Items tagged with YouTube
We have all been down the rabbit hole that is the Internet. It starts with a simple search, perhaps a lookup of the weather for the weekend, and then hours later you find yourself streaming "Little Joe Sure Can Sing" by Joe Ritchie, who you found out is actually Joe Pesci from Goodfellas fame. And woe is you if you trip into a endless sea of YouTube videos. How do you possibly climb out if that happens? We're not sure, to be honest, though Google is now throwing users a lifeline of sorts by showing you how much time you spend watching videos. This is a new feature that is rolling out to user profiles,...
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Google has been working on a dark mode for its YouTube app for a long time now, after having rolled it out to the web and then later to Apple's iOS platform. Well, guess what? Android users finally have access to it as well, and can join the dark side. It's not clear if Google has enabled the dark theme on all Android devices just yet, but it is available on at least some of them. The dark theme option started appearing on Android devices as we headed into last weekend. Some users report having seen it enabled automatically when firing up YouTube on their smartphones, along with a pop-up notifying...
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Have you noticed that YouTube pages appear to load slower in Edge, Firefox, and Safari compared to Google's own Chrome browser? If so, you are not alone. Google redesigned the YouTube experience last year, but the site still uses an older shadow API that is only used in Chrome, which makes other browsers render YouTube much slower. Chris Peterson, a program manager at Mozilla, noticed the performance disparity and posted about the topic on Twitter. According to Peterson, the YouTube page loads five times slower in those other browsers "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated...
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Google is taking a hatchet to its YouTube Red service and carving it into two new services. One will be called YouTube Music, which as it sounds is a music streaming service, and the other will be called YouTube Premium. It's all a little confusing, especially since Google already maintains a subscription music streaming service called Google Play Music, so we're here to offer some clarity on what's happening. In a nutshell, Google is attempting to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music in the music streaming space. Part of what's confusing is that YouTube Music already exists in select...
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A new rumor is going around that focuses on the fate of Google Play Music. According to the source, Google Play Music will die once YouTube Remix launches. The rumor claims that all current users of Play Music will be forced to migrate to YouTube Remix by the end of the year. YouTube Remix was tipped to be something akin to Spotify, the leader in the streaming music market. One big difference between Spotify and Remix will be that Remix will allow users to play video along with the music and will reportedly have a better recommendation engine. Google has already worked out the details with...
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YouTube announced that last quarter its software helped to pull down millions of objectionable videos before any users were able to view them. The machine learning software that helped YouTube to pull this off has been trained with the assistance of human moderators and has made policing the crush of new videos uploaded daily easier. YouTube has offered up hard numbers noting that it has pulled down 8 million videos in the last quarter and that of that number most were spam or adult content videos. Of that 8 million, 6.7 million were first flagged by computers. YouTube has been targeting violent...
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Hey, good news everyone, Google is going to be serving up more ads through YouTube in between music videos! Isn't that awesome? Wait, you're not stoked? Well then, that is unfortunate, because apparently the video streaming site will forge ahead with showing a greater number of ads to some users. It's part of an effort to get more people to subscribe to YouTube's music service. Lyor Cohen, YouTube's head of music, told Bloomberg that the ad campaign will primarily target people who mostly use YouTube as a music service. These are people who passively listen to music on YouTube for long periods...
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Thanks to the help of machine learning, creating great looking video is easier than ever. It even seems to be getting easier at an accelerated pace lately, and for those who don't have preexisting tools or skills to get a desired effect, it's a big advantage. Sometimes, cost of upgrade equipment might be a limiting factor, but other times, it could simply be skill level, or lack of time to invest in learning those skills. So, Google continues to help video creators of all levels. With technology simply called "mobile real-time video segmentation", Google uses machine learning to help separate the...
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More and more people are ditching their expensive cable and satellite TV plans and going with streaming options like Netflix, Sling TV, and Hulu. The catch is that some of these streaming services mean you miss out on local content like news and sports. YouTube TV gets around that by offering streaming content that includes your local shows and news. Yesterday, YouTube announced that the YouTube TV app had launched on Roku devices, which are the most popular streaming devices out there. Along with that announcement, YouTube also announced that the same app would be coming for Apple TV users...
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Roku's family of devices is the most popular streaming platform out there, and some smart TVs even come with Roku integrated by default. Roku users now have another option for watching their favorite content and cutting the cord from satellite or cable providers: YouTube TV. The app used on the Roku device is the same YouTube TV app that is available currently on Android TV, Xbox One (launched in October), and other platforms. That means you get the same features that users on other platforms are enjoying, namely the unlimited Cloud DVR, personalized recommendations, and a grid-style...
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It appears that Google's DoubleClick ad network has become the latest target of relentless miners looking to make an extra buck with the Monero cryptocurrency. The revelation comes after TrendMicro observed that the number of active Coinhive miner detections tripled around January 24th. After doing some detective work, it was observed that the increase in traffic was coming from a total of five "malicious domains". Given the immense popularity of the DoubleClick network, it should come as no surprise that enterprising hackers would attempt to exploit it to reach a staggering number of users. In...
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It's all fun and games on the Internet until some idiot dreams up the Tide Pod challenge, followed by more idiots partaking in this idiotic viral phenomenon. The challenge, in case you haven't come across it on social media, is to stick the detergent capsule into your mouth and chew it, munch it, and ultimately eat the colorful pod filled with concentrated detergent. It's not just disgusting, it's stupid and dangerous. So much so that YouTube is pulling videos of the challenge. Image Source: Flickr via Austin Kirk "YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit content that’s intended to encourage...
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If you're an Amazon Fire TV owner, it looks as though your access to the native YouTube client is coming to an end sooner than expected. Google originally stated that access to the app would be removed from Fire TV and Echo Show devices on January 1st 2018, which is next Monday. However, customers are reporting that access was revoked today. Customers who attempt to access the YouTube app are greeted with a message that redirects them to YouTube.com either through Amazon's own Silk browser or Mozilla's newly installed Firefox browser for the Fire TV. In a statement sent to the press today, an Amazon...
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Amazon has announced that users of the Fire TV devices can now surf the web on their TVs thanks to the addition of Firefox and Silk web browsers. The move is yet another way to give Fire TV users access to YouTube while Amazon and Google are still fighting it out in public. The YouTube app was pulled from the Fire TV and Echo Show, then returned, and then was pulled again. Amazon is said to be considering its own YouTube rival in the wake of the spat. Along with giving access to YouTube -- something that Amazon deftly avoids mentioning in its press release about the feature -- users will also be...
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