4 posts tagged “google”
Digg beats Google on Rumsfeld's resignation
Yup. The news of Rumsfeld's resignation hit the front page of Digg.com 17 minutes before it surfaced on Google news.
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, definitively comments on the issue saying ""People can break news faster than machines."
I find this somewhat comforting since I am a journalism major haha.
YouTube no friend to copyright violators
Yup, if you get sued because of material that infringes on copyright, YouTube (well now,it's part of Google so I guess them too) won't defend you at all. Now, granted that this is in their terms of service, user agreement, blah blah it seems somewhat ridiculous that a company that was just purchased in the billions is not going to defend those that made it worth that much.
Most people go on YouTube to watch work that would be deemed as infringement. That was the whole appeal of the site. You don't have to pay for a music video, you don't have to wait until SNL repeats the one skit years later on E!, and you don't have to live in a weird neighborhood where leprechaun sitings are the norm.
It's understandable that they can't take on such a risk but at the same time, if they get rid of all the copyrighted material, what will be left?? I'm definitely not going to pay a dollar everytime I want to see something which is probably what it would come down to. Though I might just for that leprechaun news story. But that's it.
YouTube cuts three content deals
Instead of fighting against the growing cultural phenomenon known as YouTube, three more record labels, following Warner's lead, have moved toward promotion of their artists via hosting of copyrighted materials such as music videos on the popular video sharing site.
Today, Universal Music Group, Song BMG Entertainment, and CBS announced that artists' music and videos will be included in their original form on YouTube. Each has negotiated a different contract with different means of dealing with compensation. Sony utilizing streaming ad revenue while CBS has chosen to upload its own media content and either remove or put streaming ads next to unauthorized material that is up on the site now.
The most disturbing contract seems to be Universal's. It has been made clear yet if there will be a charge to see or listen to content from those artists. However, if that is the case, it will certainly be detrimental to Universal. If I can see other artists' videos for free with an ad, I'll always do that instead of dealing with the hassle of typing in my credit card number.
In fact, if they choose that path, I wouldn't be surprised if many of their artists will be very upset about it. With MTV playing maybe 5 videos a day, YouTube and other online video sharing websites have become the new means of finding out about new artists and their visual interpretations of their music.
In other news, Google has bought YouTube for the "low price" of 1.65 billion in Google stock. So it seems, the Google monster grows.
Is the era of Microsoft Word and other word processors coming to an end? Well, I wouldn't say quite yet but there are clues that it could be pushed out by new some promising new technology. My sister told me about an online word processor and I decided to try it out since I often email documents to myself in order to print them on campus.
Writely.com, recently acquired by Google, offers a unique online word processor ideal for collaborative writing efforts. A user can upload an already existing document or write it directly online. Then, you can save it, tag it for organizational purposes, post it to a blog, or invite others to view or edit your document.
I recently used this program for a group project I am working on for another class and it was actually pretty great. However, we did find that some of the formatting that the online word processor did to be a bit weird/troublesome (i.e. - we had trouble controlling the bullets function from going crazy and doing what it wanted haha). It's probably better at this point to upload a document and use it that way. However, it was really cool because we were all able to type in the same document at the same time without having to email the document to one another after every revision.
As of now, people can sign in using their Google ID's. I will be interested to see if they incorporate some kind of social networking aspect (like every other site these days). But there's not "profile" or "about me" section--YET.
The program is still in beta so like I said it still needs some more work. However, with Google's backing (financially and otherwise), it will certainly improve and best of all it's FREE! :)
