Google Releases Universal Search for Gmail, Docs and Sites

Ever wanted to search not only your e-mail, but your presentations, spreadsheets and documents? Google is working on an experimental project to do just that.

Google Apps Search is a new Gmail Labs feature that “extends search with Google Docs and Sites results,” according to the feature’s description. When you activate it, the “Search Mail” button changes to “Search Mail and Docs.” Now whenever you perform a search through your Gmail, it will not only display the 20 most recent e-mails with that query, but will also show 20 related Google Docs or Sites as well. These are displayed below the Gmail search results.

In addition to universal search functionality, Apps Search also includes a second feature: “Did you mean?” search suggestions. Whenever your queries contain typos, Google will provide a suggestion for the search it believes you meant to perform, just like Google Search does.

Combined with the “Search the Web” button that sits directly to the right of the “Search Mail and Docs” button, Gmail is quickly becoming a central location for performing all of your searches. Many Google Docs are related to e-mail threads; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched my e-mail just to get to a Google Doc. It’s nice to see a Labs feature address this problem.

iPhone 4 is Coming to China in September

China’s largest telecom, China Unicom, plans to launch the latest version of iPhone in China next month September, the AFP reports.
Furthermore, Chinese media report that China Unicom will also start distributing the iPad in China, although the time of launch is unknown at this point. Neither of these statements have been officially confirmed by China Unicom.

This is a good news for Chinese customers who’ve waited years to be able to legally buy the original iPhone. After initial hurdles, some of which had to do with the fact that the Chinese national standard for wireless networking is WAPI and not Wi-Fi, new versions of Apple’s phone are coming faster and faster to the world’s most populous nation.

Last month, China Unicom started offering the iPhone 3GS with wireless capability, and it seems that the iPhone 4 might come to China sooner than expected.

iPhone 4 now plays 1080p videos easily, does some XviD/DivX magic too

I‘ve recently discovered some hidden iPhone 4 capabilities that simply beg for a blogpost. It’s about the iPhone4 media playback capabilities that are obviously quite limited by none other but the desktop iTunes application.

You probably already know about the app called Filer, we’ve covered it before. The new thing about it is that it just helped me break the iTunes video shackles. My iPhone4 will now play any mp4/mov video up to 1080p resolution – yep, that’s FullHD video, folks.

The best part about Filer is that it supports the iTunes file sharing service. This means you can simply drag’n’drop any file from any computer (with installed iTunes) straight to the iPhone4, no syncing needed.

Besides being a document and photo viewer, a nice file manager, etc., Filer also offers playing videos right within its user interface. While I poked around its video playback prowess a set of various mp4/mov files, I was surprised to see that it played fine some videos that iTunes didn’t want to accept and sync with my device. They played perfectly fine with Filer without any lag, glitches or dropped frames. And some of those, were FullHD.

It seems iPhone 4 is capable of playing full HD videos without any tuning, you just need the right app. I’ve also tested this on an iPad, and guess what – it worked like a charm as well.

Unfortunately, there is still no official XviD/DivX player to make our life easier. CineXPlayer for the iPad is a nice and free XviD capable app that handles most of the files you throw at it. But it’s an iPad-only app for now and there is no word if an iPhone/iPod version is under the way.

However, if you have a jailbroken iDevice (like mine), you can install the iPad version on your iPhone4 and have some of the XviD magic too.

As soon as I got it running on both the iPad and the iPhone 4, CineXPlayer played about 60% of the files I threw at it, which is a lot better than I expected from a free app. It also supports the iTunes file sharing service, so you can easily upload and download videos to it – much like with Filer. And best of all, it plays XviD and DiVX videos just as easily. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any FullHD video in that file format to test it out, but most 720p videos ran just fine.
If you want to install CineXPlayer on your iPhone follow this guide. The iPad users can get it from the AppStore. Filer is compatible with both the iPad and the iPhone 4 and you can get it from your AppStore as well.

Facebook Launches a Live Video Channel

Facebook, which is already widely used as a platform for distributing live video, is making a play of its own with a new app called Facebook Live.
However, unlike services like Ustream and Livestream that offer live video features for Facebook Pages, Facebook Live is more of a channel dedicated to the happenings of the social networking company as opposed to a platform for others.

In a statement, the company says it will be using Facebook Live “to be your window into what’s new at Facebook,” including celebrity guests that stop by the company’s HQ, demos of new features from employees and special events taking place (conceivably, things like the f8 conference).

The app itself looks a lot like other live video platforms, with integrated chat that broadcasts out to the News Feed. It’s also embeddable, and the company will be testing it out when actress America Ferrera stops by at 6 p.m. ET this evening.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook goes about promoting the feature. Might we see notifications in the News Feed when a big guest stops by the company’s HQ? That would give the site an opportunity to aggregate some huge audiences around live video, though it remains to be seen if that’s in the cards or if this is more of a PR move to make the company feel more personable.
Either way, it’s a nice boon for Livestream, which has been chosen as the official live video partner for the project.

Featured Column

YouTube gets a refreshed splash screen

YouTube is today rolling out a new-look screen which displays at the end of every video, showing related videos and further interactions including the ability to "like" and "share" the just-watched clip.

Capping off one of the biggest re-design periods in YouTube's history, the YouTube team have reportedly begun the roll-out of a refreshed splash screen -- which has remained largely unchanged for some time -- that features the ability to interact further with the video, bringing it up to scratch with the rest of the new-look site.

The previous iteration of the screen showed less information and didn't allow users to "like" videos, although the ability to comment and share the video (e.g. embed codes) were shown.

While it's not showing on all videos just yet, and an official announcement is still pending, select videos across YouTube when visited are now displaying the new screen (there's a screenshot of the screen below).

The past three months have been extremely hectic for the YouTube team. They've rolled out a new mobile site, launched the beta of YouTube Leanback, made the video pages cleaner and simpler, launched a new "Playlist Bar", support for local music listings, upgraded support for annotations, a new video manager and promotional badges, new embed codes, and support for Google Buzz.

Is it possible to convert video without losing quality?

Have you ever read the truth – “What Happens to a YouTube Video After 1,000 Uploads?” I think it’s really a convincing evidence that can be used to explain “the losing quality in video conversion” in some way. Let’s analyse some factors.

Image is out of sync
Out of sync when uploading to YouTube. I don’t see a problem with the music and video being out of sync. What I do see is that the clarity of the video when uploaded to YouTube is not there. Within the video, each picture has what I can only call a multiple ghosting affect, so that it appears each photo image is out of sync with itself.
I recorded a 1.64G AVI format video tutorial, and I use Video Sharer to convert it to the same format AVI for YouTube uploading, the size is 9.86M, then I upload the converted video onto YouTube. And you know? I download it onto my computer Hard Disk, the size become 6.17M.
The degradation in video quality is often an issue with YouTube – when you export a video, YouTube takes your video and re-encodes it quickly and at low-resolution. This means that it may not look as good. Often, after a few hours, YouTube replaces the low quality-version with a high-quality version, which may look better, but has still been re-encoded. So naturally, what happens to a YouTube video after 1000 uploads? You got it?

Video Losing Quality
First of all, I think you should know – What is HD video?HD video or High-Definition video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition (SD) video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1280×720 pixels (720p) or 1920×1080 pixels (1080i/1080p). Some DV or camera recorded video formats are also HD video such as TS, M2TS, TP etc.
Video Losing Quality. I think the best metaphor to discribe: the sunny and foggy, or sound quality of WAV vs. AMR.You may know that if a really low configuration computer/cell phone play a HD video, what might happen? Get stuck, poor image quality, video/audio out of sync, equipment crash or what else, all are likely to happen. Then what we can do is to lower the video quality for the device, that is convert to other low-resolution formats. Then what do you think about the picture quality?

Video/Audio Out Of Sync
That’s video lag, you need to convert the frame size to the lowest as possible(Sansa Fuze met this problem), adjust the Resolution to 160×112 or others. BTW, Video Bitrate is not too relevant, I tested it thousands and works great. Well, compare the video itself and the device, I think you should have got the key point. And I want to emphasize in a simplest way, think about it – the parameter(pixels) and file size were changed, data has been re-encoded, is it possible the video without losing anything after conversion?!
Well, let’s make it clearly by figure out a question which is asked by an iPod YouTuber.

When upload HD videos to Youtube or play them on iPod, you will meet this problem – you should convert videos of one format into a compatible format that works on YouTube or iPod, but why the output quality often gets bad after conversion?

Essentially speaking, convert video to other formats, it’s not so simple as upload a FLV video file to YouTube, it re-encoded the video files. So it’s impossible to convert HD video without losing any quality as the code compress process would destroy most of unimportant data and affect parameter adjustment. BTW, what a good video converter can do is to reduce the quality losing as possible as we can.

As to Upload HD video to YouTube, for best results, you may download the High Resolution version of your video from Animoto and upload it to YouTube (not using our Export feature). Off-topic!

Another question: Can i convert my poor quality movie to high definition video so that it become more clearly? Seems unacceptable, at least, it doesn’t work currently. Hah~ Maybe you can ask FBI or Criminal Institutions Moving Pictures Experts, I think they are what we so-called Professional.
Re-encoded the video files to realize the different formats conversion. And even upload&download video can cause losing quality. Obviously&Definitely – convert video without losing quality – the baseless bullshit for ads. But whatever, someone creates it, someone(consumer) likes it, what can i say more! What do you say?

Video hits: free download videos from Vimeo, Veoh, Vidilife, Vidmax

Here new video hits for you guys YouTubers, Video fans. YouTube is good, and definitely YouTube is the world’s largest social video sharing site. Even though it provides video uploading in various languages from different countries, but those people who vary in the styles of culture are with unique tastes of appreciation. Here recommend you some: how to free download videos from Vimeo, Veoh, Vidilife, Vidmax.

In Vimeo, Veoh, Vidilife, Vidmax, there’s Funny Videos, Crazy Videos, Video Clips, Sexy Videos, Music video clips, Watch TV Online, Music, Movies, many kinds of video tutorial, also provide spacial column for Anime Fans. Just follow my steps, I think anyone of you can find your funs there, and download enjoy videos for free.

Step1. Download, install and launch Video Sharer.

Step2. Open those sites, there are two ways to download Vimeo, Veoh, Vidilife, Vidmax videos:
Ⅰ, Traditional ways: Click “Add URL”, copy and past the video URL to corresponding spot, click “OK” button, your desired video will be downloaded. Ⅱ, Tick ”Automatic capture”, open one of the online videos, then just waiting for the downloaded video files.

Step3. Click “Open video folder” and you’ll get the downloaded videos.

Video Sharer also support batch downloading(free download video from dozens of social video sharing sites, legal adult video sites.) and batch conversion. Tab “Download” to “Convert”, then you can use it convert video to various video/audio formats for various portable devices such as iPod, iPhone, PSP etc. (can also edit video by trim&crop functions.)

Video Sharer Guides&Tips.