Google’s growth animated and digital teddy bears storming Worthing seafront in this week’s roundup

“Meet Google. The noun that became a verb.” That’s how this little film starts, going on to list all the vast projects that the company is involved at the moment using lovely animation. Made in the style of the viral “Did you know?” videos, it gives you a pretty good impression why people call Google a “frenemy”. So is Google Darth Vader? Or just a business?

Remember Charlie Brooker’s parody of TV news reporting recently? Here’s the American equivalent. Enjoy the Onion ripping apart up-to-the-minute coverage of some irrelevant story that has no ramifications whatsoever. Excellent – but not to be watched if you dislike strong language or dead fish.

Finally, we have teddy bears invading Worthing seafront. They hop above the streets, play with some cars, and kill some pigeons – all the stuff that you do when you are an animated teddy bear in a viral video fantasy from a rather talented young man.

1 The Beast File- Google (HUNGRY BEAST)
If you want to know why they call Google a “frenemy,” watch this info-animation from Hungry Beast for Australian TV channel ABC.

2 BMW S1000 RR. Dinner for RR
You know that conjuring trick where you pull out the tablecloth so quickly and smoohtly that dinner remains undisturbed? Well, BMW has tried it with a food bank and one of their motorbikes, and …

3 The Handsome Men’s Club
A post-Oscars Jimmy Kimmel gets Robert Downey Jr, Sting, Patrick Dempsey, Tad Dampsey, Ethan Hawke, Ben Affleck, Matt Demon and others to make fun of Handsome Men – that is, themselves. Really kicks of with when Lenny starts to sing. So who is most handsome?

4 Turning into Michael Jackson
Amazing transformation: Why beauty operations? Séverine takes you on a tour using make up and scotch tape to look like Michael Jackson!

5 Teddys storm Worthing sea front
Cutie of the week! Watch an endless row of teddy bears taking over the seafront of Worthing. Internet creativity as its best.

6 Iron Man 2 Trailer 2
Marvel Comics meet blockbuster featuring machines, special effects, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke to perform a film fest coming in May. But the trailer has already made it into the charts.

7 TRON: LEGACY – Official Trailer
Another movie in which technology plays the main role, and this time its a father and son tale that puts us back into 1980s cyberspace. Oh, but in 3D. Is that enough?

8 NEW E*TRADE Baby – Girlfriend
Animated human baby boy and baby girl have a serious relationship talk. What happened last night? And was that milkoholic Lindsay there as well? Very well made ad, deserves to go viral.

9 PS22 Chorus “LISZTOMANIA” Phoenix
You think Glee is TV fiction? Than watch this! Here is the pop video of the week featuring the elementary school chorus from Public School 22 in Graniteville, Staten Island, who cover Lisztomania by Phoenix.

10 Captain Kirk deals with a strange alien culture
Looking at the screen, Spock and Kirk can’t really believe their eyes. Or ears.

Source: Mostly taken by Unruly Media, but heavily inspired by Mag.ma. Compiled from data gathered at 18:00 on 11 March 2010.

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Google’s new interface turns the web into an interactive entertainment magazine

Google has launched Google Reader Play, an experimental feature that offers a new, highly visual way to browse the web.

The new interface displays only one story at a time, focusing on pictures, videos, visual statistics and maps.

“We think Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn’t find otherwise,” said software engineer Garrett Wu in a blogpost announcing the new product.

Unlike the standard Google Reader in which users have to subscribe to feeds, Google Reader Play requires no set-up. It learns new users’ preferences by asking them to mark items they like with a star to read later.

“We designed it especially for people who don’t want to spend time curating their own set of feeds,” said Wu.

Google Reader Play is thus easy to use, and as the items are displayed in full-screen, there is one type of content it is perfect for: television.

As Nick Bilton of the New York Times puts it: “Although Google doesn’t address television in the description of the product, the promising use case for many people could be the ability to use Google Reader Play on a computer hooked up to a larger screen.”

Launched a few weeks before Apple’s iPad hits the stores in April, Google Reader Play makes it clear that the big tech companies are aiming to take on the consumer market.

Do you like the idea of Google Reader Play? Please have your say in the comments

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Google and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage have reached an agreement to digitise up to a million out-of-copyright works at the national libraries in Florence and Rome, including some by Galileo.

And it’s just two weeks after an Italian court gave three Google executives suspended prison sentences over a video of bullying on YouTube that had been removed once the company was told about it.

Google is not only to work closely together with the Italian libraries, but also with the Italian ministry of culture – the first time that the search engine has had a government department a such a close partner on such a project. Google called it a “groundbreaking deal”.

“The libraries will select the works to be digitised from their collections, which include a wealth of rare historical books, including scientific works, literature from the period of the founding of Italy and the works of Italy’s most famous poets and writers,” says Google’s strategic partner development manager, Gino Mattiuzzo, in a blogpost announcing the deal.

While the costs will be covered fully by Google, the company will pass the scans on. The books will be available to groups including the EU’s Europeana project, which already has scanned 6 million digital items of cultural value.

“We believe today’s announcement is an important step, and we look forward to working with more libraries and other partners,” says Mattiuzzo.

Google has similar arrangements with Oxford University, Madrid’s Complutense University, the Bavarian state museum and others.

However, it’s not clear whether Google is creating the world’s biggest library or the world’s biggest bookshop. Some fear the search engine is exploiting cultural heritage as a cheap context for advertising.

Recently, a New York judge postponed a decision on whether the company should be allowed to display parts of books still in-copyright.

Google on the other hand claims good intentions: “We envision a future in which people will be able to search and access the world’s books anywhere, anytime. After all, Antonio Beccadelli and Anastasius Germonius – like Shakespeare and Cervantes – are part of our human cultural history.”

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Web giant takes on Microsoft with Google Apps Marketplace offering cloud-based applications

Google has announced that it has opened the Google Apps Marketplace to developers.

More than 50 companies wil be involved in the Apps Marketplace, which will offer business software such as a project management application, a tax and a payroll program, an electronic fax program, an e-signature service, and a design tool for Google Docs.

The third-party cloud-based applications will be integrated within Google to work like native Google apps. It will charge developers 20% of the revenue from sales on the marketplace site, apart from a one-off fee of $100.

“The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike,” said product manager Chris Vander Mey in a blogpost that announced the move.

Google is challenging Microsoft with the aim of becoming the operating system of the web. Up till now the search engine offered users and businesses several web applications such as Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. It already has 25 million Google Apps users, with 2 million of them businesses.

“More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves,” says Vander Mey.

Cloud computing applications, which are internet-based rather than desktop-based, were looked upon as promising but have been slow to take off. Computer users tend to choose names they already trust, and seemed to be confused about cloud-based applications. For a long time the market position of Microsoft seemed secure.

But Google might now be changing the game. It might also have found a new revenue stream – 97% of its income currently comes from advertising. As it already has released the Google Chrome browser and is working on a Google Chrome OS, the App Marketplace is the next logical step towards becoming a software company.

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Charging might work with specialist content, says Google’s chief economist – but engaging readers with online content during their leisure hours is a more promising strategy

The key to most newspapers’ survival online is engaging more with readers, rather than seeking to charge them directly, Google argues.

The case was put by its chief economist, Hal Varian, yesterday at a workshop of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington on “The Future of Journalism”.

Google denies any responsibility for the problems newspapers face. “The news industry’s financial problems started well before the web came along,” Varian said in his speech, which he also published as a blogpost.

Google estimates that charging for access is only a solution for news organisations with specialised content, since competition for generic news is too high.

A more promising approach, Varian argues, is to increase the involvement of readers with news during leisure hours, when they have more time to look at content and advertisements. Google recently introduced several experiments in displaying news differently, such as Fast Flip and the open source project Living Stories.

According to Google, declining print circulation hadn’t been offset online because news readers tend to look at a disproportionate amount of online content during working hours, when people have little spare time. “The average amount of time looking at online news is about 70 seconds a day, while the average amount of time spent reading the physical newspaper is about 25 minutes a day,” Varian says.

Furthermore, analysing search clicks, Google finds that the traditional cross-subsidization model of newspapers is broken. While before, in print, advertisements in special interest sections such as motoring, travel, or home & garden helped finance the general news production, now most of the search clicks are in categories such as sports, news and current events, and local.

According to Google, which doesn’t display any advertising with its overview page Google News, there is money to be made in the sectors of travel, health, shopping and computers and electronics while news is hard to monetize, despite being frequently accessed.

In general, Google’s outlook for newspapers isn’t too good. “The transition to a fully online news will be difficult, but there’s a good chance that we will emerge with a significantly more compelling user experience,” Varian says.

Newspapers don’t exploit fully the information they have and use their analysis and statistic tools, Google argues. A more direct measure of what users seek and read such as reviews, video and local news would improve online news, as would better advertisement measurement and a more intense contextual targeting.

Google, which wants the world to know that it is “keen on working with the news industry”, sees some hope in new devices – such as the iPad – that could make online reading more attractive in leisure hours.

Therefore, Google’s strong advice for newspapers is to increase user engagement, summed up clearly in one of Varian’s bullet points: “Engagement is currently low, need to increase it”.

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Facebook and iPhone applications can help you stub out your smoking habit

Are you one of the more than 2 million smokers ready to quit on No Smoking Day? Then today is your day! Don’t worry, you won’t be alone as there is an app for it – well, several. And this is how you can call it a day:

First of all, you install the WeQuit Facebook app to let everybody know what your are up to. It’s best to grab one of your chain-smoking friends for a competition. The Facebook version of WeQuit helps you to reward your friend if they achieve success and punish them in case of failure, perhaps by throwing a sheep at them. You can also use WeQuit to bet your Facebook friends to see who can give up for longest, or sponsor someone to quit to raise money for charity.

Secondly, you can use your iPhone to download a free NHS Quit Smoking app. Here a real-time counter keeps track of the money saved – a significant amount considering the cost of cigarettes. It also displays the minutes, hours and days you’ve been smoke-free.

If you are in danger of a relapse, a button on the app can connect you to an adviser on an NHS helpline. If not, you might find some solace in downloading the No Smoking PhotoBook for £1.19 to show you beautiful “no smoking” signs from all over the world.

Good luck!

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Charles Arthur, Rick Wray and Aleks Krotoski take on the BBC in this week’s podcast, picking apart the latest news on the corporation – from the director general’s strategy review to the battles with iPhone app developers. What’s behind the BBC’s contradictory new media messaging? Is digital really the future, or will they abandon a decade of investment to the archives?

Meanwhile Bobbie Johnson takes the team through the Musee Mecanique in San Francisco, the leading collection of pre-digital entertainment machines; and Mercedes Bunz speaks with Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the man behind Bing Maps.

Don’t forget to …

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Company working with satellite provider on feature that would let users search both TV content and web videos on set-top boxes

Once again, rumours are making their rounds that Google is going to make some sort of set-top box play. The latest: the Wall Street Journal reports that the company is working with Dish Network on a new feature that would let users search both TV content and web videos on set-top boxes “using elements of Google’s Android operating system”.

The tie-in direct with Dish Network, a broadcast satellite service provider, makes sense, since both companies already have a close relationship on the TV, where Google TV Ads counts Dish Network as one of its primary partners.

But there are some big caveats and unknowns: It’s unlikely that the service will come to market soon, since the WSJ makes a point of emphasising that the tests are limited for now to a “very small number” of Google employees.

Also, no set-top boxes that run on Android are currently on the market. But as far back as November 2007 there were rumours that Google was working to build an app platform for set-top boxes. Nothing has come of that, although that effort would presumably be related to this one in some way.

If Google did go ahead and launch some sort of “Google TV search”, competitors would include Clicker, the much-hyped (and funded) online video search engine which has deals with set-top boxes like Boxee and popbox, so that users can search Clicker from their TVs.

A Google spokesman said the company does not comment on rumour or speculation.

Related stories

• Clicker Gets $11 Million For Online Video Search Engine
• Google’s Android Is Moving Into The Digital Home

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Film-maker spends time on internet chat service Chatroulette – all in the name of research, of course

Heard and read about Chatroulette, but a bit frightened to check it out yourself? Now you can find out about the website that allows you to video chat with strangers all over the world thanks to New York film-maker Casey Neistat.

After being introduced to it by a friend, Neistat logs on to Chatroulette. He explains what it means to get “nexted”, and explores different aspects of the phenomenon.

The film-maker says that of the 90 people he clicked through at 4pm New York time on a Thursday he found 71% men, 15% women and 14% perverts, while 83% were fairly young and 17% older people. With the help of a female friend he also found out that people on Chatroulette are much more likely to talk to a woman. While 95% “nexted” Neistadt, his friend Genevieve was clicked away by only 5%.

Neistat is best known for the viral video he made with his brother in 2003 about the iPod’s irreplaceable battery called The iPod’s Dirty Secret. This summer, HBO will air an eight-episodes series created by Neistat, his brother Van and Tom Scott. It is called The Neistat Brothers and features short stories about the brothers’ lives.

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Advert suggests Apple wants tablet computer to go mainstream

Apple ran its first TV ad for the iPad during last night’s Oscars coverage, while the company’s founder, Steve Jobs, was spotted at the event. But while past campaigns won viewers over with their creative inspiration, this time Apple’s ad seemed rather basic.

The ad positions the iPad as a device for private entertainment. That’s it. You see the airbrushed hands of a man at home picking up the iPad to check out videos, read the New York Times, flip through book pages, check his private mail, and so on.

Apple has aired iPhone commercials during previous Oscars as it often uses high profile TV events to advertise its products and services. Its excellent 1984 ad that launched the Macintosh computer premiered during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

Compared with the creativity of the 1984 commercial, the new ad for the iPad is rather disappointing, but it suggests Apple wants the iPad to go mainstream. The tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US for $499, and hit the stores in the UK and other international locations in late April.

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