Google just launched a new Google Labs product for Google Reader: Google Reader Play. Reader Play is a new, highly visual way to browse your Google Reader subscriptions that is somewhat reminiscent of Google’s Fast Flip. It replaces the busy Google Reader interface with an interface that focuses on a single story. Whenever a post includes videos or images, Play with highlight these and give you the option to read more of the text as well. This new interface allows you to browse through the feeds you already subscribe to, but Google Reader Play also emphasizes Google Reader’s ability to recommend items from around the web for you based on your preferences.

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As Google notes, Play will learn from your preferences, based on the articles you read and “like.” You can also choose from a set of categories (tech, entertainment, arts, business, etc.) and Google Reader will create a personalized stream of items just for you. According to Google, Play uses the same algorithm as the Recommended Items feed in Google Reader.

Play will even work if you don’t have a Google account. While you can’t star, like or share items, you can still browse interesting posts based on the categories you choose. This should make it a good tool for those users who don’t want to go through the effort of setting up a feed reader and subscribing to hundreds of different feeds.

Get Started

To use Google Reader Play, just head over here or look for “View in Reader Play” in the folder settings in Google Reader. You can switch stories by using your arrow keys or choose the slideshow mode that will automatically forward to the next story after a few second.

Discuss

Last year, Google’s Matt Cutts dropped the bomb (to put it in the exaggerated tone that many took the news in), that Google was considering taking site speed into consideration as one of many potential ranking factors for search results.

Is your site’s performance up to snuff? Comment here.

This of course freaked a lot of people out, but as Matt and Google as a whole has maintained, this would not trump relevance. It would be taken more into consideration when there are two sites of relatively equal relevance, but one site loads faster and delivers a better user experience. Matt reiterated this point in an interview we did with him this week at SMX.

WebProNews also chatted with Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer for Google at SMX, about website performance (speed), how that pertains to search rankings and the user experience, and some tips for making sure your site is up to speed, so to speak.

As far as site speed as a ranking factor, Ohye pretty much makes the same point as Cutts, and it’s probably not going to be something where all of a sudden all of the faster sites are ranking better and the slower ones are doing worse. But it does enhance the user experience, and she refers to a study that found that an optimized site actually increased conversions by 16%. So if you’re not optimizing your site’s performance for Google, maybe that’s a good enough reason on its own.

Watch the video to get some specific advice regarding some simple adjustments you can make to your site that can make a big difference.

If you’re one of those freaking out about getting your site performance optimized, you may feel better after hearing what she has to say, and realize that it might not be as big a deal as you thought.

By the way, Cutts also mentioned that the speed thing is completly independent of Caffeine.

Do you think site performance is a manageable attribute of your search engine marketing strategy? Discuss here.

This week, YouTube launched Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps users screen out potentially objectionable videos. We asked YouTube how it works. For example, is there human intervention involved?

"Safety Mode goes above and beyond the flagging system and manual review to use community signals to filter out content that may be objectionable," YouTube tells WebProNews. "YouTube’s filters use proprietary technology and algorithms to identify and filter potentially objectionable content."

That’s about as in-depth as they were willing to get on that, but YouTube has acknowledged that it’s not 100% perfect, calling it just another step in their ongoing desire to give users more control over what they see on the site.

Don’t expect YouTube to start accepting more "objectionable" content now that it has Safety Mode available. All content still has to comply with YouTube’s community guidelines.

To use Safety Mode, simply click on the link at the bottom of any video page. The setting can be locked on that browser with your YouTube password.

YouTube is readying the launch of an automatic captions feature for the site’s videos. This and a new automatic caption timing feature will make it easier for anyone to add captions to their videos, and will enable anyone to read captions on more videos.

"Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands," says software engineer Ken Harrenstien, who helped design YouTube’s caption features. "This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they’re looking for." (emphasis added)

"However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale," adds Harrenstein. "Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me."

To help with this problem, Google has utilized its automatic speech recognition technology, and integrated it with YouTube’s caption system to offer automatic captions. The captions generated by this will not always be perfect, as you can imagine, but as Harrenstein notes, even when they are flawed, they can still be quite helpful. He also says the technology will continue to improve over time.

YouTube is also launching automatic caption timing to make it easier to create captions manually. With this feature, users can just create a simple text file with all the words in the video, and Google will use the automatic speech recognition technology to figure out where the words are spoken and create the captions for the video. That’s pretty useful stuff.

Google says both new features will be available in English by the end of the week. At first, auto-caps will only be visible on a few partner channels, so they can get feedback. Eventually, they will roll out more broadly.

Related Articles:

> YouTube Adds Captions Option to API

> YouTube Now Allowing For Captions

> YouTube Translation Should Help Globalize Videos

As you may know, Google has been sending out Google Wave invitations for a little while now. Many people are still finding these hard to come by, but others have been lucky enough to be selected and get their hands dirty.

Those who have been granted access to Google Wave have the ability to nominate people for invitation, but not directly invite people themselves. So in other words, you’re not getting in unless Google wants you to. They have to approve your nomination.

Unfortunately, that means those outside of the tech-savvy developer crowd and those who can actually access Google Wave, there is still a lot of mystery around the service. People want to know how it works.

The preview comes with a wave featuring a video from "Dr. Wave," or Product Manager Greg. The video is embedded below, but he points to different features within the interface, so imagine that it is placed as it is in the above screenshot.

Google Wave brings its own terminology to the table. For one, a wave itself is a collection of messages. Those messages within a wave are "blips." Blips can be edited and replied to. Anyone that is in the wave at the same time can see replies and blips being typed live in real time. That’s live. You can see the characters appear as they are typed.

If you really want to see how Google Wave works, watch this series of videos that Google provides in the preview (they’re all very short):

There are other videos that appear in the preview, but these are probably the most useful ones for showing how Wave works.

Now the version of Google Wave that people have access to is just a "preview." It doesn’t even come with a beta tag. It’s still quite early. Even parts within the preview version are clearly marked as under construction (things like key settings).

The videos provided do not begin to scratch the surface of the potential of Google Wave. With Google allowing developers to create apps or "gadgets" for it, the possibilities will likely be limitless. But as a general "getting to know you" for the common user, the videos provided pretty much explain the core of Google Wave.
 
Have you used Google Wave yet? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Wave Shape the Future of Online Communication?

> Is Google Wave Getting An App Store?

> Google Wave Invitations Roll Out/span>

IPhone app sharing service AppsFire (our review) has announced a contest to highlight the best still-unlaunched iPhone apps under development and ReadWriteWeb will be part of the judging. Called the App Star Awards, the contest will evaluate 30-second videos about apps under development.

The iPhone app environment is absurdly overcrowded and hard to navigate – AppsFire is one of my favorite solutions to that problem. The service lets you email links to apps you want to share on your phone. It’s simple but so useful! A contest to start the hype for apps before they get buried in the app store is smart.

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Below are my favorite iPhone apps right now, shared in an AppsFire widget. I hope this contest will expose me to all kinds of new apps that will eventually land on this list as well.

We’ll get to learn about great apps and the app makers will get a small amount of cash and a large amount of publicity. You can register to participate at the page for the AppStar Contest.

Google’s Matt Cutts has posted a new video talking about how Google deals with geographic targeting. This is a subject he has tackled on more than one occasion in the past, but in this latest one, he is elaborating on it a bit more, and explains that Google is looking more and more at this stuff as time goes on.

This particular video deals specifically with using Webmaster Tools to tell Google what country your site is relevant to. Cutts says the team that deals with what sites are relevant for which countries is starting to show, for example, dot coms a little bit more for other countries’ searchers. 

He says one thing Google is trying to use as a signal is what users specify in Webmaster Central. For example, if you own a dot com but you’re more relevant to a specific country like Australia, you can specify that.

"Now the one thing to be careful of is not to sort of mix that up," he says. "For example, there was a site that was talking about a directory of streets that was really, really relevant to Singapore. Whenever you loaded it up, even though it was a dot com, it pretty much started with the island of Singapore and that was all you saw. Well, this site, we thought was about Singapore and they went in to webmaster central and they sort of changed their setting to say, ‘no, no we’re relevant to the U.S.’"

"Now, if you do that, if we think that you’re relevant to a specific country like Singapore and you change it to the dot U.S.," he adds. "What that can end up doing is you don’t show up for people in Singapore as much as you might not show up as much for people in the united states."

So basically, don’t use this as a way to try and optimize for other countries just to get more views from that country. What will happen is you will be more likely to not show up as much anywhere. Watch the video:

Here are a couple more geo-related videos from Cutts. They’re all fairly short and to the point.

Google has announced a new feature for AdSense mobile publishers, which lets them serve text and image ads on their sites, specifically optimized for high-end smartphones like the iPhone, Android devices, and the Palm Pre.

With the launch of the feature, publishers can run larger AdSense ads on these phones, whereas before, they could only serve smaller ads.

"High-end mobile phones, like iPhone, Android-powered devices and the Palm Pre, continue to grow — Gartner estimates that global sales of smartphones will soar by 27% in 2009, to 177 million units. Naturally, as a result more and more people are browsing the web on the go," says Google software engineer Danielle VanDyke. "Because these devices offer a browsing experience that is similar to desktop computers, advertising on smartphones is a natural extension for any AdWords campaign."

Google says the addition of this feature will help "nurture the smartphone ecosystem," by encouraging users to create more mobile content.

To make the feature work, Google introduced a new JavaScript snippet that’s optimized for mobile "to reduce latency" on high-end mobile phones. The snippet also allows publishers to select additional ad unit sizes from common AdSense formats.

"However, if you’re targeting all mobile devices, or if you’re unable to make changes to your website, you don’t have to update your AdSense code in order to enable larger AdSense ads to show on high-end devices," says VanDyke. "We’ll automatically detect if the user is browsing with a high-end phone, and instead of serving a smaller mobile WAP ad, we’ll return a larger ad optimized for high-end mobile devices."

The new feature certainly opens up new opportunities for AdSense publishers, who have had some additional benefits announced recently. Just the other day Google announced that it would extend YouTube promoted videos to AdSense for example. Google also recently announced the addition of ad networks to the competition pool for AdSense.

Google’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel has provided countless valuable videos for webmasters and search engine marketers. They often come from Google’ Matt Cutts who has uploaded numerous videos in which he answers user questions.

Cutts isn’t the only one that can provide useful content though, and Google knows this. The company is now calling upon users to submit their own videos for possible inclusion on the Webmaster Central YouTube Channel.

The guidelines Google offers up for this initiative are as follows:

- Keep the video short; 3-5 minutes is ideal. Think small: a short video is a good way to showcase your use of – for example – Top Search Queries, but not long enough to highlight your whole SEO strategy.

- Focus on a real-life example of how you used a particular feature. For example, you could show how you used link data to research your brand, or crawl errors to diagnose problems with your site structure. Do you have a great tip or recommendation?

- Upload your video before September 30.

- White hats are recommended. They show up better on screen.

This is not the first time Google has called upon users to help expand its useful YouTube content library. In fact, YouTube itself asked users to submit YouTube help videos for inclusion in its help center. The idea was to make the help center more community driven and interesting to users.

Google’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel is already a great resource for tips and advice. This initiative should only increase the value of that resource. Users getting tips from other users will make it feel like they’re not just getting advice from the company itself, but they can rest assured that the advice given is approved by Google or it wouldn’t be there.

To submit videos, go to the help center and submit it through the Help Center gadget. There is a full list of guidelines that goes beyond the short version listed above.

Update: Google says the Google Chome Icon Project is over now.

Original Article: Feeling creative? Fan of Google’s Chrome browser? If your answer to either of these questions is yes, you might be interested to know that Google is hosting a global project in which it is asking fans to submit creative videos in which they create a Google Chrome icon.

Jason Toff from the Google Chrome team says the idea for the project came when the team itself was experimenting with using different objects to create the icon – like this cake for example:

What Google considers to be the best entries to this project, it will feature on Google and YouTube. "We know from past experience that users are the ones who come up with the coolest stuff. So with that, we now turn the challenge to YOU to make a video showing the formation of the Google Chrome icon in a big, unusual or creative way," says Toff. He tells me he likes the magnets one so far (video below):

You may recall that earlier this year, Google created its first television advertisement, and this was for Chrome. I don’t know if any of these designs will make it into an actual commercial or not, but I suspect the initiative itself is designed to generate buzz and draw awareness to Chrome. Not a bad viral campaign.

Participants have until July 22 to submit their videos. You can do so here, and while you’re there, you can also check out what other people have done. I’ll leave you with a few samples below. By the way, they should be between 15 and 60 seconds long.

There have been a couple of videos recently highlighted on Google company blogs that AdWords advertisers should pay attention to if their conversions are not where they want them to be. These videos deal with landing pages and ad copy.

The first video is actually a full webinar on landing pages, and is a bit lengthy. It is an important topic though, and if landing pages are a weakness for your business, it would probably be wise to view it. It runs about an hour and fifteen minutes, and talks about the "7 deadly sins of landing page design."

The second video asks a very important question: How will your customers know you really have what they want? As the video’s narrator says, potential customers only see your ad when they type in a search query. They don’t see your keywords, your ad groups, your campaigns, etc. You have to grab their attention.

The following video, which is much shorter than the previous one (this one comes in at a minute and a half), provides tips for using compelling ad copy that attracts clicks.

The click and the landing page are two of the most important elements of the conversion. Google wants you to improve your conversions, because it’s better for their service that way. The more successful you are, the more successful they are. It stands to reason that they would offer you tips that they truly believe will help your AdWords performance.

Some of it is common sense, but in this industry, that is a trait that is often overlooked. In the heat of competition, sometimes the basics are overlooked.

Google’s Matt Cutts frequently posts useful tips for webmasters on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The short clips generally offer valuable nuggets of info that can have an impact on your site’s performance in Google.

In these videos, Matt always answers questions submitted by users, and in a recent one he answers the question: "How do meta geo tags influence search results?"

Noticed changes in your ranking based on geographic info? Discuss.

Cutts says it’s not something Google really looks at at all. He says they do look at:

- IP Address
- gTLD
- ccTLD

He also points out that there’s a feature in Google’s Webmaster Tools where you can tell it that your site pertains to a specific country even though it’s a dot com. "Typically the geotags that are in meta tags are not as useful and We don’t tend to give those as much weight if at all," says Cutts. He suggests spending your time:

- trying to make sure you have the right domain name

- trying to make sure you have the right IP address if you can

- If you have content (even if it’s geo-located) even if it’s a sub-domain or a sub-directory, you can specify it in Google’s Webamster Tools. You can tell it that certain content is relevant for a particular country.

These are good things to keep in mind if geographic information is important to your site. Have you used the Webmaster Tools Feature Cutts refers to? Tell us about it.

Google’s Matt Cutts frequently posts useful tips for webmasters on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The short clips generally offer valuable nuggets of info that can have an impact on your site’s performance in Google.

In these videos, Matt always answers questions submitted by users, and in a recent one he answers the question: "How do meta geo tags influence search results?"

Noticed changes in your ranking based on geographic info? Discuss.

Cutts says it’s not something Google really looks at at all. He says they do look at:

- IP Address
- gTLD
- ccTLD

He also points out that there’s a feature in Google’s Webmaster Tools where you can tell it that your site pertains to a specific country even though it’s a dot com. "Typically the geotags that are in meta tags are not as useful and We don’t tend to give those as much weight if at all," says Cutts. He suggests spending your time:

- trying to make sure you have the right domain name

- trying to make sure you have the right IP address if you can

- If you have content (even if it’s geo-located) even if it’s a sub-domain or a sub-directory, you can specify it in Google’s Webamster Tools. You can tell it that certain content is relevant for a particular country.

These are good things to keep in mind if geographic information is important to your site. Have you used the Webmaster Tools Feature Cutts refers to? Tell us about it.

Google’s Matt Cutts frequently posts useful tips for webmasters on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The short clips generally offer valuable nuggets of info that can have an impact on your site’s performance in Google.

In these videos, Matt always answers questions submitted by users, and in a recent one he answers the question: "How do meta geo tags influence search results?"

Noticed changes in your ranking based on geographic info? Discuss.

Cutts says it’s not something Google really looks at at all. He says they do look at:

- IP Address
- gTLD
- ccTLD

He also points out that there’s a feature in Google’s Webmaster Tools where you can tell it that your site pertains to a specific country even though it’s a dot com. "Typically the geotags that are in meta tags are not as useful and We don’t tend to give those as much weight if at all," says Cutts. He suggests spending your time:

- trying to make sure you have the right domain name

- trying to make sure you have the right IP address if you can

- If you have content (even if it’s geo-located) even if it’s a sub-domain or a sub-directory, you can specify it in Google’s Webamster Tools. You can tell it that certain content is relevant for a particular country.

These are good things to keep in mind if geographic information is important to your site. Have you used the Webmaster Tools Feature Cutts refers to? Tell us about it.