The Project Glass parody videos are just not stopping. Luckily, I’ve been able to gain some bit of amusement out of each one so far, so I guess it hasn’t jumped the shark quite yet, though I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
While not quite to the extent of the last one, this one is a free with the language as well. It does end with the user unzipping his pants as he gets ready for a ChatRoulette session. Nothing too graphic though.
This one’s also funny because the glasses often misinterpret the user’s commands, which voice search users can certainly identify with.
I’m a bit surprised there isn’t an Apple-based parody on this list yet, though again, I’m sure that’s only a matter of time as well. Which parody is your favorite?
The Project Glass parody videos continue to make their way to YouTube. This is the first one I’ve seen, which could be rated R for language, which is used to bring yet another take on the humor, setting it apart from the rest.
It’s really more a parody of the video rather than of the technology.
More and more parodies of Google’s Project Glass promo video are surfacing. Many of them are pointing out the potential for bodily harm, though so far, from the ones I’ve seen, they’ve mostly done a good job at still being different enough from one another to be worth watching.
In this one, we see a guy burn himself with coffee, receive constant reminders of everything that sucks about his day, and ultimately get hit by a car.
All the while, the glasses alert him of the obvious: “it’s cloudy” when he looks at the cloudy sky, for example. When he looks at the clock, it shows him the time digitally.
This parody highlighted another potential reality (though greatly exaggerated, I hope) where ads appear throughout the Project Glass experience.
Parody videos about Project Glass have been coming out of the woodwork. Some of them are disturbingly realistic. They include things like people running into telephone poles or falling off balconies and whatnot.
Some may find this one startlingly realistic as well, but for other reasons:
In case the title didn’t give it away, it’s all about Google sprinkling ads all over the interface, giving the user constant exposure to ad campaigns. Advertisers would likely salivate over this. Perhaps Project Glass will one day become a real money maker for Google.
I wouldn’t expect any ads at launch. We’re still waiting for ads to make their way to Google+.
Google has captured the imaginations (and cynicism) of many this week, with the unveiling of Project Glass, it’s futuristic glasses that give the user access to the virtual world. Google’s promo video was a concept video, but they do exist, even if they’re not ready for prime time. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was photographed wearing them at a charity dinner.
We already saw one parody video, painting a funny, but realistic picture of what life may be like if these become popular:
Now there’s another parody, showing the Windows version of Project Glass (via Mitesh Shah):
Google has posted a pair of webinars from its “GoMo” campaign, which is an initiative to get people to create mobile-friendly sites. One of the webinars is for advertisers and one is for publishers. They both include tips and case studies on sites that have gone mobile.
Frankly, you shouldn’t need Google to tell you that you need to be optimized for mobile these days, but there is still plenty to be learned.
In the first one (the one for advertisers), Google discusses mobilizing your site, maximizing mobile ads, and tracking/measuring them. The second one discusses why you should go mobile, provides tips for building a mobile site, talks about best practices and explains how to get started.
As a bonus, Google has also made the slides from the webinars available to download here (pdf).
If you’re familiar with the work of filmmaker David Lynch, the video you’re about to see shouldn’t be too jarring. If you haven’t seen a lot of David Lynch films, your response might be a resounding WTF.
Even as someone who’s familiar with Lynch (and harbors mixed feelings about his work), the just-released video for his song “Crazy Clown Time” is pretty surreal. And odd. There’s a football player, a pretty righteous mohawk, fire, some moaning naked girls, a bit of beer wasting, and a couple of instances of ear-piercing screaming. All in all, it amounts to one of the strangest backyard parties that I’ve ever seen.
It’s Lynch’s song, and he also directed the video. Check it out below (kind of NSFW):
The song comes to you from Lynch’s debut solo album “Crazy Clown Time,” which released last November to mixed critical reception. Lynch decided to try his hand at putting what goes on inside his head into a cohesive musical experience – a challenge indeed. Lynch, of course, is probably best known for his films Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, as well as the cult classic TV show Twin Peaks. but other than being a legendary filmmaker and now a solo artist, Lynch is a visual artist and coffee enthusiast.
The video debuted today on the Noisey YouTube Channel. Noisey, the music discovery company that got their start at SXSW 2011, had this to say about the video:
“Crazy Clown Time” unveils a majestic, yet powerfully idiosyncratic vision of “modern blues” that could only be drawn from the mind of David Lynch. Filled with foreboding soundscapes, hypnotic rhythms and enigmatic lyrics, this is music that will resonate not only with fans of Lynch’s films, but also to listeners who appreciate daring, experimental music.
The YouTube commentary mirrors the response to most of Lynch’s work – all over the place. “Captivating, daring and absolutely mad, LOVE IT!” writes one viewer. “It’s crap and sorry, it’s just pretentious,” writes another. The most accurate is probably “What the f*ck did I just watch?”
To sum it up, David Lynch makes a David Lynchian music video for a David Lynchian song and receives David Lynchian response. Questions? Let us know what you think about it in the comments.
Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts put out a new video discussing site speed’s impact on rankings. This is not the first time Cutts has addressed the issue, but it’s a somewhat different take than we’ve seen before, as it’s in direct response to the following user-submitted question:
You mentioned that site speed is a factor in ranking. On some pages, our site uses complex queries to return the users request, giving a slow pagetime. should we not allow Googlebot to index these pages to improve our overall site speed?
“I would say, in general, I would let Googlebot crawl the same pages that users see,” says Cutts. “The rule of thumb is this. Only something like 1 out of 100 searches are affected by our page speed mechanism that says, things that are too slow rank lower. And if it’s 1 out of a 100 searches, that’s 1 out of roughly 1,000 websites. So if you really think that you might be in the 1 out of 1,000, that you’re the slowest, then maybe that’s something to consider.”
“But in general, most of the time, as long as your browser isn’t timing out, as long as it’s not starting to be flaky, you should be in relatively good shape,” he continues. “You might, however, think about the user experience. If users have to wait 8, 9, 10, 20 seconds in order to get a page back, a lot of people don’t stick around that long. So there’s a lot of people that will do things like cache results and then compute them on the fly later. And you can fold in the new results.”
“But if it’s at all possible to pre-compute the results, or cache them, or do some sort of way to speed things up, that’s great for users,” Cutts says. “Typically, as long as there is just a few number of pages that are very slow or if the site overall is fast, it’s not the kind of thing that you need to worry about. So you might want to pay attention to making it faster just for the user experience.But it sounds like I wouldn’t necessarily block those slower pages out from Googlebot unless you’re worried that you’re in one of those 1 out of a 1,000, where you’re really, really the outlier in terms of not being the fastest possible site.”
In November, we referenced another video Cutts did talking about page speed, where he also dropped the “1 out of 100 searches” stat. He said basically not to overly stress about speed as a ranking factor. Both the new video and that video were actually uploaded to YouTube in August, so this advice is already older than it appears. Today’s video, however, was just made public by Google, so it stands to reason that the advice from the company remains the same.
Following are nine videos from the Big Tent events specifically discussing privacy, which is certainly a hot button issue on the web these days. Google itself has faces plenty of criticism in this department. While these may all be from Google events, the discussion is not all from Googlers.
Speakers include Jeff Jarvis, Cornelia Rogall, Cory Doctorow, Peter Schaar, Jeremy Hunt and Eric Schmidt, to name a few.
Google has a new YouTube channel for its “Big Tent” events full of wonderful videos featuring keynotes and other inspirational discussions on topic like free speech, privacy, digital literacy, the economy and arts & culture.
“The Internet has transformed society in so many ways, and that’s bound to continue,” says Google Policy Analyst Katharine Wang. “The aim of our Big Tent events is to bring together people with diverse views to debate some of the hot-button issues that transformation raises.”
“This week we hosted our first Big Tent event stateside at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif,” she notes. “The theme was Digital Citizenship, and over the course of the day we discussed child safety online, the most effective ways to incorporate technology with education and what governments and civil society can do to maintain a responsible and innovative web.”
The entire channel is worth checking out. To save you some time, here are the currently available videos of the discussions that are related to freedom of expression and free speech:
Back in December of 2011, YouTube launched YouTube Slam, a game/discovery mechanism where certain types of videos are pitted against each other in a one-on-one style battle. The videos are be in the same general category like “comedy slam” or “dance slam.” Each slam has the viewer select which video “won” the battle, and there are online leaderboards and such.
“This is the place for discovering talented amateur singers, the most adorable clips and the craziest videos on YouTube,” they said at the time. Recently, YouTube hosted a Valentine’s Day slam where users’ proposal videos were matched up against on another.
Today, YouTube has announced that users can now make their own Slam battles, using their own playlists.
You can now turn any of your playlists into a YouTube Slam. Play solo, share the YouTube link with your friends or even play together in a Google+ Hangout. Here’s how to do it:
Make a playlist with the videos you want to include in the Slam (you’ll need at least two videos and they have to be public), or choose a playlist you have already
Click the “Create Slam” button next to one of your playlists.
After that, a button to play your slam will appear, as will one to remove the slam from public consumption.
I just tried it out, using my playlist of video clips from, about, or mashed-up from the film Home Alone.
While this is fun and all to do by yourself and to share with your friends for them to do by themselves – it would be a lot more fun if you could all vote on the video battles together. Luckily, YouTube says that you can. Google+ Hangouts now support YouTube Slams. Having the ability to watch YouTube videos with your friends inside a Hangout was already pretty fun, but this could really spark the use of YouTube inside Hangouts.
So next time you and your friends are arguing about which standup comedian is funnier, or which faceplant video is the most brutal – just put it to a vote.
Google has over 200 signals it uses to rank results. Given Google’s legendary PageRank algorithm, based on links, it has led to a lot of people worrying about links way too much. That’s not to say quality links aren’t still important, but just because you have a whole bunch of links, it doesn’t mean your site is going to rank well.
Google’s Matt Cutts posted an interesting webmaster help video under the title: “Will Google Provide More Link Data For All Sites?” It’s Cutts’ response to the user-submitted question:
In the wake of the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer, does Google Webmaster Tools plan to take up the reigns this product once provided to SEO’s everywhere?
Cutts responds, “What I think you’re asking is actually code for ‘will you give me a lot of links?’ and let me give you some context about Google’s policies on that. I know that Yahoo Site Explorer gave a lot of links, but Yahoo Site Explorer is going away. Microsoft used to give a lot of links. And they saw so much abuse and so many people hitting it really, really hard that I think they turn that off so that people wouldn’t be tempted to just keep pounding them and pounding their servers.”
“So our policy has been to give a subsample of links to anybody for any given page or any given site– and you can do that with a link colon command–and to give a much more exhaustive, much more full list of links to the actual site owner,” says Cutts. “And let me tell you why I think that’s a little bit more of a balanced plan. Yahoo Site Explorer, they were giving a lot of links, but they weren’t giving links that Google knew about. And certainly, they don’t know which links Google really trusts. And so I think a lot of people sometimes focus on the low-quality links that a competitor has, and they don’t realize that the vast majority of times, those links aren’t counting.”
“So, for example, the New York Times sent us a sample of literally thousands of links that they were wondering how many of these count because they’d gotten it from some third party or other source of links,” he adds. “And the answer was that basically none of those links had counted. And so it’s a little easy for people to get obsessed by looking at the backlinks of their competitors and saying, ‘oh, they’re doing this bad thing or that bad thing.’ And they might not know the good links. And they might not know that a lot of those links aren’t counted at all.”
“So I also think that it’s a relatively good policy because you deserve to know your own links,” he continues. “I think that’s perfectly defensible. But it doesn’t provide that much help to give all the links to a competitor site unless you’re maybe an SEO, or your a competitor, or something along those lines. So for somebody like a librarian or a power searcher or something like that, using link colon and getting a nice sample, a fair fraction of links to a particular page or to a particular website, is a very good policy.”
“I think that’s defensible, but I don’t expect us to show all the links that we know of for all the different sites that we know of, just because people tend to focus on the wrong thing,” he concludes. “They don’t know which links really count. So they tend to obsess about all the bad links their competitors have and only look at the good links that they have. And it’s probably the case that surfacing this data makes it so that you’re helping the people who really, really, really want to try to get all their competitors backlinks or whatever. And I just think it’s a little bit more equitable to say, OK, you’re allowed to see as many of the backlinks as we can give you for your own site, but maybe not for every other site. You can get a sampling, so you can get an idea of what they’re like, but I wouldn’t expect us to try to provide a full snapshot for every single site.”
Links obviously aren’t everything, and if you follow Google’s changes, it’s easy to see that other signals have been given a lot more significance in recent memory. This includes things like content quality, social signals and freshness. If you’re that worried about the number of links you have, you’re living in the wrong era of search.
Granted, links have value beyond search ranking. They still provide more potential referrals to your site, but in terms of Google, the search engine is moving more and more away from the traditional 10 organic links anyway, with more personalized results, fresher results, blended (universal search) results, and more direct answers.
Google posted the following video from an on air Google+ hangout in which a handful of the company’s UX designers talk for about a half hour about the kinds of things they do when approaching user experience projects and issues. Included in the discussion are a YouTube designer, a Google visual designer working on the Chrome Web Store, and a UX guy from the Google Analytics team (he’s also worked on the Google TV team and some of Google’s ad teams).
The discussion starts off by talking about how putting the user first is Google’s primary objective. The YouTube designer talks about how the UX staff put themselves in the mindset of the user and meet with the company’s various product managers and engineers to push this element of things. They’ll draw up mocks and prototypes on paper to illustrate things to the other Googlers.
A big part of their job is to work with other Google teams and talk to partners about where the user experience can be improved. The YouTube guy talks about meeting with partners at SXSW, for example, and collecting feedback.
Google+ itself has been huge for Google to collect feedback. Various Googlers are communicating with users throughout the social network, by hangouts and posts all the time. Even if Google+ never gets Facebook-like engagement from users, it’s already proven to be an invaluable tool for communicating with Google itself. I don’t think there are too many Googlers who aren’t on Google+.
He has now put out a new video talking about how Google will treat the TLDs, in response to the user-submitted question:
How will Google treat the new nTLDs where any Top Level Domain is possible e.g. for corporations eg. www.portfolio.mycompanyname regarding influence on ranking and pagerank?
“Well we’ve had hundreds of different TLDs, and we do a pretty good job of ranking those,” says Cutts. “We want to return the best result, and if the best result is on one particular TLD, then it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll do the work in terms of writing the code and finding out how to crawl different domains, where we are able to return what we think is the best result according to our system.”
“So if you are making Transformers 9, and you want to buy the domain transformers9.movie or something like that, it’s reasonable to expect that Google will try to find those results, try to be able to crawl them well, and then try to return them to users.”
“Now there’s going to be a lot of migration, and so different search engines will have different answers, and I’m sure there will be a transition period where we have to learn or find out different ways of what the valid top level domains are, and then if there’s any way where we can find out what the domains on that top level domain are,” he says. “So we’ll have to explore that space a little bit, but it’s definitely the case that we’ve always wanted to return the best result we can to users, and so we try to figure that out, whether it’s on a .com, or a .de, or a dot whatever, and we’ll try to return that to users.”
PayPal introduced a new digital wallet today at SXSW. “This is the future of what PayPal is going to be looking like over the coming months,” PayPal VP, Global Product & Experience, Sam Shrauger declares.
Separating the purchase from the payment: Buy something in a store, take it home and decide later how you want to pay for it. PayPal is the only wallet that will offer a 5-7 day grace period for consumers to change their minds.
Switch from one funding source to another
Decide to pay over time in installments
Apply different sources of value (gift cards, airline miles, loyalty points, etc.)
Personal Lists: Search for items, compare prices and create lists of things you want to buy for a variety of situations.
Found Money: Your wallet will find deals and coupons for items on your personal lists once you’re in the store. Forgot about that coupon you were saving? The PayPal wallet won’t.
Spending Rules. Create specific “set asides” like travel funds, set rules by purchase amount, tie specific payment instruments to specific merchants – all in your wallet, without setting up any new bank accounts or opening any new credit cards.
Here’s about 20 minutes worth of demo of the new digital wallet from Shrauger:
PayPal will begin rolling out the new features in late May.
While we’ve yet to see it, PayPal is rumored to be launching a mobile payments dongle to compete with Square. Square has enjoyed unprecedented success in a short time of existence. Such an offering from PayPal, which is more of a household name, could do very well.
In other PayPal news this week, vice president of customer advocacy and operational excellence Eric Salvatierra was killed when he was struck by a commuter train in Menlo Park.
Google, never shy about uploading videos to help people use their products better, has been uploading a lot lately. That includes this 45-minute Google Apps Fireside Chat: API Overview.
“One of the many benefits of the Google Apps platform is our robust set of APIs that help administrators provision, manage, and integrate our products more efficiently,” Google says.
The chat was with Stafford Marquardt , one of Google’s “Enterprise Support API Specialists”. The video provides an overview of the APIs, as well as some code examples and Q&A. As the video talks about, you can use the APIs to:
– Utilize bulk provisioning for users, groups, etc.
– Set up automatic syncs with local data resources
– Build custom reports from raw usage data
– Extend productivity suite with custom tools
– Integrate Google Apps with third-party services
– Build rich interaction with other web properties
Back in September, Google introduced new markup for paginated content in an effort to return single-page versions of content in search results, when the content is broken up among multiple page. This would include things like multiple-page articles and slideshows.
Google says users usually prefer the single page format, and as a consumer of content, you probably agree in most cases. But tt’s worth noting that the markup isn’t an absolute must. Even Google acknowledges that there are times when paginated content makes sense. Sometimes single-page versions can load slowly, for example.
She created a video going more in depth on using the markup.
She has actually put together a 37-page slideshow on the subject as well:
Keep in mind, if you’re in e-commerce, this all applies to you too. It’s not just about writing articles and creating slidehsows. It could very well include product categories that span multiple pages.
Google does say that using the markup provides “a strong hint” that pages should be treated as a “logical sequence”.
SBNation, the sports blog network, has formed a partnership with YouTube to create a sports channel which could eventually rival ESPN.
YouTube, which has recently begun to expand their programming, is promising celebrities and original content within the coming months, hoping to become the next big cable provider without the cable part.
In October the company blog announced, “Today we’re announcing that even more talented creators and original entertainment will soon join YouTube’s existing channel lineup, including channels created by well-known personalities and content producers from the TV, film, music, news, and sports fields, as well as some of the most innovative up-and-coming media companies in the world and some of YouTube’s own existing partners. These channels will have something for everyone, whether you’re a mom, a comedy fan, a sports nut, a music lover or a pop-culture maven.”
The addition of a sports channel could be a huge booster for the website, making it a competitor not only for ESPN but for sites like Yahoo! Sports. So far only six programs have been secured on the channel, but it is in the early stages of development. It will be interesting to see what more they have in store for viewers. As reported earlier this year, Yahoo! added an online magazine feature recently called ThePostGame, and it’s probably a safe bet that SBNation will want to add something similar to their lineup.
Below is a video from the show “Shutdown Fullback”, a college football show that has already garnered favorable reviews and comments from viewers.
SBNation’s Senior Correspondent Amy K. Nelson had this to say about the partnership: “SB Nation’s YouTube Channel provides our talent and community a platform for even richer commentary, analysis, reporting and storytelling. We are going to take maximum advantage of this opportunity by expanding the range of content we produce on a regular basis for sports fans around the globe. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious but always different than your standard sports TV fare.”
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. The founder of the organization, Salman Khan, was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2004, he began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends continued to ask him for help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. This is why Khan decided to create his academy and now he is releasing an app that will make it easier for people to retrieve and process educational materials.
The Khan Academy iPad app allows users to view Khan Academy’s complete library of over 2,700 videos. The library covers an array of educational topics in the humanities, arts, math, history, and science.
This free app will help me address my lapses in learning and brush up on trigonometry and learn more about the French and Indian War. This app can also help students prepare for the SAT.
The iPad app contains downloadable videos and many have subtitles that make them easier to skim through. Once users have an account their progress while logged in is tracked and they can get credit for watching videos and monitor their achievements.
The application will also feature exercises in the near future.
While this app is most likely to be used by students, teachers and other individuals involved with formal education settings, the app is also being used heavily by self-directed learners who want to strengthen their areas of weakness.
The Khan academy is continuing to grow and build its portfolio of corporate employees which now includes former Google employee, Craig Silverstein. Silverstein created some of the company’s original IT components, which were critical in supporting the search engine’s growth. As you can see from some of the talks he’s given, he’s been involved with some of Google’s more educational endeavors.
Google announced the launch of a new webinar program for businesses called “Learn with Google”. It’s basically just a general series covering best practices for various Google products.
You can bookmark this landing page and find them all there, including a schedule of upcoming webinars and links to recored ones, by category and product. Here’s the current schedule for upcoming webinars.
March 13 at 10am PDT: 5 Tips to Start Marketing your Business with Video
March 14 at 10am PDT: Introduction to the Google Display Network
March 15 at 10am PDT: GoMo: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising
March 20 at 10am PDT: Understanding Mobile Ads Across Marketing Objectives
March 21 at 10am PDT: Reaching Your Goals with Google Analytics
March 22 at 10am PDT: GoMo for Publishers
March 27 at 10am PDT: Manage Large AdWords Campaigns with Less Effort
March 28 at 10am PDT: 3 Tips to Get More out of your Video Advertising Campaigns
Here are some of the recorded webinars that are already posted:
OK, this was uploaded in November, so if you’ve already seen it, feel free to move along, but it doesn’t look like it got a whole lot of attention, which is surprising. I know we have a lot of Star Wars fans reading WebProNews, so it seems worth passing along to those who haven’t seen it yet.
I have to give Adobe Principal Product Manager John Nack a hat tip for posting it on his blog this morning as he wonders what software produces such animations (a future Adobe acquisition perhaps?).
The video itself is a promo for Star Wars Identities, which is described as: “A character-driven adventure into identity coming soon to a museum near you! In Montreal Spring 2012 and Edmonton Fall 2012.”
As far as the Adobe connection, it’s important to note, as Nack does on his blog, that the views he expresses there are his own, and not necessarily those of the company.
