Google+ Notifications for YouTube Uploads

Ondřej Pokorný, a reader of this blog, noticed a Google+ notification about a video uploaded to one of his YouTube subscribed channels: It's Okay To Be Smart. It's a YouTube notification and it even has a special icon.

I don't remember seeing notifications like this. Google+ shows notifications when your own YouTube videos receive comments and you can disable this in the settings.

Danny Fratella, Top Contributor for the YouTube Help Center, explains that "the notifications that subscribers get in their Google+ Notifications are based on their previous engagement with your videos and your channel. If YouTube's algorithms notice that they're watching a lot of your content, they're more likely to receive notifications when you upload new videos. There isn't anything you can do to force this notification upon your subscribers."

{ Thanks, Ondřej. ]

YouTube Tests Borderless Search Box

YouTube tests a new search box. There are a few changes: YouTube no longer uses a search button, a small icon is placed next to the search box, there's a "Search YouTube" message inside the search box until you type a query and the search box doesn't have a border.

Here's the regular YouTube interface:

{ Thanks, Matthew Bohr. }

Find 360-Degree YouTube Videos

Now you can quickly find 360-degree YouTube videos. Open YouTube's desktop site or YouTube's Android app, type a query, click the Filters button and select 360° from the Features section.

For now, 360-degree spherical videos are only fully supported in Chrome for desktop and the YouTube app for Android.

Google+ Celebrates Earth Day

Mr. Jingles, the Google+ mascot, has a special look for Earth Day. Just clear all Google+ notifications and you'll see the new Mr. Jingles, which looks like a terrestrial globe. Click the happy face to see the animation.

Here's a bigger version of the animation:

Export Custom Maps, Helpouts and More

Google Takeout added support for some new services: Google Moderator, Google Groups, My Maps and Google Helpouts.

Google Helpouts has already been discontinued, while Google Moderator is shutting down on June 30. "Unfortunately, Google Moderator has not had the usage we had hoped, so we've made the difficult decision to close down the product," informed Google.

Google Groups and My Maps are still available, but Takeout lets you export your group members and custom maps.

Google's Earth Day Quiz

Google has an unexpected doodle for Earth Day. It's an animated doodle that sends you to a search results page for [earth day quiz].

Google tries to answer the question: "which animal are you?". You are asked 5 questions like "What are you up to on a typical Friday night?" and you can pick between 4 funny options like "alone in my burrow", "rarely seen out", "strutting my stuff" and "following the herd".

Depending on your answers, the results is a honey bee, giant squid, komodo dragon, pangolin, cuttlefish, mantis shrimp, honey badger, woolly mammoth, red-capped manakin, sea otter, whooping crane or another animal.

"Earth Day is a great time to search for information on how to celebrate and protect our planet – and it’s now a great time to find out something about yourself too. In a doodle first, clicking on this year's Earth Day logo (or searching for 'Earth Day quiz') presents one of the Internet's favorite pastimes: a goofy quiz. Take the time to answer a few questions and you too can determine, share, and learn more about which animal most closely represents your personality. The quiz works on just about any up-to-date browsers on your mobile or desktop browsers, including the Android and iOS Google Apps. (We assure you it's all 100% accurate and scientific)," explains Google.

Old YouTube Apps Will Stop Working

Yesterday YouTube retired the old version of its main API (Data API v2). Data API v3 was launched in 2012, bringing some new features like comment management, editing channel sections and retrieving user ratings. The old version was deprecated last year and developers were encouraged to migrate to the new API.

YouTube will start to show this warning video and next month "v2 API calls except for comments and captions will receive 410 Gone HTTP responses".

Unfortunately, there are still devices that won't be updated, so many people will no longer be able to use the built-in YouTube apps from iOS devices that run iOS 6 or earlier (iPhone 1st generation, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPad 1st generation), Apple TV (1st and 2nd generation), Google TV 2 or earlier, old Smart TVs and game consoles. Devices affected were "manufactured in 2012 and earlier, including Sony TVs & Blu-ray Discs, Panasonic TVs & Blu-ray Discs, older iOS devices, and devices running older versions of Google TV."

Mobile devices and smart TVs have browsers, so users can still watch videos at m.youtube.com or youtube.com. For Apple TV 2, you can still watch YouTube videos using AirPlay.

Protect your Google Accounts with a USB Security Key

Most big-name web services like Gmail, Microsoft, Evernote, WordPress and Dropbox now support 2-step authentication to improve the security of your online accounts. Once you enable two-factor authentication, a malicious person will not be able to log into your online account even if they know the password – they’ll need access to your mobile phone as well to get in.

The verification codes required for logging into a 2-step enabled account can be generated either using a mobile app – like Authy or Google Authenticator – or you can have them sent to your mobile phone via a text message or a voice call. The latter option however will not work if the mobile phone associated with your account is outside the coverage area (like when you are in a foreign country).

There’s another option that makes the process of logging into a 2-factor enabled account Google less cumbersome. Instead of generating the verification codes on a mobile phone,  you can use a hardware based authenticator that can be inserted into a USB port on your computer and you’ll be signed-in automatically without having to hand-type the digits. 

The option works for both Google and Google Apps accounts and you don’t even need the mobile phone – watch video demo.

Google 2-factor Authentication Simplified

I am using the least-expensive Yubico key though there are more options to choose from. The first stop is to associate the USB security key with your Google Account. Go to myaccount.google.com, click on 2-step verification and then switch to the Security Keys tab. Here click the Register Device button and then insert the USB key into the computer to attach it to your account.

Once registered, you can use your USB security key to log into your Google Account from any other desktop or laptop computer without requiring the mobile phone. Simply open the Google login page, type in your username & password, click the Sign-in button and then insert the USB key. The lights will blink on the device, you need to tap it once and it will instantly log you into the account.

The USB security keys require no software and they are compatible with Windows, Mac, Chrome OS and Linux computers. They need no batteries, they are tiny like a regular USB thumb drive but also rigid. You can also associate multiple Google Accounts with the same USB key which can be a huge timesaver for some users.

USB Security Keys make 2-factor authentication painless but you can only use them inside Google Chrome on desktop and laptop computers. You’ll still have to rely on SMS messages, or the authenticator app, for logging into Google on your mobile phones or in browsers like Firefox and Opera (download video).

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The story, Protect your Google Accounts with a USB Security Key, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 21/04/2015 under Google, Security, Internet.

Google Web History Removes Filters

Google Web History used to have a sidebar that allowed you to restrict search history to Google Images searches, Google Videos searches, Google AdWords clicks and also to results from Google Maps, Google Shopping, Google Finance, Google Travel, Google Books, Google Blog Search, Google News and Visual Search.



Unfortunately, the sidebar is no longer available. Activity stats are still placed at the top of the page, above the list of searches.

Here's a screenshot from 2012 that shows the old sidebar. This article has a more recent screenshot.

Export Google Search History

I've mentioned last year that Google tested a download feature for search history. It looks like this feature is available for everyone. Just go to Google Web History, click the gear button and select "Download".

"You can download all of your saved search history to see a list of the terms you've searched for. This gives you access to your data when and where you want," informs Google. "When you download your past searches, a copy of your history will be saved securely to the Takeout folder in Google Drive. You can download the files to your computer if you want a copy on your computer."



Google will send you an email when your archive is ready to download.

The download dialog is pretty unusual. It includes a warning message: "Please read this carefully, it's not the usual yada yada." It suggests users to enable 2-step verification and it informs them that the archive includes sensitive data. "If you have decided to take your data elsewhere, please research the data export policies of your destination. Otherwise, if you ever want to leave the service, you may have to leave your data behind."



Here's the email message you'll receive when "your Google search history archive is ready".

You'll get a ZIP archive with a lot of JSON files:

Chrome 42 Brings Better Integration With iOS 8

Chrome 42 for iOS brought a lot of new features. Some of them use the APIs introduced in iOS 8, while others make it easy to use Apple's bigger phones.



You can now reload a page, open a new tab or close a tab with one swipe. Go to the top of a page, pull down and you'll see three buttons: a reload button (pull straight down), a plus button for opening a new tab (pull down and left) and a button that closes the current tab (pull down and right).

Chrome for iOS 8 now has support for the Today View. You can open a new tab, use voice search or open copied links. For example, you can copy a link from Safari, open the Notification Center and tap "open copied link" to open the page in Chrome.

Chrome has its own app extension for the Today View, but it also supports third-party app extensions. For example, you can now use password managers like LastPass and 1Password right inside Chrome. Here are the instructions for LastPass. Basically, you need to tap the share button from Chrome's menu, enable LastPass in the extensions menu and then you can quickly log in using LastPass.

Another new feature allows you find answers more quickly. When you're searching from the address bar, Chrome now shows answers related to weather, stocks, unit conversions and more. Chrome also shows the latest URL copied to the clipboard.

Breadcrumbs in Google Mobile Search

Google's mobile search site replaced URLs for search results with breadcrumbs that reflect the structure of the URL. "To help mobile searchers understand your website better when we show it in the mobile search results, today we're updating the algorithms that display URLs in the search results to better reflect the names of websites, using the real-world name of the site instead of the domain name, and the URL structure of the sites in a breadcrumbs-like format," informs Google.



For example, instead of URLs like http://ift.tt/1CNrSe5, you'll see something like this: Google > about > company > history.

Google added support for schema.org structured data for websites, so webmasters can include the site's name and the URL structure as breadcrumbs. You can include multiple site names, but they have to be unique and closely related to the domain name.



Breadcrumbs are already used in desktop SERPs. When they were released, you could click each link to navigate the site's hierarchy, but this feature is no longer available. Google also shows the site's name next to the URL and you can click it to find more information about the site.

Mobile SERPs will add a similar feature and the most important change is that Google will replace the domain name with the site's name. Regular users don't understand web addresses and that's why they use search engines to navigate to sites they visit often like Facebook or Amazon.



Mobile breadcrumbs will gradually roll out worldwide, but site names will only be displayed in the US. I assume that Google will use domain names outside the US, at least for now.



In my opinion, the war against URLs is a bad idea. More and more browser partially hide URLs, Google replaces search results URLs with breadcrumbs and even tests removing them. URLs may be meaningless for many people, but they're unique and they give some information about the site's identity. It's hard to come up with unique site names, especially when you consider that there are many companies, products and sites that have the same name.

Export Classic Custom Maps

The old My Maps is no longer available, even if you use the classic Google Maps interface. Your custom maps were upgraded to the new My Maps, which has more advanced features.



You can still download the original KML files for your custom maps until June 1st, just in case they weren't properly converted. To export a map, go to My Maps, click "open a map", pick the map you want to export and click "Download classic My Maps data" in the settings menu. If this feature is not available, the the map was created using the new My Maps. There's also an option to "export to KML", which downloads the current map.

"If you aren't happy with the way that your maps upgraded, you can download the original, pre-upgrade version of your maps as KML files from within the new My Maps. These files will be available only until June 1st, 2015. After June 1st, the pre-upgrade version of the KML files will be removed," informs Google.

Google Removes Search Filters for Visited Pages

One by one, Google's advanced search features disappear. Google's search tools menu used to include a lot of filters and now there are only 2 filters.



Google has quietly removed the features that allowed you to restrict results to visited pages and pages you haven't visited yet. "Visited pages" and "not yet visited" are no longer included in the search tools menu.



Here's a screenshot from 2013: 9 search tools.

A screenshot from 2014: 4 search tools.

And here's the same menu today: only 2 search tools left, at least for now.

I'm sure that Google will soon remove "reading level" and "verbatim", since they're probably used by a small percentage of Google users.