Google

The New America Foundation, like half the sites on the web, makes extensive use of embedded YouTube videos. We long ago made the decision to use YouTube as our de facto video hosting service -- both for the added exposure it offers to New America events, and for the simple reason that the cost of storing and streaming our hundreds of hours of video was more than the organization could afford.*

This evening, though, I hopped over to NewAmerica.net and was greeted with the unpleasant surpise of YouTube search boxes plastered atop every one of our embedded videos. Apparently this "feature" was unveiled last month, but must have been rolled out gradually -- because at 6pm, our homepage looked like this:

and at 11pm it looked like this:

Such is life when you're relying on free web services and third-party APIs, but it's definitely not the look we're looking for. And the effect was even worse on our event pages, where the video search box appeared almost directly below our site search box -- making things confusing as well as clunky.

Luckily, Google is pretty good about making this stuff optional -- it'd be nice if such "improvements" were opt-in rather than opt-out, but it's an easy fix.

The New America Foundation -- the think tank that signs my paychecks -- is hosting an event next Tuesday with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, focusing on tech policy, the economy and open government.

Schmidt, who chairs New America's board of directors and is also serving on President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, will be speaking at 1pm at the Ronald Reagan Building. From the official announcement:

Schmidt will explore the ways in which technology can help the new administration and Congress address two of the biggest challenges ahead: generating the kind of short- and long-term economic and job growth that can help pull the nation out of financial distress, and restoring public trust in government. He will offer specifics on such topics as the need to build a 21st Century Infrastructure, support for research and innovation, repairs for our education system, and ways to make the government more open and responsive.

The event will be webcast live, or you can RSVP to attend in the flesh at http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/eric_schmidt. Should be a good discussion...

Looks like Google is serious about that whole "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible" thing.

A belated reminder for a panel discussion I'm moderating tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb. 26) at Google's DC offices.

A quick summary and list of the panelists follows. It looks to be a full house, but last-minute attendees are welcome.

Much like their mass-market cousins, publishers that target DC decision-makers are scrambling to adapt to a rapidly changing digital landscape - trying to capitalize on "web 2.0" trends while also protecting their existing reader bases and business models.

GrandCentral.com -- the Google-acquired service that offers "one number for life" and a host of call forwarding /screening/management tools -- is tiptoeing out of private Beta and effectively giving out numbers to anyone who wants one. (Well, anyone in 46 of the 48 continental United States, anyway.)

Has everyone forgotten that copyright exists primarily to encourage the public good that can come from intellectual property? That helping to compensate the content creator is a means for getting good ideas out there, not an end unto itself?

The Wall Street Journal reports today that a coalition of "Internet, media and technology companies" is set to announce... a set of guidelines they have agreed on aimed at protecting copyrights online."

Jeff Atwood is taking YouTube to task for its wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to uploading copyrighted video clips.

It's a valid point, and I especially like his quip that "by YouTube's own rules, YouTube cannot exist." But YouTube's copyright tips also qualify as a "big copyright lie" in another sense: they seriously downplay the importance of fair use.

On ars technica yesterday, Nate Anderson wrote about the Computer & Communications Industry Association's "Defend Fair Use" initiative.

It's a nice run-down of the effort by Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sun, Red Hat, and others to rein in the overly broad copyright notices that accompany sports broadcasts, DVDs and a wide range of other "big media." Toward the end, however, Anderson notes:

GrandCentral -- the "one phone number for life" venture acquired by Google earlier this year -- has drawn criticism a couple times on this site, but that's been tough love. I really do like the service, and here's another reason why:

OK, so GrandCentral under Google is now 0 for 2. First they turned off the custom MP3 feature, and now they're dropping "a very small number" of the phone numbers that have already been issued:

Hmm. Wasn't the whole point to quit giving out your home/work/mobile numbers, and instead steer everyone to this cool new GrandCentral number "that you can keep for life"?