MyMai.tv Dev Blog / Social-Web News Feed

Up until now, if YouTube users wanted to combine multiple clips into a single video, they had to use offline editing tools. But YouTube today rolled out cloud-based video editing tools, giving users a whole new way to remix their existing video assets online. As detailed in the Google operating system blog, the new YouTube editor allows users to trim video, mix and match clips — even add music. And while the new offering won’t replace more robust video editing software — like Apple’s Final Cut Pro — it will enable users to combine their videos in new and interesting ways.

Google has announced that it has completed the rollout of Google Caffeine, the new and improved web indexing system that now powers the world’s largest search engine. In August of last year, it was revealed that Google was working on a new version of its search engine. The project, dubbed “Caffeine,” was initiated in order to create a faster, more accurate indexing and search system. It was also meant to better handle rich media and real-time content.

According to the analysts at Hitwise, social networks in general are more popular than search engines in some parts of the world. In fact, networks such as Facebook (Facebook) have been pushing hard against the biggest names in web search, including Google (Google), for several months now. As Hitwise reported recently, Facebook’s overall web traffic pulled ahead of Google’s for the first time in the U.S. in March of this year. Now, we’ve learned that in the UK, people are visiting social networks more than they’re visiting search engines. Facebook dominates the current crop of social networks, accounting for the majority (55%) of all social site visits. When compared to the wider web, Google gets around 9.3% of all web traffic, while Facebook captures just over 7%.

Starting today, when you conduct a Google search on your iPhone or Android device, you’ll get apps as results along with regular search results. These special links will take you directly to the app’s page in the Android Market (Android Market) or iPhone App Store (App Store), where you can buy or download the app immediately. Links will include star rating, number of reviews, price and the name of the app maker.

Intel could add Google’s WebM to the list of video formats that have hardware acceleration built into its processors for consumer electronics devices, according to a report from ComputerWorld. But that support won’t come in time for the first generation of Google TV products to leverage it. As part of its WebM Project, Google released its VP8 codec with an open source, royalty-free license at its I/O developers conference last week. Along with that announcement came a list of partners, including hardware and chip makers that plan to support the WebM initiative. But surprisingly, despite the fact that rivals AMD, ARM and NVIDIA all were named as partners, Intel was not on that list.

Google TV has the potential to be a game-changer in the pay-TV business, by bringing web-like search navigation to traditional channel surfing, according to a new report I wrote for GigaOM Pro entitled Google TV: Overview and Strategic Analysis (subscription required). I also foresee an eventual clash between Apple’s App Store and Google’s search-based platform for supremacy on connected consumer electronics devices. I expect a slow initial ramp-up for the Android-powered Google TV devices, due to the high cost of implementation and uncertain consumer demand. The Intel Atom-based system-on-a-chip and software licensing costs are expected to add a significant premium to first-generation Google TV-enabled devices, including the Logitech set-top box and Sony HDTVs and Blu-ray players announced at the Google I/O conference. Consumer interest in surfing the web on a big-screen TV is also yet to be proved. If Google TV does prove popular with consumers, however, it could pose a highly disruptive challenge to traditional video service providers, set makers and competing TV app stores, according to the report.

[Holland] WatchMouse, the website performance monitoring company, has launched its new GeoBrand service today. It’s designed to detect “brand abuse” in search-based keyword advertising and follows the recent European Court ruling on the LVMH vs Google case which places the onus on the brands themselves to monitor for trademark infringements. The service targets pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft Bing in over 30 countries and offers an automated way for brands to be alerted that a competitor is purchasing keyword advertising which potentially infringes on their trademark, listing offenses by country and specific search engine.

Another week, another Google acquisition. This time, it’s LabPixies, a company Google has worked with to create many of the widgets on its personalized portal, iGoogle. LabPixies has been acquired for an undisclosed sum and will help expand iGoogle across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. There are no planned changes to LabPixies’s current products, but the company says it “will continue to evaluate this over time.”

While Google works to extend Street View to the inside of stores — at least according to rumor — for the time being it has released a handy utility for better browsing with Google Street View: local business annotations. Now when you’re milling about town — virtually via Street View of course — you can view the the top business listings for the surrounding area as annotations inside your view. They are the same annotations that appear when zoomed out, but now at your service while you poke around town close up.

The Location War going on right now has many fronts (Foursquare, Twitter, search, mobile), but it is being funded by one thing: convincing local businesses to spend money on online advertising. Google is escalating that war today by making a big push to become the de facto directory for local businesses on the Web.

Amen!

YouTube has started to serve ads on mobile phones, but you may not even notice them. The online video platform is now serving display ads on m.youtube.com in the U.S. and Japan, according to a blog post, and will sell banner ads on a full-day basis. Today’s advertiser is Mazda, which bought the mobile ad in conjunction with its banner on the regular YouTube home page. The blog post reveals that YouTube has already run campaigns for Kia and Sony as well…

Many of us take the disaster readiness of servers and data centers for granted. But for IT admins from both small and large companies, being prepared for disaster and emergency situations is complicated and expensive issue. Google has made an announcement today for any enterprise users of Google Apps; assuring IT admins that the suite is now fully prepared for disaster recovery.