Google has been posting a lot of hangouts to its developer YouTube channel lately, and this week, they uploaded one for Google TV app developers.
If you fall into this category, or are considering testing the Google TV waters, you might want to check it out. It’s about 53 minutes long.
Last week, Google announced that a big update to the Google Play Developer Console (demoed at Google I/O earlier this year) is now available to everyone. This makes it easier for developers to track the success of their apps by looking at metrics like active installs, average ratings, etc.
Google has shared the following developer hangout with the Google Play Developer Console team, who talk about the offering for nearly forty minutes.
More on the Google Play Developer Console here.
For single guys, every situation sports an opportunity to pick up girls – even the gym. You’re sweaty, she’s sweaty, but who cares? You’re both obviously into physical fitness, so at least you have a point from which to begin the conversation.
But as you probably know, picking up girls is hard. Especially when you have to interrupt their workout routine to do it.
Jarrett Sleeper knows exactly how to do it. And luckily for us, he’s decided to share his technique with the masses.
Ouch, right in the predictability.
[via reddit]
Over the years, Breaking Bad‘s Walt and Jesse have weathered a tempestuous relationship – one not unlike that of a teen couple in love. In like. Whatever. They’ve had their ups and downs, their breakups and their hookups. And most importantly, both parties could be accused of being insanely irrational from time to time.
In honor of one of the best relationships in the history of dramatic television, the folks over at Teddie Films has put together this impressive parody of Taylor Swift’s song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Since it’s about meth, the title and lyrics have been changed to reflect this.
Check out “We Are Never Ever Gonna Cook Together”:
[via The Daily What]
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke at the company’s Zeitgeist Americas 2012 conference this week. If you have sixteen minutes to spare, check it out below.
He speaks about how technology will shape the next five to ten years, and what this might mean for your children. He notes that people will still be using voice to text rather than texting while they’re in their driverless cars, because “they’ll never change the law”.
He also talks a bit about robots. “These robots will represent us and do gesture recognition. You’ll send your robot — I don’t like to stay out at night. I’ll send my robot out to go to the party and they can represent me.”
“You know, it’s much safer too,” he added. “He’ll have a good time, and he’ll report in the morning.”
There was plenty of laughter from the audience, but he added, “And you think I’m kidding. There are companies building these social robots right now, and they are uncannily powerful.”
Watch what Google CEO Larry Page had to say at the event here.
What did you do today? Because these people pulled a baby elephant out of a well and reunited it with its mom.
The group is the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and this is the best animal-related video you’ll see all week.
“We rescued this young eight months old calf early this week. Luckily the report came in early in the morning and we were able to get there quick before the mother was forced to leave by herders arriving to water their cattle. It was a happy ending as we were able to reunite the calf with her mother,” says ATE.
Check it out:
According to their site, the ATE “aims to ensure the long-term conservation and welfare of Africa’s elephants in the context of human needs and pressures through scientific research, training, community outreach, public awareness and advocacy.” You can make a donation to their cause here.
Young girls having viral success for songs that you simply have no words for; it’s as American as watching a cat eat an apple pie (the remixed version) on YouTube. Just in case you’ve forgotten that anyone can be a star thanks to the powers of online video and social media, may I present to you the latest viral sensation, Gnesa.
Some are saying she’s the new Rebecca Black. I don’t know. She seems pretty sure about wanting you to get wilder. Rebecca Black, as you may remember, wasn’t even sure about where she should sit in the car.
Before you watch, here is one of the YouTube comments for the video:
“After hearing this I’m off burning my copy of Sgt. Pepper’s!”
With that, here is “Wilder” by Gnesa:
[via BuzzFeed]
Google’s Matt Cutts has released a new Webmaster Help video. In this one, he is answering a question submitted by himself:
What is Google’s current thinking about getting links from article marketing, widgets, footers, themes, etc.?
The current thinking, he says, is pretty much the same as the past thinking, but he wants to be a little more “explicit” about it. There’s not a lot of surprising info here, or anything most in the industry don’t know, but it does serve as a reminder that trying to get links in easy (or lazy) ways is usually not the best decision.
“Whenever you get a link from just a WordPress footer or a random footer or, you know, when someone installs a widget, or they install some theme on their content management system, it’s often the case that they’re not editorially choosing to a link with that anchor text,” says Cutts. “And so you sometimes see a lot of links all with the exact some anchor text because, you know, that’s what the widget happened to have embedded in it, or something like that. And even if it’s not the exact same anchor text, it’s relatively inorganic in the sense that the person who made the widget decided what the anchor text should be rather than the person who is actually doing the link by including the widget.”
“It’s the same sort of thing with article marketing,” he continues. “If you write a relatively low quality article, you know, just a few hundred words, then at the bottom is two or three links of, you know, specifically high keyword density anchor text, then the sort of guy who just wants some content and doesn’t really care about the quality might grab that article from an article bank or something, and he’s not really editorially choosing to give that anchor text. So, as opposed to something that’s really compelling, when he really likes something, and linking to it organically…that’s the sort of links that we really want to count more.”
“It’s always been the case that these sorts of links that are almost like boiler plate – it’s like not really a person’s real choice to really endorse that particular link or that particular anchor text,” Cutts says. “Those are links that typically we would not want to count as much, so either our algorithms or we do have manual ways of saying, ‘OK, at a very granular level, you know, this is the sort of link that we don’t want to trust.’”
Google did just release a new Link Disavow tool that will let webmasters tell Google links they want it to ignore. Cutts says, however, that you really shouldn’t use the tool in most cases, painting it kind of more as a last resort measure.
The last time you saw them they were a little bit younger. That epic YouTube hit has nearly 500 million views and is the 7th-most-viewed video of all time on the site (1st if you don’t count music videos).
Yes, it’s the Charlie Bit My Finger kids and they’re back in a new ad for Ragu pasta sauce.
‘America’s favorite pasta sauce’ + British viral sensations = I’m not quite sure what it equals. “A long day of childhood calls for America’s favorite pasta sauce. And it doesn’t get much longer than having 500 million people watch your brother bite your finger. So give him Ragú, he’s been through enough.” That’s Ragu’s pitch.
Oh well, it’s just nice to see the stars of one of the most-watched internet videos in history again. Check it out below:
[via The Daily What]
We’re big fans of extremely well-put-together timelapse videos, and this one that’s creating some viral chatter is no exception.
“Humans are part of the natural order. We’re risen apes that acquired language and learned to use tools. Skyscrapers and spacecraft may seem unnatural, but they’re just as much a part of the natural order as beaver dams and bird nests. Boring electrical lines hint at the energy solution of a mammalian species. Open your eyes to the world you’ve grown accustomed to, and rejoice in the fact that you can participate in the human project,” says creator Reid Gower.
Check it out below. Here’s “Natural Phenomena”:
For a Q&A from interested viewers and the man behind the video, just check out the reddit post. Gower has taken a lot of time to answer dozens of questions about the project. What a fascinating video – this is what the interent and viral buzz was built for.
[Reid Gower via reddit]
Google has a new show for developers called The Breakpoint. The company uploaded the first episode to its Google Developers YouTube channel, and it stars programmers Paul Irish and Addy Osmani.
The Breakpoint, Google says, will be dedicated to developer tools and time-saving techniques. Yeoman is discussed in this one.
Google has made a transcript available on the video page, if you want to skim through the content before watching it.
In the world of political endorsements, I’m not exactly sure where Pauly Shore ranks. Maybe somewhere between Lindsay Lohan and Kid Rock. I guess it really doesn’t matter how the President of the United States feels about it, because Pauly Shore has endorsed him with a new rap song posted to his YouTube channel.
I mean, I guess he endorsed him. To be honest, I’m not sure what the message is here. Obama got Osama, I get that. But all the stuff with Kenya, Herman Cain, and Meet the Press? I don’t know. Is this supposed to be Pauly Shore’s perspective or Obama’s?
With lines like “Meet the Press can press my meat,” who the hell knows. Anyway, it’s Friday, so here it is:
[via UPROXX]
Google has shared a recent Hangout on Air discussing Google Maps Engine. In the video, you get a half hour discussion about the technology, including a demo and explanation from product manager Dylan Lorimer and Envista CEO Marc Fagan.
If you don’t want to sit through the whole thing, you can skim through the transcript on the video page.
If you missed the first Presidential debate, don’t worry – there are still two more to go. And even if there were no more televised contests it would be cool, because Bad Lip Reading has you covered.
The folks at BLR have tackled the debate, putting their spin on the Denver showdown between President Obama and Mitt Romney. As a voter, would I suggest getting your information from a Bad Lip Reading episode? Probably not. But I can confirm that it’s a lot more interesting than what was televised last Wednesday.
Check out Mitt Romney’s slightly Beavis-like giggle below:
If you’re looking for more Bad Lip Reading goodies from the past few weeks, including some takes on Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan by themselves check here.
Twitter has just purchased a small video creation and sharing company based in New York for an undisclosed amount. What’s particularly interesting about the acquisition is that the startup has yet to actually launch.
According to All Things D, Twitter has just acqui-hired Vine, a startup founded by former JetSetter employees Dominik Hoffman and Colin Kroll. They say that the acqui-hire may not be entirely traditional, as Vine may be able to survive as a standalone service.
Vine has not yet launched, but the do have a site. Its landing page says:
Vine is the best way to capture and share video on your iPhone. No editing. No rendering. No post-production. Video has never been this fun.
We’re not ready for you yet, but we will be soon. Sign up below to be notified when Vine is released.
Future users can enter an email address and be notified when it launches. That will obviously be impacted by this acquisition. Vine was officially founded back in June, according to Hoffman’s LinkedIn page.
This news comes on a day where reports say that Twitter is in the early stages of developing their own video-hosting service that would eliminate the need for third-party hosting from companies like yFrog and TwitVid. Hiring the founders of a video-sharing site would seem like a move that’s compatible with this venture.
Last week, NASA announced that they were in preparations to begin the surface testing phase of the Curiosity mission, meaning that they were about to start scooping up Martian soil.
And now, NASA has revealed the first photo and video from that first scoop. On October 7th, Curiosity used its 1.8-inch x 2.8 inch scoop to reach into the red planet for the first time.
This video clip was stitched together with 256 frames captured by the rover’s Mast Camera. It was originally taken at around 8 FPS, and NASA has interpolated it so that it runs at about 32 FPS. Check it out:
The first scoop revealed something shiny hidden in the soil:
“Subsequently, the rover team decided to refrain from using the rover’s robotic arm on Oct. 8 due to the detection of a bright object on the ground that might be a piece from the rover. Instead of arm activities during the 62nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, Curiosity is acquiring additional imaging of the object to aid the team in identifying the object and assessing possible impact, if any, to sampling activities,” says NASA
And about all of that “vibrating,” and “churning”:
“We’re going to take a close look at the particle size distribution in the soil here to be sure it’s what we want,” said Daniel Limonadi, lead systems engineer for Curiosity’s surface sampling and science system. “We are being very careful with this first time using the scoop on Mars.”
For now, it’s scooping. Later, the Curiosity rover will begin drilling into rocks.
Today’s wake up song: “Digging in the Dirt” by Peter Gabriel. Because no song says “Digging in the Regolith.” <sigh>
[Image/Video courtesy NASA/JPL]
Well this is cute.
If you’re around eight years old and want to get the cute girl at the beach to come sit next to you, how do you go about it? I’d say that creating a giant stick bomb with popsicle sticks is one of the coolest ways you could possibly do it.
“There’s a unique manner in which you can weave Popsicle sticks so that when you undo a stick on one end, it creates a chain reaction that ripples down the line at 35 mph. We decided to take this idea a step further and to build this story around it. I conceptualized this idea about two years ago, but we could never find the right project with which to incorporate. Since the sticks fly off so fast, we knew that we would need a high-speed camera to capture it. Until recently, high-speed cameras were very expensive to rent for a project that really had no budget,” says director Ross Ching.
Check it out below (it may make you miss summer):
According to Ching, this is only a spec commercial and isn’t affiliated with the official Popsicle brand. I’d strongly suggest they consider it, however.
