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YouTube is launching what the company calls the biggest redesign in its history today, including sweeping changes to its homepage and channel pages. The goal is better personalized video discovery and viewing, with a notable emphasis on social features. Think of the changes as the latest example of Google’s campaign to create a unified social layer for all of its products. The new homepage looks a lot like Facebook, or Google+ for that matter. An activity feed view dominates the middle of the page, while a left-hand navigation bar provides a set of filters for what you see in the feed. The default Subscriptions feed appears to include algorithmically determined video uploads and activities determined by information like what videos you’ve watched and which channels you’ve subscribed to, although YouTube group product manager Noam Lovinsky wouldn’t tell me exactly how it worked. The previous version of the homepage feed, which launched early this year, doesn’t appear to be algorithmically tuned to the same degree. G+ and Facebook also get prime-time spots in the navigation bar, listed right beneath the first feed. Click on either and you’ll be able to view videos shared by friends on those networks. G+ videos are automatically in there since YouTube accounts are linked to users Google identities. Facebook requires an opt-in login. Google is playing up the already social aspects of YouTube to help it bolster Google’s cross-product G+ push. The Facebook integration is a bit more surprising considering that it’s the main social competitor out there. But Lovinksy downplayed that point when I brought it up, noting that only around 10% of YouTube’s views are from embeds, meaning that Facebook is just a part of that percentage. He went on to explain that the prominent locations for G+ and Facebook are to help with onboarding for newer users. Instead of looking through the entire site for interesting channels, or trying to see what YouTube’s general recommendations tell them, they can get started by seeing what their current friends are already sharing. The rest of the left-hand bar includes other options for filtering the feed. You can pin any subscribed channel to the top section as well. Click on any of those subscriptions and you’ll see a reverse-chronological feed of all the activity in that channel. Further down, the bar includes a YouTube-curated section showing Trending, Popular and Music channels, and another section showing recommended channels. The new homepage has a lot in common with Facebook’s left-hand navigation lists, its algorithmic feed, and its right-hand side recommendations and ads. But that’s a reflection of the design paradigm for all social products, as Lovinksy tells me. Users need a homepage that can help them consume new and interesting content as easily as possible, paired with landing pages that let you add subscriptions. In YouTube’s case, the homepage emphasis on filtering channels is based on users’ desires to watch sets of videos in a single sitting. Like, you know, television, channels. To that end, YouTube is also adding some new templates for channel pages. Here’s what they include, according to the company: The  Blogger template : A featured video, a reverse chronological list of videos from 1 playlist of your choosing, playlists, and other Channels. The  Creator template : A featured video, featured playlists, and other Channels. The  Network template : A featured video and featured Channels The  Everything template : A featured video, featured playlists, and featured Channels These additions, which are more analogous to template options in Tumblr or MySpace rather than Facebook’s one-size-fits-all style, let producers promote their works in the most natural style for what they offer. These templates come with a Feed tab showing any of the following actions from the channel owner: Liking a video Commenting on a video Subscribing to a Channel Favoriting a video Uploading a video, and Adding a video to a playlist Importantly, any of these social actions can also potentially appear in users homepages, similar to how activity on a Facebook page appears in users news feeds. The Feed tab includes a section for users to post their comments, another section for the owner to feature other channels, and an About form. The homepage and channel changes are the two biggest updates today, but the company is also introducing a site-wide design upgrade to all the elements — typography, iconography, etc (like the new logo at the top of this article). It’s separately adding new versions of its Xbox and Google TV applications, that feature magazine-style tile interfaces showing various channels. Finally, the company is touting the success of its advertising platform, saying that it’s seeing strong demand for its new cost-per-click style of video ads. Going forward, look for YouTube to introduce more social features, Lovinsky said. While he didn’t get into specifics, my impression was there’s going to more fine-tuned discovery options coming, like channels on the homepage that show you content on topics related to videos you like. A “hip hop” video channel for instance. And, of course, look for YouTube to add tighter G+ integrations across the site.

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YouTube’s New Homepage Goes Social With Algorithmic Feed, Emphasis On Google+ And Facebook

Yesterday, Bloomberg published a story stating that Apple had made a major (and, frankly, somewhat surprising) change to its App Store policies: it was going to begin allowing game publishers to sell bundles of games as monthly subscriptions, as opposed to a la carte. Historically all games on the App Store have been sold as one-off purchases (or for free), and they can generate further revenue by offering in-app goods and services. But last week, game developer Big Fish Games introduced an app with different model. Gamers would purchase the app, and, for $6.99 a month, they’d have access to “dozens” of games within that application (in other words, each game would not require a separate download). Such a model could potentially be a big deal for other gaming companies like Zynga, which could establish ‘hub’ apps rather than having to launch a new app for each game. As it turns out, that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. Apple didn’t comment for yesterday’s Bloomberg report, but the article treated the fact that Big Fish’s app was accepted as indicative of a broader policy change — especially because the two companies had apparently been in negotiations over the launch. According to the original article, Big Fish founder Paul Thelen said, “It took longer than usual to be approved… They needed to be convinced there’s a reason to charge customers every month.” And it wouldn’t have been the first time for Apple to enact an App Store policy change without officially announcing it. Still, the fact that Bigfish was the only app to launch with the feature was a bit strange — you’d think Apple would have wanted other partners onboard as well. So what was going on? Today, we have our answer: Bloomberg has written a followup story stating that Apple has  removed the subscription plan option. Or, more specifically, Big Fish Games’s app has been removed from the App Store, and Apple isn’t commenting. Big Fish is predictably (and understandably) upset: “We were notified that the app was removed,” said Paul Thelen, founder of Big Fish, a game publisher in Seattle. The app had been available since Nov. 18, he said. “We’re trying to follow up with Apple to try to figure out what happened.” Thelen said he was surprised by the move because Big Fish had worked with Apple for several weeks to ensure that it met the requirements for recurring monthly charges made through the App Store, a method most commonly used by magazines and newspaper publishers. “It was officially approved,” Thelen said. Apple had even seen the app’s press release before it went out earlier today, he said. So what happened? My hunch (and I’m not alone) is that one or more of the reviewers at Apple mistakenly accepted the application, and that there was no intentional policy change. Applications that were in violation of Apple’s terms have slipped through the cracks before. And while Big Fish did obviously interact with someone at Apple during the process, the reviewer may not have realized that accepting the app would have broader repercussions.

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The App Store Game Subscription Plan That Wasn’t

Article marketing has always been one of the best ways to get traffic and backlinks for your website. What you have to realize is how time consuming it can be to submit these articles all over the Internet. However these submissions can be done by using article submission services which can be found on the Internet. In this article we are going to be taking a deeper look at the “Submit Your Article” program.

Some features that you really should have in order to get the most from the submission service are not offered with all services. There are just a few features that the submission service has to have in order to make it a good choice, these are, drip feeding articles, unique article submission and also the ability to create multiple pen names. “Submit Your Article” actually covers all those features and in this article we will be taking a look at each feature individually.

Pen names can actually be a huge feature and here we will tell you why this is important. I am sure you are in more than one niche as an Internet marketer, most marketers don’t limit themselves to just one niche. Now the trick is to make yourself appear as an expert in each and every niche that your in. The problem with just using the exact same name for every niche is that people will see this, so if your claiming to be an expert in many different niches people will be able to figure out that your not an expert and your just trying to make a sale. Now if for every niche your in you use a different name to publish the articles under, you will be able to market yourself as being an expert in each and every niche. Which is one good thing about the “Submit Your Article” program, they allow you to create multiple pen names.

The next thing that this program provides is the ability to submit different versions of your articles to the sites in their network. Being able to do this helps to keep you off Google’s radar. And when your publishing unique articles the links in those articles will end up being more powerful. When you end up taking an article and just publishing it in article directories, Google sees that all your links are coming from duplicate content and the power of these links will be diminished. This should explain why unique content is so much better to use than just a plain article.

One of the other keys to proper article marketing is to be able to trickle your articles online, which you can do with this program, this way Google won’t see hundreds or thousands of links appearing in one day. If you end up getting all these links at one time there is a very good chance that Google will catch on and end up sand boxing your website.

By using this service you will find that it is one of the better ways to get your articles published and also for building links for your sites. If you really want to get a better search engine ranking you must realize that you need links from all different websites and this program can help you achieve that.

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For as long as I can remember, there has been one constant in tech news: Google News sucks at it. Now, that’s not entirely fair since Google News doesn’t actually provide any of their own content. Instead, they use the supposedly magical Google algorithms to curate others’ content from around the web. Still, there’s just no way around it — the product, at least for tech news, sucks. Again, this is nothing new. I’ve been writing this article at least once a year for five years or so. But what’s amazing to me is how many updates Google does to the product and it still sucks. Even more remarkable is that a lot of people continue to go to it as a source of tech news. How do I know? When TechCrunch does appear on it, it sends a lot of traffic. So is this just me complaining that we don’t appear on it enough? Well sure, partially. But to me, our sporadic appearances are also indicative of the big problem the service has. How much tech news gets broken on TechCrunch? Even our rivals would admit “a lot”. Yet if that news appears on Google News at all (far from a given), it often does hours later and almost always under another source that has re-reported it after we have. That’s really Google News’ problem in a nutshell. It’s hit-or-miss, way too slow, and as a result, often credits the re-bloggers rather than actual sources. Let’s look at the Google News  Technology section right now (which, humorously, is still called the “Sci/Tech” section — Technology apparently isn’t yet big enough to have its own stand-alone section even though I think just about everyone in the media industry would disagree at this point — and impressively odd since Google is a company known for one thing: technology). Top story: Sony’s freebies after Playstation hack. First of all, a fairly “meh” top story. (Main story is very old, new update today is fairly lame freebies in response.) Second and more importantly, even this new twist to the story is hours old. They use this Computerworld story as the main headline, which is little more than a repurposing of information from Sony’s own blog from hours earlier. Second story: RIM stock falls on Playbook recall news. Again, old news — from yesterday, in fact. And they link to this Reuters story which appears to have been written on a typewriter in the 1940s — and does nothing to expand upon the story which is over a day old. The secondary headline they choose is from a site called “ Today’s THV ” which is some local bullshit site that just republishes AP stories. Puke. Third story: “Next hurdle for Giffords: Mending damaged skull.” Interesting and important story, no doubt. But a top tech headline? The algorithm is fooled because her husband is an astronaut aboard Space Shuttle Endavor, which took off on its last flight earlier today. Again, that would also clearly be a “Sci” story, which should have its own category. This goes on and on. Now, let’s compare it to Techmeme . Top story: Rumors of Apple secret launch for 10th anniversary of Apple Stores. Hot story? Yep. Bullshit? Maybe, but judging from the smoke surrounding this, probably not. Regardless, it’s something everyone wants to know about. And yet, it’s story number nine on Google News, waaaaay below the fold. And they cite PC Magazine which is re-blogging the actual source, BGR . Guess who Techmeme cites ? Yep. Second story: Bing/Facebook integration. Again, good story, though several hours old — BUT, Techmeme  cites  the Bing blog as the big source of the news. In other words, they give proper credit rather than award johnny-come-lately, which is exactly who Google News gives credit to in their listing for it (more on this in a minute). Third story: Amazon rumored dual-core and quad-core tablets. Again, really hot story. And at least at a high level, seemingly for sure not bullshit. Google News doesn’t have this story at all. Not one word, even though a dozen or so big sites are covering it. Techmeme learned long ago that algorithms alone aren’t nearly enough to fully, quickly, and competently convey the news. Google has not yet learned this. For some categories, their algorithms probably work fine. For tech news, they suck. And I’d argue they suck for both visitors and for publishers. Because it’s so obvious what Google’s algorithms are looking for, there’s a not-so-secret trick on how to game them. Instead of rushing to get a post out about a hot story, just wait a few hours. By then, the story will bubble towards the top of Google News’ tech section and if you time it correctly and you’re a site that Google News watches (some good, some bad), you can easily be the top headline for the entire section (which also means placement on the main site as well). This works because Google News favors recent “takes” on a story instead of actual sources of information. You could argue that’s okay in some situations, but often these “takes” are just like the Today’s THV bullshit: republishing AP content late. In other words, if you’re in the business of breaking news, you’ll almost never find your stories on Google News. Instead, you’ll find someone else re-purposing your story there hours later and reaping tens of thousands of pageviews as a result of the sloth and/or jackassery. Why bring this all up now? Because Google announced yet more updates to Google News today. I tried reading over what’s new, but my eyes quickly glazed over. I’m certain it will be business as usual. Actually, it might be worse. As Danny Sullivan points out , Google now allows you to cut out the source of much of the fresh content — blogs — as an option. Brilliant. Now you can further hide the sources that Google was already burying for you. At some point, I have to believe Google will start to care about the quality of this product. But years of experience tells me otherwise. And really, that’s fine by me. It’s just another service I can easily ignore. CrunchBase Information Google News Techmeme Information provided by CrunchBase

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Eventually, One Of These Updates Will Make Google News Not Suck At Tech News, Right?

Editor’s note : The following guest post is by bestselling author and former venture capitalist  Peter Sims .  His next book is Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries . He can be found on Twitter @petersims . In his recent article on TechCrunch, “ Engineering vs. Liberal Arts: Who’s Right—Bill or Steve

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What Bill Gates Could Learn from Chris Rock

If you are looking for tips on how to remove trojan virus for free, this article is a must read.

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How to Remove Trojan Virus for Free

Do you like this Article? According to the Identity Theft Resource Center , there were at least 662 data breaches in 2010, which exposed more than 16 million records.

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Criminal Hackers Responsible For Most Data Breaches

Victor Noagbodji has written a long post on the subject of writing books for programmers. The article is based mostly on the advice of the legendary Brian Kernighan – coiner of the term Unix, original developer of “Hello World,” co-author of The C Programming Language and so much more. Although Noagbodji’s post is focused on writing entire book, those who write shorter works for programmers can probably stand to benefit from it as well. Sponsor Here’s my best attempt at condensing the points down even more than Noagbodji did, but I suggest you read his article anyway: Write about what you care about, not what you think will sell. Use examples

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How to Write a Programming Book

Google has updated its Google Reader for Android with a couple of interesting features, most importantly the ability to add it as a widget to the home screen of your Android device. The widget comes in two flavors. You can either have an unread count widget, which merely shows you the number of unread items for a feed, label, person or all items in your Reader, or a news ticker widget, which is larger and displays items in any stream you choose.

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Google Reader for Android Gets Widgetized