YouTube Fans

If you have a popular YouTube channels with more than 5,000 subscribers, you'll be able to find more about the people who love your videos. "The Fans page shows a list of some of your most engaged and most influential fans, based on their public interaction with your YouTube channel. By default, the list is sorted by a combination of subscriber count and engagement level, but you can also sort by either factor on its own," informs YouTube.

"For each person on the list, you can see how many subscribers they have, how engaged they are with your channel, an example comment they've left on one of your videos, and how long they've been a subscriber. Engagement is based on that person's public interactions with your channel, such as commenting, liking, subscribing, etc."

You can also create a Google+ circle for your top fans in the insights page. "See what other videos and channels they're into, and reach out via Google+ to ask a question, start a conversation, share behind-the-scenes photos, or upload a private video just for them."

{ Thanks, Stefan. }

Chrome to Gradually Drop Support for NPAPI Plug-ins

10 years ago, browsers were a lot less powerful and you had to install plug-ins to watch videos, play games, open PDF files. Applications like QuickTime, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Adobe Reader, Java installed plug-ins that added missing features. Now browsers can play audio files and video files without plug-ins, some of them include PDF viewers, many of them render interactive 3D graphics natively. NPAPI plug-ins are no longer that necessary, they have plenty of security issues and the NPAPI plug-in architecture from the Netscape era is now outdated.

Google addressed some of the NPAPI issues in Pepper and bundled a Pepper version of the Flash plug-in with Chrome. Pepper is also used by Native Client and the PDF viewer.

The next step: Chromium's blog announced that the NPAPI support will be gradually dropped next year. "NPAPI isn't supported on mobile devices, and Mozilla plans to block NPAPI plug-ins in December 2013. Based on anonymous Chrome usage data, we estimate that only six NPAPI plug-ins were used by more than 5% of users in the last month. (...) Starting in January 2014, Chrome will block webpage-instantiated NPAPI plug-ins by default on the Stable channel. To avoid disruption to users, we will temporarily whitelist the most popular NPAPI plug-ins that are not already blocked for security reasons:" Silverlight, Unity, Google Earth, Google Talk and Facebook Video. Java is already blocked by default for security reasons. "In the short term, end users and enterprise administrators will be able to whitelist specific plug-ins. Eventually, however, NPAPI support will be completely removed from Chrome. We expect this to happen before the end of 2014, but the exact timing will depend on usage and user feedback."

A simplified version of Google Earth is now available in the new Google Maps, while the Google Talk plug-in will no longer be necessary in Chrome when Google Hangouts switches to WebRTC. Silverlight is mainly used for streaming premium video by sites like Netflix, but the DRM support for HTML5 video will change this.

Some Chrome extensions include NPAPI plug-ins. Google will no longer accept new Chrome extensions with NPAPI plug-ins starting today and will unpublish these extensions from the Chrome Web Store in September 2014 if developers don't remove the NPAPI plug-ins.

"There are several alternatives to NPAPI. In cases where standard web technologies are not yet sufficient, developers and administrators can use NaCl, Apps, Native Messaging API, and Legacy Browser Support to transition from NPAPI. Moving forward, our goal is to evolve the standards-based web platform to cover the use cases once served by NPAPI," informs Google.

It will be interesting to see if Google will actually drop NPAPI support next year. There are still many sites that rely on plug-ins and some of them are no longer updated.

To see a list of the plug-ins you use in Chrome, open a new tab and paste chrome://plugins/ in the address bar. Click "Details" to see more information about them (including their type: NPAPI or PPAPI - Pepper). You can also disable plug-ins or check "always allowed".

You'll see at least 4 PPAPI (Pepper) plug-ins that are bundled with Chrome: Flash, PDF Viewer, Native Client and Chrome Remote Desktop Viewer. The list also includes a separate NPAPI version of the Flash plugin that's used by Firefox, Opera, Safari, a Google Update NPAPI plug-in and some other NPAPI plug-ins for software you've installed (Google Talk, Java, iTunes Application Detector, Picasa, Google Earth Plugin).

Free Quickoffice for Android and iOS

Google announced a new Quickoffice app for Android and iOS that's free and it's optimized for both phones and tablets. The previous paid Quickoffice apps are no longer available, but not all the features from the paid apps are included in the free app. The new Quickoffice application supports a single cloud storage provider (Google Drive) and it requires to log in using a Google account.

Google acquired Quickoffice because it did a better job at handling Microsoft Office files than Google Docs. This was especially important for Google Apps users. Google started to work on porting Quickoffice to Native Client and integrating the application with Chrome OS. Now the mobile apps are free.

There's some overlap between Quickoffice and Google Drive apps, so offering two apps for editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations may seem strange. Quickoffice is a basic office suite that works offline, it lets you create and edit Microsoft Office files and annotate PDFs. You can store these files in Google Drive or on your mobile device. Files uploaded by Quickoffice can't be edited by Google Drive apps without converting them. Google Drive doesn't let you create or edit files when you are offline.

I find the Drive editing interface more intuitive and easier to use, but Quickoffice offers more features. When you open a file in Google Drive for iOS, the application first needs to upload the file to Google Drive. If you try the same thing in Quickoffice, the application opens the file and lets you edit it. I hope that the two apps will merge at some point.

Even if you don't need Quickoffice, it's still a good idea to install the app: you'll get 10GB of free Drive storage for 2 years. "If you sign in to your Google Account from the new Quickoffice app for Android or iOS by September 26, 2013, for two years, an extra 10GB of Google Drive storage will be added to your account in the next few weeks." If you don't get the extra storage, remember that will be added "in the next few weeks".

Here are the download links:

* Quickoffice for Android (phones and tablets, Android 2.2+)
* Quickoffice for iOS (iPhone/iPad - requires iOS 6+)

Those who paid for Quickoffice will probably be disappointed: no more updates for their apps, no iOS7 bug fixes. "Quickoffice Pro and Pro HD are not fully compatible with iOS 7 and some features may not work. After March 31, 2014, all cloud storage services will become unavailable on Quickoffice Pro and Quickoffice Pro HD," informs Google. Fortunately, "if you purchased Quickoffice Pro or Pro HD on or after June 17, 2013, you are eligible to receive 50GB of free Google Drive storage (with proof of purchase)."

(Quickoffice Pro and Quickoffice Pro HD used to cost $14.99 and $19.99. Pretty expensive, indeed.)

Google Wallet App for iPhone

When Google released a new version of the Wallet app for Android, it was clear that the features that were available to every Android device in the US didn't require NFC or carriers' approval. The new features are now available for iPhone users.

"The response from users has been great, and we want iOS users to enjoy all of the benefits too. So, today we're introducing the first Google Wallet app for iPhone (iOS v6.0+), which means even more people can easily send money to friends and store all of their loyalty cards and offers in one place," informs Google.

I assume that Google will try to move beyond NFC and find other ways to make Google Wallet useful and widely available. It's not enough to have a good product if most of the people can't use it. Somewhere between security issues, NFC's adoption, carriers' competing services, Google Wallet couldn't find a way to flourish.

Another thing that suggests that Google will move beyond NFC is the Bump acquisition. "Our mission at Bump has always been to build the simplest tools for sharing the information you care about with other people and devices," informed Bump's blog. Bump lets you share photos, videos, contacts without using NFC and it works on Android and iOS. Bump uses your Internet connection to share data with the people nearby.

{ Thanks, Michael. }

Google Tests New Interface for Music Video Results

Google tests a new interface for top search results, but only for music videos. The experimental interface adds a huge 480x360 thumbnail and shows the name of the artist, the album and the year when it was released.

Here's the regular version:

I think the thumbnail is way too big and the top result shouldn't dominate the entire page, especially when it comes to videos.

{ Thanks, Yvo. }

Try Google's New Logo and Navigation Menu

So many iOS developers had to change app icons and make them flat for iOS7. Flat is now fashionable, so you should expect to see some changes even if you don't use Apple's devices.

I've mentioned in a previous post that Google tests a new logo that's flat, minimalist and reduced to its essence, but someone from Google denied that this will replace the traditional logo. This is obviously not true: it's a Google experiment, the logo is hosted on Google's servers, the URL is very similar to the URL of the current Google logo and even Chrome starts to include it.

Here's how you can enable the new logo and the new navigation interface. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Internet Explorer 8+:

1. open google.com in a new tab

2. load your browser's developer console:

* Chrome or Opera 15+ - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac

* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac

* Opera 12 - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console"

* Internet Explorer - press F12 and select the "Console" tab.

3. paste the following code which changes a Google cookie:

document.cookie="PREF=ID=e66a207a51ceefd8:U=936bafc98b2a9121:FF=0:LD=en:NR=10:CR=2:TM=1378808351:LM=1379592992:SG=1:S=OXyq0fqClYB66VuV ; path=/; domain=google.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

To go back to the regular interface, use the same instructions, but replace the code from step 3 with this one:

document.cookie="PREF= ; path=/; domain=google.com";window.location.reload();

{ Thanks, André Zlatin. }

Google Rolls Out New Navigation Interface

After so many posts about Google's new navigation menu, it looks like this feature will roll out to everyone in the coming weeks. It's time to say goodbye to the black navigation bar, which didn't look that great, but it was always at the top of almost any Google service, so you could quickly navigate to other Google sites.

"We'll be rolling out this new feature in the next few weeks...stay tuned," says Justine Rivero, from Google. "The new design has been under testing for over half a year, with reports coming in as early as February 2013 regarding the new grid menu," informs Google+ Daily.

The new grid icon shows a list of 9 popular Google services (Google+, Web Search, YouTube, Maps, Play, News, Gmail, Drive, Calendar) and you can click "more" or scroll down to see 8 other services (Translate, Books, Offers, Wallet, Shopping, Blogger, Finance and Google+ Photos). The services that are missing: Google Image Search, Google Mobile and Google Video Search (they are available in the black navigation bar). The homepage only includes links to Gmail and Image Search next to the grid icon.

Here's the old navbar:

The new navigation menu looks just like the Chrome app launcher or the apps section of the Google Search app for iOS. It includes icons for each Google service, so that they look more like real apps.

For the first time, YouTube will have a Google navigation menu and the interface will be more consistent.

It will be interesting to see if the app launcher will be more successful than a similar interface launched in 2011 and removed after a few months. You had to click a small arrow next to the Google logo to see a huge menu that included a lot of Google services. The menu was hidden by default, so it wasn't easy to find (Google's homepage expanded it, but that didn't save the short-lived menu).

Update: here's how you can enable the new interface.

Update 2: Google's search blog announces the changes. "We're introducing an updated Google bar that streamlines your experience across products and devices. Your Google products are now accessible under a new app launcher, located at the top right of the screen. Just click on the familiar 'Apps' grid, also present on Android devices and Chromebooks. As part of this design, we've also refined the color palette and letter shapes of the Google logo. We'll be rolling out this update across most Google products over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out and let us know your thoughts."

{ via Google+ Daily }