YouTube Red Launched

As promised, YouTube Red was launched today in the US. If you use the mobile apps for Android and iOS, you probably noticed that the title changed to "YouTube Red" and there's a new "YouTube Red" section in the settings. YouTube didn't even update the apps: the changes were probably triggered automatically.

The desktop site has a new logo:

"With a YouTube Red membership, you’ll experience YouTube without video ads, be able to save videos to watch offline, and play videos in the background on your mobile device, all for $9.99 a month. And just like with our advertising revenue, the majority of revenue we get from YouTube Red memberships will go to our creator community," mentions YouTube's blog.

YouTube Red is free for Google Play Music subscribers and there's a free 30-day trial for US users.

New Google Calendar URL

Daniel Fletcher, a reader of this blog, noticed that Google Calendar's URL changed from http://ift.tt/f1vjMt to calendar.google.com. This seems to be a recent change, even though the Google Apps Blog announced it back in September.

"In an effort to further increase security, in the coming weeks we'll be changing the main Google Calendar URL from 'http://ift.tt/f1vjMt' to 'calendar.google.com.' Following the launch, the old Calendar url will simply redirect to the new one, so the overall impact of this change on Google Apps customers should be minimal," informed Google.

Browsers like Chrome and Safari will ask you for permission again to show notifications. Greasemonkey scripts and extensions that use the old URLs will probably stop working, so developers will need to update them.

Daniel Fletcher wonders why "Maps is now google.com/maps, when it used to be maps.google.com and Calendar seems to have gone the other way". Maybe Google Maps will go back to the old URL.