that many were hoping for. We’ll be keeping our ears out in the event that there’s more Google TV news in store for Monday.

Google Home Entertainment System Will Challenge Apple, Microsoft

Google's home entertainment device will be a WiFi system for streaming music and likely controlling Google TV and other home products. Apple will also play here.

The Wall Street Journal report that Google is building a home entertainment system to let users stream music throughout the home without wires has roiled the tech sector the last couple of days.
The news comes several months after Google unveiled a streaming music server that let users tap a CD against a  device to scan the music into Google's Music storage locker.
The experimental product, dubbed Project Tungsten at Google I/O last May, falls under the company's Android @Home banner for powering home consumer electronics and eventually home appliances such as lights, thermostats, refrigerators and microwaves with the company's Android operating system.
Google has asked the Federal Communications Commission permission to have 252 Google employees test the prototype device in Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif., Los Angeles, Cambridge, Mass., and New York City.
According to the patent application, which GigaOm discovered, users will connect their device to home WiFi networks and use Bluetooth to connect to other home electronics equipment. The device is designed to test the throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device.
The system will certainly leverage Google's Music streaming service and work with Google TV, the company's Web-based television surface. These products could be controlled via Android smartphones and tablets. However, while Google simply licenses the Android-based Google TV software to TV OEMs such as Sony and Vizio, Google will allegedly market and brand the home entertainment device under its own name. This is unusual for a company given to releasing Android under open source and letting OEMs build products.
Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey told eWEEK Google's biggest challenge will be in explaining to people that whatever it wants to sell is a platform rather than a product. Such a device could get lost in the muddle of other home TV devices from Sonos, Roku and Logitech.
Yet if Google can sell Android as a single controlling platform for all home electronics rather than just a single consumer electronics device "they have a shot at defining a new category."
Pundits opine that Google will fumble this project away because it has no experience building and marketing hardware products, let alone consumer electronics devices. Others argue Google will tap Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI), which makes set-top boxes, for its hardware and marketing expertise.
Both points are valid and yet Google has other challenges. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is a home entertainment gaming and streaming system.
Apple, already dominant in consumer electronics, is purportedly preparing to launch its own Web-based super TV system this year. Such a device would sync across Apple's Macs, iPhones and iPads, all tethered by the company's iCloud storage service. McQuivey noted:

Apple's forthcoming TV won't just be a TV, it has to be a home information and experience management platform. It may not even be designed to replace your living room TV (replacement cycles are too long there to get the kind of sales spike Apple will want), but it will definitely be designed to manage your whole life -- all your media, your personal information, and eventually the full body of data that you generate each day including how well you slept last night, how much you weigh today, and whether you're fighting more with your spouse than before.

"That's where all of this ends. Google knows it, Apple wants it, Microsoft might accidentally get there first, and Facebook is most likely to be the glue that connects people to it all. It's the technology platform holy grail, of course, but you can't sell it that way today. You have to sell it as a TV streaming device that happens to have an app platform."
Google might have an advantage in addressing a larger market, something Android lends itself to naturally by remaining open source. Apple, however, will target existing Apple users who have their Macs, iPhones and iPads -- and certainly the existing Apple TV users.
"Google has to strike now in order to signal to people that there will be a more open alternative, one in which you can buy from Samsung, Verizon, and even Amazon and have it all accrue to the same platform," McQuivey said.
"Will they do it well? I'm not confident they will, but if they wait and try to follow quickly like they did with tablets, they might spend 5 years catching up."

Atlantis has been deleted from Google Earth

Google Earth is a pretty nifty piece of software. You get to see the planet, land and ocean on your computer. To mark their three year anniversary of 3D Ocean in Google Earth, they made some changes to the program. According to the Google's Lat Long Blog, Google has 'cleaned up' the ocean floor a bit, by removing stray artifacts and images visible in the ocean. Google says, "The update covers ocean topography from all over the globe and reveals our most accurate view of the seafloor to date. This new detail comes from spacecraft measurements of bumps and dips in the ocean surface as well as shipboard soundings from surveys carried out by over 40 countries. With this update to ocean terrain data in Google Earth, 15 percent of the seafloor is now available at 1 km resolution."

It seems the cleanup also involved the removal of entire lost lands. The lost land of Atlantis, which Google 'placed' off the coast of North Africa, back in 2009 is not visible on Google Earth anymore. Back in 2009, a grid like shape was seen in Google Ocean, an extension of Google Earth, and many people believed that Google had discovered the lost island of Atlantis. The reason this grid existed was because of the way a ship went back and forth using sonar to collect information on the ocean floor. The grid is a result of ship tracks as explained by Google in their blog, back in 2009.

Other clean up efforts, include an area in the Mediterranean Sea, especially just south of Cyprus where the boundary between Eurasian and Arabian plates is more clearly defined. Another area in the Pacific Ocean, Guam and the Mariana Trench have been improved in resolution. The update comes from work done by Google in conjunction with  the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO (with major contributions from IFREMER and IBCAO). Check out the video below for a visual tour of the updates that Google's made in Google Ocean.

India delays Web censorship hearing against Facebook, Google

The Delhi High Court today delayed hearings on petitions by Facebook and Google to dismiss criminal proceedings against them in the country’s Web censorship case. The two Internet giants are among 21 companies that have been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, and the Indian government has given the green light for their prosecution. The case will continue next month.
Earlier this week, Facebook and Google told the Delhi High Court they cannot block offensive content that appears on their services. Although the case was originally filed in a lower court, the companies have appealed to the Delhi High Court, challenging the lower court’s ruling asking them to take down some content. The high court has now pushed back the case till February 2, according to NDTV. If their petitions fail, the 21 companies will have to face trial in the lower court, which has its next hearing scheduled for March 13.
The case causing all this brouhaha first began with a private complaint filed by journalist Vinay Rai against “21 social networking sites.” The list features 10 foreign-based companies, and could affect websites provided by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and YouTube. He filed a complaint last December saying the websites were showing images that seek “to create enmity, hatred, and communal violence” and “will corrupt minds.” The charge is that they’ve allowed material offensive to Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. The punishment for such offenses can be several years of jail time and financial penalties. Representatives of the 21 companies were thus summoned to court and a long proceeding began.
Siddharth Luthra, one of Facebook’s lawyers, told the court it was impossible for the social network to pre-screen and monitor everything and that instead users should be held responsible for content they post. Justice Suresh Kait, the judge in the higher court, two weeks ago threatened to block the websites if they don’t comply. When the companies in question told him they have a global policy of non-interference even if content posted on their services are found to be obscene or objectionable, he responded by saying this policy won’t work in India.
Kait was quoted as saying: “Like China, we too can block such websites.” Neeraj Kishan Kaul, one of Google’s lawyers, last week replied by saying this was a constitutional issue and not taking away freedom of speech separates democratic India from a totalitarian regime like the one in China.
Last year, India passed a law that makes companies responsible for user content posted on their websites, requiring them to take down anything deemed offensive (”ethnically objectionable,” “blasphemous,” or “grossly harmful.”) within 36 hours in case of a complaint. Civil rights groups are opposed to the law but politicians argue posting offensive images in the socially conservative country with a history of violence between religious groups presents a danger to the public as Internet use grows.
Both Facebook and Google have previously said they can’t and won’t censor content in the country, but now they’re asking a high court to reverse a lower court’s decision. The companies argue they can’t be held legally responsible under the law for content posted by third parties, regardless of offensive someone may find it.
Although India is democratic (in fact, it’s the world’s largest democracy), many fear the country will resort to censorship. The case has quickly become a major part of the debate over free speech in the country.

Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis’

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.
Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.
Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.
Yet Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday.
Google wrote Jan. 9 it would begin redirecting Blogger traffic to country-specific URLs, meaning whatever country you’re in, you’ll get that country’s domain for Blogger-hosted blogs.
TechDows reports that this is now happening in India, for example. So when you’re there and click on a Blogger blog, the URL will end .in.
Doing that, Google wrote, means content can be removed “on a per country basis.”
“Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law,” Google wrote.
Twitter did not announce how its new technology functions, but said Twitter has the ability to remove tweets only in countries where that content was barred.

Google's new privacy policy could anger FTC

Google announced on Monday that it would be enacting a new privacy policy that, when customers agree to it, will allow the company to collect and store information across all of its services. Not only that, but Google will share information gathered across those services in order to "maintain, protect and improve" the services, but also to target search results and ads for each user. There is no way to opt out of the information-sharing aside from deleting your entire account and saying goodbye to your Gmail, YouTube videos, and Calendar, among other things. Users may feel that this is a backhanded gesture on Google's part, but the new privacy policy may also raise issues with the company's agreement with the FTC.
Google has been able to see and use its users' information for a long time, as in targeted ads displayed alongside Gmail. With the new privacy policy, Google will store information from all of the services a person might use, including location and application information from smartphones, Google Wallet, Google+, your search and viewing history in YouTube and Maps, books you browse, RSS feeds you read, and your Blogger posts marked "private." The company can then share that information across all of those services.
All of this information has been passing in front of Google's eyes in a glittering stream for years, but now they're putting a bucket underneath it. While information shared across services may make for a more integrated experience, it also creates a more complete picture of users that can be tacked onto the advertising dartboard.
Google isn't the first to dig its fingers into service information and receive blowback. Facebook has been tiptoeing over that line for years, and occasionally returning to the other side, recanting. But Facebook is a service predicated on sharing information with others, and the Beacon marketing fiasco aside, there's not as much there that users didn't put there themselves.
Google, on the other hand, has made itself essential with free services like YouTube and Gmail. The cost of dropping off Facebook is increased difficulty in stalking your peers, plus nagging questions about why you don't have Facebook. The cost of dropping off Google is, often as not, moving your entire online system for managing communication and information in multiple media elsewhere.
Privacy groups such as Common Sense Media are concerned about users' inability to opt out of the information collection and sharing. "Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out," Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer said in a statement. Steyer noted that the ability to opt out would be particularly important for kids and teens who use Google's services; the default setting, he says, should be "opt-in" if you're interested in the integrated experience Google is selling with its collected information.
Google's new privacy policy is not yet in effect, but the company is set to adopt it on March 1. But they may not get that far: Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Ars that opting users into services violates Google's consent order with the FTC. "Google is not allowed, under the settlement, to opt users in. If Google goes forward, they may be hit with serious monetary penalties," said Rotenberg.
A Google spokesperson told Ars, however, that the consent order with FTC concerns the company's sharing of information with third parties, which the new privacy policy will not affect. But Rotenberg argued that the new information sharing practices resemble too closely "Google's attempt to use the data of Gmail subscribers to launch Buzz without consent," which prompted FTC to create the consent order in the first place.
Google has also released a new Terms of Service alongside its privacy policy. In one section, the company states in all caps, "Other than as expressly set out in these terms or additional terms, neither Google nor its suppliers or distributors make any specific promises about the services. For example, we don't make any commitments about… the specific function of the services, or their reliability, availability, or ability to meet your needs. We provide the services 'as is.'"
It's easy to think that because a free service serves you now, it will serve you forever. And it's hard to feel like you aren't owed something by Google and its services. By using Google's services, you do pay the company's bills after all. Unlike software you buy outright, you can pull support for Google if disagree with how they operate, but always at the cost of shaking your dependency.

Google, Facebook and Others Join to Write New Email-Authentication Spec Called DMARC

Google, Yahoo, AOL and a group of other large email senders and receivers have banded together to develop a new framework for sending and receiving email that is designed to stop phishing attacks and other email-borne scams. Called DMARC.org, the new group has come up with a specification called Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Compliance that implements message authentication through the mail-transport agent and not the sender or user agents.
The specification is the product of a collaboration among the large email receivers such as AOL, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, and major email senders such as Facebook, Bank of America and others, all of whom have a vested interest in either knowing which emails are legitimate or being able to prove that their messages are authentic. The DMARC specification is meant to be a policy layer that works in conjunction with existing mail authentication systems such as DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework).
"Building upon the work of previous mail authentication standards like SPF and DKIM, DMARC is responding to domain spoofing and other phishing methods by creating a standard protocol by which we’ll be able to measure and enforce the authenticity of emails. With DMARC, large email senders can ensure that the email they send is being recognized by mail providers like Gmail as legitimate, as well as set policies so that mail providers can reject messages that try to spoof the senders’ addresses," Adam Dawes, a Google product manager, said.
"We’ve been active in the leadership of the DMARC group for almost two years, and now that Gmail and several other large mail senders and providers — namely Facebook, LinkedIn, and PayPal — are actively using the DMARC specification, the road is paved for more members of the email ecosystem to start getting a handle on phishing."
In the specification document, the DMARC participants lay out the technical details of the plan, which is seen mainly as a way to create a stream of authenticated email messages. Rather than being a replacement for DKIM or other previous frameworks, DMARC relies on DKIM and also depends upon the security of the existing DNS system to work.
"This document is significantly informed by ongoing efforts to enact large-scale, Internet-wide, anti-phishing measures. Whereas DMARC can only be used to combat specific forms of exact-domain phishing directly, the DMARC mechanism is viewed more importantly as a substantial step forward in terms of creating reliable and defensible message streams," the specification says. "The DMARC mechanism is designed to enable highly accurate Internet- scale deployments of email authentication technologies. Anti-phishing measures are a compelling instance of what widely-deployed authenticated messaging streams can enable. As email authentication deployments continue to mature, additional authentication-enabled services are expected to be developed."
Phishing attacks have been a large-scale problem for both users and email senders for more than a decade now, and generations of security and mail-filtering companies have risen and fallen with various attempts to fix it. There have been a lot of other industry groups and frameworks that have emerged over the years as well, and the latest ones, including DKIM and SPF, have met with some success. But the huge volume of spam and phishing mail that continues to choke users' inboxes shows that this is still far from a solved problem, and one that is bothering the email senders and receivers as well as the end users.
Companies such as Bank of America, Facebook and PayPal that rely on email to communicate with their customers are among the more common targets of phishers who use a variety of techniques to spoof the sending domain and try to trick users into opening their scam messages. Some users, wary of these attacks, have gotten to the point of distrusting just about any email that purports to come from one of these companies, leading to problems in communication between the companies and their actual customers.
DMARC participants are optimistic that the new specification will help alleviate this problem.
"Our recent data indicates that roughly 15% of non-spam messages in Gmail are already coming from domains protected by DMARC, which means Gmail users like you don’t need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders. The phishing potential plummets when the system just works, and that’s what DMARC provides," Dawes said in his blog post

Google kills Menu button, brings action bar on the fore

As Ice Cream Sandwich begins rolling to more devices, you will not find the Menu button on Android devices anymore. Honeycomb 3.0 had reduced users’ reliance on physical buttons and now Google has decided to kill the Menu button and get its ‘action bar’ on the forefront. Now, action bar isn’t something new and was there, even before Honeycomb.

 The Android developers’ blog states, “You might worry that it’s too much work to begin using the action bar, because you need to support versions of Android older than Honeycomb. However, it’s quite simple for most apps because you can continue to support the Menu button on pre-Honeycomb devices, but also provide the action bar on newer devices with only a few lines of code changes.” In the blog post, Google also tells its Android developers to start using the action bar, which is a dedicated space to the application and actions that users can perform. The app is recognized and gives it users several actions to choose from.

It tells developers that apps should stop relying on the hardware Menu button, and they should also stop thinking about activities using a menu button. The activities should provide buttons for important user actions directly in the action bar (or elsewhere on screen). Those that can’t fit in the action bar will end up in the action overflow. Basically, those actions, which don’t need to be on the screen can overflow off the screen. The action overflow is a three dotted icon found on the extreme right. Users can reveal the overflow and other options by touching an overflow button that appears alongside the on-screen action buttons.

So, even if an app supports older Android versions, it won’t display the Menu button for versions Honeycomb 3.0 and beyond. Those with apps developed for Android 2.3 and lower, and when running on the Honeycomb tablet of Google Nexus will see that the system adds the action overflow button besides the system navigation.

 

Google Search Negatively Affects Human Memory: Study

Google search has now become a part of our lives. Most of the people use it to find information from internet. But have you ever thought of its effect on our brain?

As long as we know where to find information, we are less likely to remember it. The easily accessible data anywhere, anytime is changing the way people handle information. So in effect Google is making people dumb, by destroying our memories.

A new study has revealed findings that could just go to show that Google could be destroying our memories.

According to the study published by Psychology professors from the Columbia University, the University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard University:

“People remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found. The Internet, with its search engines such as Google and databases such as IMDB and the information stored there, has become an external memory source that we can access at any time. It has become so commonplace to look up the answer to any question the moment it occurs, it can feel like going through withdrawal when we can’t find out something immediately.”

The four tests that the professors conducted on individuals in short, confirmed that searching for information on the internet could be wiping out our “internal memory”, which stores data. “When people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it”, said the study.

So instead of remembering data, say what happened during an event, we tend to remember which sites we saw that information on, or where on Google we found the site.

According to the study “These results suggest that processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology. We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.” “This gives us the advantage of access to a vast range of information—although the disadvantages of being constantly ‘wired’ are still being debated”, concluded the professors in the study.