At this week’s “Made by Google” event, Google launched their Pixel 7 and 7 Pro phones, Pixel watch and Pixel Tablet; Twitter lets you Tweet mixed media types; Facebook settings let you customize your Feed; plus news from YouTube, social media and more.

Read this on the web.

Upcoming Events

It’s conference season!

October 7-9 is TwitchCon. This in-person event for Twitch streamers and fans is in person (and sold out), and does not allow streaming inside the conference. But there is an official livestream on the official Twitch channel at twitch.tv/twitch all weekend.

October 11 is Meta Connect, with a focus on VR development and “building the metaverse.” It’s free to join virtually or you can watch the live stream on the Reality Labs Facebook page. You can also join via VR with your Meta Quest 2 headset.

October 11-13 is Google Cloud Next ‘22, with sessions for businesses, developers, and data analysts and engineers. As a user, rather than a developer, I’m particularly interested in the sessions on using Google Workspace for collaboration. Register for free to join virtually and create a playlist, or watch sessions on YouTube on the Google Cloud or Google Cloud Platform channel.

October 12-14 is Microsoft Ignite, focused on Microsoft Cloud, Teams, Microsoft 365 and more. Yes, Ignite and Cloud Next cover similar territory, so you need to pick Team Google or Team Microsoft. You can register for the digital Ignite event for free.

World Mental Health Day

October 10 is World Mental Health Day and platforms are stepping up to provide resources. If you are in the US and need emotional support, call 988 or start a free confidential Lifeline chat.

Pinterest is offering active creators a free 6-month subscription to the Headspace meditation app. This is available to creators who have published at least 3 Pins a month for the last 3 months, saved at least 20 published Pins in the last 30 days, and are in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, or the United States.

Last month YouTube launched a new Personal Stories shelf that appears when you search for certain health information. This can appear for users in the US searching topics related to anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, bipolar disease, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

YouTube will show crisis resource panels (for example the ability to call a Suicide Prevention Lifeline) in search results and on the video watch pages of related content. This may appear with content about suicide, self-harm, depression, sexual assault, substance abuse and eating disorders. (US only for some topics).

A number of mental health organizations are partnering with the YouTube Health team to provide quality content - mostly Shorts - on mental health topics.

Made by Google Event

At this week’s Google hardware event, they showcased the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro phones, Pixel Watch and (coming in 2023) Pixel Tablet with charging speaker dock.

For creatives, the new camera and photo features of the Pixel 7 phones stand out.

• For blind or low vision users, Guided Frame helps frame a selfie.

• Updated HDR+ with Bracketing (originally available on the Pixel 4a) and machine learning reduces the exposure time for Night Sight photos in dark environments. Shorter exposure means sharper images.

• The Pixel 7 Pro has an ultrawide lens, Macro Focus (for super close-ups), and Super Res Zoom with Zoom Stabilization (up to 30x!).

• Cinematic Blur mode is like Portrait mode for video, “artfully” blurring the background.

• Both front and back cameras can record video at 4K60 FPS and use Speech Enhancement to isolate audio from the person speaking.

• 10-bit HDR video recording and viewing, including video recorded from Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

• Use “Dual” mode on Snapchat to simultaneously record from the front and back cameras.

• Photo Unblur is a new Google Photos editing tool that sharpens up blurry images

The Recorder app on the Pixel 7 will soon also show speaker labels to differentiate who is speaking in the recording transcription. Recorder is one of my favorite Pixel apps, since it allows audio recording with high-quality live transcription, so this is a nice update (and hopefully it will eventually come to some earlier Pixel models).

And of course there are helpful messaging features if you plan to use your phone for communicating.

Hacking Google

HACKING GOOGLE is a 6 part video series profiling Google’s security teams. It’s a slick production and interesting even for a non-technical audience (I watched the series with my mom).

YouTube and Video

If you have the Shopping tab on your YouTube channel, you can now display products from multiple stores on your videos. Learn more from Creator Insider.

YouTube Channel Members will now be notified of members-only live streams, videos and posts. More from Creator Insider.

YouTube is experimenting with “Data Stories” in YouTube Analytics in the YouTube Studio mobile app. These are insights and tips from your channel data, presented in a story-like format. Watch the sneak peek from Creator Insider.

YouTube shared an overview of the testing that went into developing Super Thanks. A lesson: optimize for conversions, not clicks.

If you use Streamyard to live stream, any recordings you have saved there can now be trimmed. Recording is available with paid plans.

Social Media: Twitter

Twitter now lets you post mixed media: videos, images and GIFs, all in the same post. You can add up to four videos, images and/or GIFs to a Tweet. Posting mixed media types is currently only available in the iOS and Android Twitter app.

If you were on Twitter this week, you have probably noticed the chatter about edited Tweets. Editing published Tweets is now available to Twitter Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. There is a 30 minute edit window, multiple edits are allowed, and viewers are able to see all edited versions.

Twitter is rolling out Soundboard audio reactions for Spaces. Available now on iOS devices.

Birdwatch notes, written by users in the Twitter Birdwatch program to give context to posts, are now visible to everyone in the US.

If you are an owner or member of a Community on Twitter, be sure you understand how Community hashtags work. Robert Wallis explains.

Social Media: Meta, Facebook, Instagram

There are more options to customize your Facebook feed. Choose “Show More” or “Show Less” on posts to let Facebook know what you want to see. Plus your Feed Preferences will let you set how much you want to see from Friends and Family, Groups and Pages. While this isn’t a new option, you can use the (hidden) “Most Recent” setting to see posts in chronological order.

Meta will shut down Bulletin, its newsletter platform, early next year. Bulletin launched in April 2021, and at one point was financially supporting 115 publications.

Meta has published a list of malicious Android and iOS apps that steal Facebook login information. These include photo editing apps (make yourself a cartoon!), VPNs, business targeted apps that promise access to hidden features, games and more. Check the list to make sure you haven’t inadvertently installed one of these malicious apps.

An internal Meta memo about Horizon Worlds metaverse VR platform says the team building it doesn't use it enough: "The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?"

Google Meet

If you are hosting a Meet meeting from a Google Workspace business or education account, you will now not only be able to see the RSVP status for all invitees in the meeting, but also information like their working location, out of office status, and whether it’s outside their working hours.

Productivity

Amazon Drive is shutting down in December 2023. It’s a service I didn’t even know I was using, since Send-to-Kindle documents are stored there. Amazon is keeping the Amazon Photos interface, and I’m guessing they will also keep the separate Kindle Content interface. I shared how to export an archive of your files (make a backup!).

If you use Google Slides on an Android device, you can now drag and drop content from other Android apps into Slides. Learn how.

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 Photo by Suzy Hazelwood at Pexels (link). Free to use, no attribution required.