Zeitgeist: Google reveals the spirit of the time

One more year is ending... Time for new year's resolutions, exchange of gifts, and ... Google Zeitgeist. The annual reviews of the most searched terms in Google is coming again, showing the keywords and phrases that have been searched more frequently in Google search.

This year, Google revealed a little about how they come up with this list. According to them, they are not looking for the most searched terms of the year, but the ones that moved to the forefront during 2006.

This was the year of social and video websites, such as bebo, youtube, and related services. You can see the complete list in Google Zeitgeist.

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Google Picasa has new options for the Xmas

Google Picasa is the product that allows users to organize photos according to several criteria. A new version of Picasa - web albums - is available today. With this version you will be able to order prints of your pictures directly from Picasa. This will make it much easier to enjoy your pictures with your family.


From the Google blog:

Other new features include video upload for easy sharing (it’s just like with photos—select them in Picasa and click the “Web Album” button) and searching tools. Now you can search over your own captions, album titles, and album descriptions, and you can even search for photos in your friends’ public albums. Digging up that picture of me trying to figure out which end of the holiday turkey is "up" should be easier than ever.

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Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Using Google to hear the web

The web 2.0, with graphics, video, and dynamic applications is a great advance in terms of web usability. But, when it comes to accessibility, all these features may cause more harm than good. This is the case, for example, of users that cannot see.

One way of alleviating this problem, which has been provided by Google, is a by product of their technology for access from mobile phones. The Google transcoder is able to translate flashy web pages into their (near) equivalent text-based versions.

Using this software, it has become much easier for vision-impaired user to hear the content of web pages. It is definitely another great service that Google is providing for free for everyone. As stated by T.V. Raman in the Google blog:

It turns out that much of the visual complexity that creates stumbling blocks for mobile users also become show-stoppers when it comes to listening to a web page using screen-readers. So the transcoder has become a useful part of my web access arsenal. You can reach it at google.com/m. From there, search for your favorite site. Think of it as the equivalent of your browser's address bar. Once you access a website through the this interface, any links you follow from that page will be automatically transcoded.

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Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

How to create a Google video bar

Video content access has been exploding during the last months due to the increased amount of bandwidth on the average households. This explains why so many sites such as Google video, and youtube have become successful.

You can also enter this new web trend by installing a Google video bar in your blog or web page. Although you will certainly need some programming expertise, everything is clearly explained in the Google ajax API blog.

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Technorati Tags: Google, Internet, Web 2.0

Google will start offering book downloads

Update: Google has confirmed this information today in its blog.

Free music and video downloads have been common place in the Internet for a few years now. Google has been able to get into some of this action with the Google video web site, and related efforts. Now, they also want to provide downloads for free books, of which they have a lot, from the millions of scans stored on Google book search.

Basically, the idea is to provide access to the books free of copyright, but letting users to download the content in some format similar to pdf. The books will be readable and printable in the local computer.

According to CIO.com,

The books available for download will only be those that are in the public domain and thus not protected by copyright, Smith said. Until now, people have been able to read these public-domain books on the Google Book Search website, but not download and print them, he said. ... Google will not allow downloading of copyrighted books, not even those for which it has obtained permission from the copyright holders to display their full text, Smith said.

However, it doesn't take much imagination to see how they can partner with publisher worldwide and provide legitimate downloads of new books, using their Google checkout payment system. This may look like good news for readers who will have better access to books. Let us see if this initiative really works in practice.

Link via CIO.com

Google Video goes international

After the initial inception of Google video in the US, the online store has been celebrated by some and detracted by others. Using the familiar interface created by Google to its leading search engine, Google video delivery movies and short videos to a large audience in the world.

Now, they are taking a new step by introducing Google video to other markets. It has been recently reported the introduction of Google video to UK, France, Canada, Germany, Poland, and a few other countries.

It clearly shows that the translation group at Google is working full speed in several products. We hope Google video will do very well in these new markets.


Link via Pocket-lint

Technorati Tags: Google, Web 2.0

Google is running ads on videos

The Google video web site has been one of the focus points of the selling strategy of Google. Their goal is to provide information in new medias, and video has proved to draw increasingly more attention from users.

To capitalize on this audience, Google is now running ads on the videos, which on the past were available only for a fee. With this new strategy, Google hopes to make videos available to a larger group of viewers. This certainly fits with the general strategy of the company, of making information available for everyone.

This new initiative puts Google in an area of advertisement that resembles what TVs have been doing for years: showing advertisement to users instead of charging for the content they are presenting. If successful, this will be an important step for Google video to become even more competitive against rivals such as iTunes.

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Embedding videos from Google video

While it is fun enough to see the videos posted on Google video, there are some that are so good you may want to show in your web page.

So, to make many more people happy, Google has added a new feature to the Google video site which allows the video to be embedded into any other web page. In the upper right portion of the video page, you can click "put on site", and the html code necessary to add the video to your web page will be displayed. Then you can simply copy and paste it in whatever page you may want.

Technorati Tags: Google, video

American History on Google video

One of the advantages of Google video is the possibility of getting hard-to-find movies at the click of the mouse. If you want the newest Hollywood production or an old flick, it should become easily available over the Internet in the near future.

To prove the power of the new media, Google is using Google video to present old historical movies to new generations. They are now offering the files of the National Archives, an organization created to record the history of USA.

Now you should be able to see historical movies that were very difficult to find in the past in Google video for free. This is another opportunity for schools and individuals to learn more about the past using modern technologies.

Link via Google blog.

Technorati Tags: Google, video

Google adds super Bowl commercials to Google videos

If you would like to see the super Bowl commercials again, and don't know how to find them, just look for the best best search web site. Not only you will find them, but they are also hosted on their Google video site.

Google has a selection of the best advertisements appearing on Super Bowl XL appearing on Google video. These ads can be accessed freely with two options: individual viewing or back-to-back viewing.

Now, you don't need to stay on TV just to see the commercials -- just search Google.

Technorati Tags: Google, Super Bowl, Video

Indian movies not free anymore on Google video

Some time ago, Indian movies companies have joined to complain about the Google video web site, for allowing copies of their movies to be freely distributed. This security breach is pretty hard for a company such as Google that wants to have the confidence of media producers worldwide.

To avoid problems like this, Google has removed all Bollywood movies from the Google video web site, as reported by the indian television website.

It is good to see that Google is trying to fix the problems in Google video as fast as possible. In the end, Google video is progressing like most other Google services: it starts very experimental and evolves as users give suggestions for new features. This is one of the things that makes Google to stand above the competition: the willingness to address problems that may occur and try to improve its services almost every day.

If the speed of improvements continue, in a few months Google video will become one of the best video stores around, which will allow it to compete with more established video distribution services such as Apple iTunes.

Link

Technorati Tags: Google, Video

Google may release a competitor for iTunes

After adding video to its offers, the next step is music -- and a competitor to iTunes. This is the analysis of Bearn Sterns, an investment company that rates the Google stock as "outperforming".

The analyst of Bear Sterns believe that Google is preparing a new service that may be presented within the next 3 to 6 months. This new service would put Google in direct competition with Apple, which created the popular iTunes software.

Using the infrastructure available for video downloads, it would in fact be easy for Google to provide a similar web site for the download of music files. The biggest problem, however, would be the acquisition of distribution licenses for music from the recording companies. Certainly Google may be able to do this, but it would probably take more time than to complete the necessary code.

From the Forbes article:

"We would expect Google to rollout a Beta service within 3 to 6 months. We note that Google has not confirmed our expectations, and that our thinking is based on Mosaic theory," said Peck. "However, we do think this fits with Google's recent moves and its ultimate goal of organizing the world's information."

Link

Technorati tags: Google, video

NBA on Google video

Google has improved a little bit the contrieved interface of Google video. To celebrate this, they are promoting the NBA videos, which are part of the revamped Google video store.

According to the Google blog,

When people say, “Wow, Kobe scored 81?” or “Nash went for 20+ points and 15+ assists… again!” – now you (and I!) can reply, “Yep – just caught it on Google Video.” So come watch the greatest players today play some of the greatest games ever.

Link

Technorati tags: Google, Google video

Converting Google video to avi format

A web site has recently created a new service for Google video users that will make it much easier to store information from that web site.

The instructions are very simple:
1 - Finding the Google video you want
2 - Copy the URL from the Google site
3 - Access http://www.querocarromogi.com/videogoogle/ and enter that URL. The web site will save the video for you in the avi format.

It is also nice that previous videos that have been converted are available for download.

Technorati tags: Google, video

Google video and copyright issues

The Google video store is not more than a few days old, but is already raising concerns from people related to copyright protection issues.


Although "for sale" videos in the Google video store must respect copyright laws to be commercialized, there may be several problems with the videos currently available for free. An example is given by the illegal appearance of Bollywood movies in the Google web site.


According to the Economic Times in India, Google is displaying several commercial movies for free. Examples are the movies "Bunty Aur Babli", "Paheli", "Neal 'N' Nikki", "Ek Khilari Ek Hasina".


It may be well the time for Google to step up and make sure that no illegal content distribution is happening though its Google video service. Otherwise, it may loose credibility among the very companies that it needs to collaborate with.

Technorati tags: Google, video

Google video has a great start

As I said before, Google video started recently, and is already making a splash: Google is announcing the support of dozens of video sources for the service. Now you can watch a great number of videos for varying prices (including Hollywood movies) without leaving home.

In the worlds of our friends in the Google blog:

When we launched our Upload Program earlier this year, people sent in a huge number of free and compelling videos. But since there's a ton of video that can't be offered for free, we built the Google Video store to give content owners the option to charge for downloads if they'd like. This means producers large and small can distribute their great content in an easy, secure way. Some of your favorite prime time and classic TV shows, sports, music videos, and documentaries are at your fingertips. Want to see how Shaq scored 30 points last night? Download and watch it (and every NBA game for the rest of the season) through Google Video.

Technorati tags: Google, Google video

Google video store opened today!

Today, Google video store entered in operation. The main change is the display options of video: a new drop box show the option of "browsing video for sale". The first videos that I see are the CBS series such as Star Trek Voyager, NBA games (Classic game Lakers @ Clippers) $3.95 a piece, and some other old movies from Warner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox.

Sadly enough, one of the movies I saw can only be sold on Windows 2000 or Windows XP, which makes me wonder if the technology used in Google video store is cross platform or Windows only.

The prices I have seen don't look very good. $5.95 for an old movie like "Yes Nurse, No Nurse" (seems to be a german one) doesn't seem very cheap. I hope they will give better prices in the future. otherwise I doubt that many people will be ready to spend money on this...

Technorati tags: Google, Google video

Google release is not too little, it is just enough

More about the Googlepack and Larry Page's talk on CES. Some people have complained that the announcement was not anything great as was advertised by the media and the Blogosphere. For example

Some bloggers got busy offering their takes on the new video service and software package. Others, however, seemed uninspired in a collective, "That's it? What was all the hype about?"

What most people forget, however, is that it would be really strange if Google acted different this time. This company is not about big annoucements, as Microsoft and Apple are very well known to do. Google has always been building things silently and releasing them without warnings.

This is the reason I think Larry Page did only what he was supposed to do, not what the media want the hear from him. It is better that Google keep this way, and let the good stuff appear when it is ready, instead of rushing it for no good reason.

Technorati tags: Google, Googlepack

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Google video store and Apple

Google video store and Apple

Yesterday, along with the Google pack, Google announced a new service that will sell video over the Internet for interested viewers. The service, which is an extension of the Google video offer, presents an interesting new competitor for the iTunes service of Apple.

Apple has since last year presented a long list of video sources for its iTunes and iPod video. It seems that they are in good shape to fight for the first place as the online video store and video watching gadget.

However, with the introduction of the new Google video store there are several things that must be considered by Apple.

First, is its approach for pricing of web video. While they have been successfull with the flat fee of 99 cents per music on iTunes, this doesn't mean that they can do the same for video. Video is clearly a different thing in the sense that you don't watch it repeatedly; there are videos of different lengths, from the 30 seconds commercial to the 3 hour King-Kong-style movie.

The Google video store has a much flexible method for video pricing: the producer can ask any price they want, even given the video for free. This makes it much easier to reach an initial audience with low prices and make changes progressivelly.

The second thing is the new format that Google video is introducing. This is bad news because there is the potential of much confusion among the different types of videos with competing formats. Google and Apple could well collaborate to try to avoid this kind of confusion.

Technorati tags: Apple, Google

The new Google video Store

One of the big announcements from the yesterday's talk of Larry Page is the launching of a video store, based on the already existing Google video service.

This was not really a surprise for many, since we have seen the signs in the last few days: The change of terms in Google video were intended to allow for this kind of commercialization.

What is new is that Google is intending to create a store in the "Google style": prices are not dictated by the company, but instead by content owner. This pricing strategy some similarities to their search auctions, where each advertiser gives a price for a word. In this way, we are gonna see a pricing war among content distributers, which will hopefully drive the prices to acceptable levels.

This is also very different from the strategy adopted by Apple, where each video is sold by 1.99, irrespective of its importance. The studios have complained against this method, because they cannot have different prices that account for the importance of the video. The same applies for the flat fee imposed to iTunes.

The Google approach is similar to the old flea market method: let anyone decide on their prices, instead of a central authority, and make the prices converge as needed. This approach is much more flexible and may become the reason for the success of the Google video store.

For the first time, video content will be sold without someone stablishing the minimum price. Authough this may not make any difference in the short term for the well stablished hollywood companies, in the long run this may prove a rervolution for new content producers, which will have much more opportunities to get their fair piece of the market.

Technorati tags: Google video

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