YouTube is giving Shorts creators access to a much larger toolkit. Creators will be able to clip and remix up to five seconds of any eligible video or Short in their own shorts. The feature should be available for everyone on iOS in the coming weeks, and it'll come to Android later this year.
The tool builds on an audio remixing option YouTube added last year. To remix a regular video, tap the Create button and then Cut from the remix options. You can then choose which part of the video that you want to use in your Short. If you'd like to remix someone else's short, tap the three-dot menu button, then select Cut.
Shorts that remix other videos will automatically include attribution for the original. Those who don't want their videos to be remixed can opt out in YouTube Studio.
Adding a video remix tool is a smart move. Remixing options played an important role in TikTok's success, while Instagram added a similar option in January. The feature will give current Shorts creators a much bigger palette and it might entice some newcomers to try making Shorts as well. Limiting the length of remix clips to five seconds might seem a little constricting, but inventive creators should still be able to make the most of it.
On top of that, it'll now be somewhat easier for Shorts creators to find an audience. Those videos will be available to view on the web and YouTube's tablet app in the coming weeks. Until now, they've only been viewable in the mobile app.
WhatsApp will start experimenting with Communities, an update that represents a “major evolution” for the messaging app, according to Mark Zuckerberg. An unreleased version of the feature was first spotted last year, but the company hadn’t confirmed its existence until now.
Communities will allow people to combine separate group chats “under one umbrella with a structure that works for them,” WhatsApp wrote in a blog post. “That way people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them.”
The company hasn’t shared details around exactly how these groups will be formed, but a spokesperson said the idea is to give “close-knit groups” more ways to communicate beyond the chat features currently offered by WhatsApp. The company will start testing the feature later this year in “select countries,” but will eventually make it available globally.
In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg said that Communities would be a major shift for WhatsApp and Meta, one that emphasizes “feeds” and traditional social networking features less than “community messaging.”
“In the same way that social feeds took the basic technology behind the internet and made it so anyone could find people and content online, I think community messaging will take the basic protocols behind one-to-one messaging and extend them so you can communicate more easily with groups of people to get things done together,” he wrote. He added that Meta was working on similar features for Messenger, WhatsApp and Facebook as well.
It’s also a playbook Meta has used in the past. In 2017, Zuckerberg tried to reorient Facebook around Groups and “meaningful communities.” The company started building new feature for Groups and encouraging users to join as part of its new mission to "bring the world closer together.” Zuckerberg seems to be following the same strategy now with WhatsApp, which is far more popular than Facebook in much of the world.
Making WhatsApp more like Groups on Facebook also comes with some risks, though.Facebook’s earlier pivot to Groups may have resulted in increased polarization on the platform, and Groups have also been pegged as major sources of misinformation on the platform. And WhatsApp, which due to its encryption lacks many of the moderation tools available to Facebook, has already struggled with misinformation and other problematic content. Making it even easier to connect disparate group threads into one place could potentially exacerbate these issues.
A spokesperson said the company is “building a number of updates” focused on safety, and pointed to new controls that allow admins to delete messages and existing limits on message forwarding.
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, SpaceX boss, that guy, has been Twitter’s largest shareholder for mere weeks but has packed in enough drama and turmoil to make it feel like months.
He’s now facing legal action over the handling of his latest investment. A Twitter shareholder has filed a class-action lawsuit against Musk over his 11-day delay in officially disclosing his investment in Twitter to the SEC.
It continues the bizarre ebb and flow between the Tesla CEO and Twitter. After becoming the social network’s biggest shareholder, Musk agreed to join Twitter’s board of directors. Then, the decision was reversed following several days of bizarre tweets from Musk, who polled his Twitter followers on whether the company should change its name and speculated on whether the service was “dying.”
As we noted in our report, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal told employees it was “for the best” that Musk ultimately wouldn’t take the position on the board.
No Man’s Sky is already an enormous game, and it keeps growing. Hello Games has now launched its Outlaws update, which adds smuggling as well as the game’s first new starship in two years. You can buy illicit goods in outlaw systems and sell them for a hefty profit in a regulated system, as long as you're able to smuggle them in, helping to flesh out your very own take on Han Solo, but with derpy dinosaurs and occasional heavy resource management.
Robosen Robotics' Optimus Prime robot can automatically transform into a truck, just like the movie/cartoon versions, but it will cost you $900 for the privilege. Now, Hasbro and Robosen have launched a companion Trailer and Roller set for Optimus Prime. You just need another $750.
Remember when the company blasted Apple’s 30 percent cut?
Meta has confirmed to CNBC that it will take a total 47.5 percent cut from digital asset sales in Horizon Worlds, including 30 percent through the Meta Quest Store and 17.5 percent through Horizon Worlds itself.
Meta is promising "goal-oriented" bonuses to virtual developers whose worlds are particularly active. Nonetheless, the rate isn't exactly pleasing to digital product makers.
CD Projekt Red has delayed its Witcher 3 free next-gen upgrade "until further notice" after deciding to finish the project with an internal development team instead of Saber Interactive. The company wants to evaluate the necessary "scope of work," according to a statement.
The update was originally slated to arrive before the end of June.
Meta is going hard on its vision for augmented reality and the metaverse. According to anonymous sources talking to The Verge, the company aims to launch its first AR glasses in 2024. These would be followed by a "lighter, more advanced" model in 2026 and a third iteration in 2028. The initial model would be independent of your phone, but you would need a "phone-shaped device" to handle the computing part and rely on a wristband for controls. Are you ready for some AR accessories?
TikTok is testing a way for users to “dislike” comments in an effort to help people “feel more in control” over what they are seeing. The company revealed the experiment in a blog post about its most recent community guidelines enforcement report, which tracks how TikTok is enforcing its safety policies.
For now, TikTok hasn’t provided many details about exactly how the feature will work or what it looks like. Some users who appear to be part of the test have shared screenshots on Twitter of a thumbs down button appearing next to the heart in videos’ comment sections. The company did specify that individual users will have no way of knowing if their comment has been disliked, so it seems that dislike counts will not be viewable in the same way that likes are. (The screenshots show no numbers next to the thumbs down.)
“We've started testing a way to let individuals identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate,” the company explained. “This community feedback will add to the range of factors we already use to help keep the comment section consistently relevant and a place for genuine engagement. To avoid creating ill-feeling between community members or demoralize creators, only the person who registered a dislike on a comment will be able to see that they have done so.”
The subject of “dislikes” on social media has been somewhat of a controversial topic. YouTube, which had public dislikes for years, recently made dislike counts private saying that the feature was contributing to targeted harassment on the platform. Though some creators welcomed the move, it’s proved so controversial that even one of YouTube’s co-founders has protested the change.
In TikTok’s case, it sounds like dislikes will be much more limited than how YouTube has used them, at least for now. The company has so far suggested the feature is meant to help inform how it ranks comments and give creators a way to control which ones are most visible.
Apple is looking to build on the success of TV+ by locking in Tom Hanks' production company to an exclusive multi-year deal. The agreement with Playtone covers series, documentaries and unscripted projects.
Hanks is also set to star in a sequel to World War II movie Greyhound. The thriller was one of the most-watched projects on Apple TV+, according to Deadline. Apple scooped up distribution rights to the film in 2020. Greyhound was supposed to be released theatrically, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it from being released in theaters. There was a similar situation with Finch, a post-apocalyptic survival film in which Hanks' character is accompanied on the road by his dog and a helper robot. That movie hit Apple TV+ in November.
Apple has had a working relationship with Playtone, which was founded by Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman, for a few years. It was announced in 2019 that the two companies and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television were working on Masters of the Air, a follow-up series to Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Production of the show has wrapped, but a release date hasn't been announced.
Adding more shows and movies from Playtone to the library will bolster Apple TV+, which is on a great run. It just became the first streaming service to win the Best Picture Oscar (for CODA) while sitcom Ted Lasso enjoyed huge success at last year's Emmys. Recent shows like Severance and Slow Horses have earned acclaim as well.
Clubhouse has started testing an in-room gaming feature, the company has confirmed to TechCrunch, and its debut game could help users get to know each other better. The feature's launch title called "Wild Cards" presents users a series of icebreaker questions and challenges. It could ask you to "pitch an idea for a movie in 60 seconds," for instance, or to "share five things from your search history." To play, you'll have to choose the "Games" option under +Rooms. It'll open a social room for you where you can invite friends to play.
As TechCrunch notes, launching a feature not offered by other audio services such as Twitter Spaces could be part of Clubhouse's efforts to get new users to stay. The audio chat app shot up in popularity in the early days of the pandemic when full lockdowns were implemented and people were looking to connect with friends and strangers in new ways. Its success led to the development and launch of other audio products by more well-known companies, including Facebook's audio rooms, Spotify's Greenroom (that's been rebranded as Spotify Live) and Amazon's Amp.
Clubhouse's popularity and download numbers took a hit when those rival services emerged, especially after pandemic restrictions started lifting. A lot of users chose to move to more established social networks offering similar audio services, because they already have an existing network on those platforms. Still, Clubhouse told The New York Times back in December that it's still growing and that the company is confident it's not just a pandemic fad. Over the past few months, the service has released a handful of new and experimental features in an effort to get users to stay. One of them is the chat function in voice rooms for those who'd rather text, and the other is support for web listening in the US.
After nearly two years of PlayStation and Epic Games Store exclusivity, indie darling Bugsnax is making its way to additional platforms. Starting April 28th, you can play the game on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Steam, in addition to PlayStation 5 and PS4 as was previously the case. The game is also coming to Xbox and PC Game Pass, as well as Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming platform.
That same day, developer Young Horses will release The Isle of Bigsnax, a free content update that adds a new island for players to explore. The studio estimates the DLC includes three to four hours of additional gameplay for players to complete.
On the island, you’ll find new Bugsnax, including one that’s a mashup of a stick bug with celery for its long, tendril-like legs. Additionally, the update adds new challenges in the town of Snaxbug. Completing those will reward you with furniture and accessories you can use to decorate your in-game personal hut. But the most exciting part of the update is that you’ll be able to find hats for your Bugsnax.
You can see all the improvements detailed in the trailer above. The new versions of Bugsnax will cost $25 if you decide to buy them to own.
While Apple's iMovie software has always been a fairly powerful piece of movie-editing software, its main appeal is that it's a free and simple way to start making your own videos. But iMovie for the iPhone and iPad offers surprisingly little in the way of direction when you open it — it's up to the user to figure out how to structure their movie.
Apple is changing that significantly today with iMovie 3.0 for iOS and iPadOS, a free download that's available now. The software features two new creation modes, Magic Movie and Storyboards, to help people build videos for the first time.
Magic Movie automates a lot of the video creation process while still leaving room for plenty of customization, assuming you want to dig into the details. Apple recommends you start by choosing an album with related video clips and photos, but you can also manually select images and videos. From there, Magic Movie will analyze the content and look for things like faces, dialog and action to select the best parts of video clips and build out a movie from there, complete with transitions and music. The end result reminds me a lot of the "memories" that the iOS Photos app automatically builds — those memories also mix video and photo from the same day or event and adds a soundtrack and transitions to it.
Apple
Once Magic Movie puts together a project for you, there's a ton of customization you can do from there. Naturally, you can remove photos or videos that you don't want in the project, as well as quickly trim clips to show only the action you want. Instead of using a traditional horizontal timeline view, clips and images are contained in a vertically-scrolling left-side column (on the iPhone, it shows up below the video preview); you can easily drag and drop them to reorder the flow of your video. And tapping on an item in the left-side column gives you a bigger set of editing controls.
Another big part of iMovie 3.0's customization tools are a feature called Styles. These apply to the entire video and include things like fonts, color palettes and filters, music and transitions. There are a total of 20 to choose from, and while you can just set one and forget it, you also have the option to go in and adjust those individual characteristics if you want greater control over the final product.
Apple
The Storyboards features has a lot in common with Magic Movie, but it's a more manual tool. Storyboards starts by giving you more than 20 different video templates to choose from — options include video themes like "DIY," "day in the life," "how it works," "gaming," "Q&A" and so forth. When you select one of those options, the left side column populates with a rough structure for that video style, including broad categories and then examples of specific shots.
Apple
In a demo, Apple showed off a DIY project, which includes categories like "intro," "overview," "supplies" and so forth. Each of those sections is then populated with suggestions for different types of shots (wide shot, close-up and so forth). While you can obviously just import videos from your library right into these suggestions, you can also shoot directly on your iPhone or iPad and have that clip inserted into the slot.
As with Magic Movie, you can re-order and delete any suggestions from the left-side column, and tapping into it lets you do more involved editing. And the new Styles that are part of Magic Movie can be applied here, as well. The basic idea behind Storyboards is to give aspiring creators a framework to use when trying to put together a video, and while I haven't tried the app yet it does seem like a smart idea. As someone who has done very little video editing in his time, I could definitely see using a Storyboard as inspiration to get started on a video if I had an idea I wanted to pursue.
Once you have your creation finished, you can export it in a variety of video formats, in resolutions up to 4K; HDR content you may have filmed with be retained, as well. You can also export your iMovie project and open it up on a Mac. But before you do so, you should know that Storyboards and Magic Movie features are only available when using iMovie on an iPad or iPhone. Videos created with those tools will be exported in a format compatible with iMovie on the Mac, but you won't be able to edit or change Styles, for example.
If you want to try these new iMovie features, the updated app arrives today and will work on any iPhone running iOS 15.2 or higher, and on any iPad running iPadOS 15.2 or higher.
The alt-history space race drama For All Mankind is headed to Mars for its third season. Apple unveiled a trailer today for the upcoming season, set to debut on June 10th. While the second season depicted a turf war on the moon between the US and the Soviets set in the eighties, the newest season fast-forwards to 1995. The US is vying to be the first country on Earth to colonize Mars.
Fans of the show can expect to see a mix of familiar faces and new ones. Last season's finale depicted the untimely demise of Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman) and Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones). Sonya Walger is returning as Molly Cobb, despite being exposed to (at least what seemed) like a fatal dose of radiation during her walk on the Moon. Returning cast members include Joel Kinnaman (Ed Baldin), Shantel VanSanten (Karen Baldwin), Jodi Balfour (Ellen Wilson) and Cynthy Wu (Kelly Baldwin). Also due back are Coral Peña as Aleida Rosales and Casey W. Johnson as Danny Stevens.
You can watch the new (albeit, frustratingly brief) teaser below.
There’s a big difference between merely liking a show and it being your all-time favorite. Netflix’s recommendation algorithm will now be able to distinguish between the two. The streaming service is adding a “Two Thumbs Up” option to its rating system. Viewers will notice the new option starting today, right next to the traditional “Thumbs Up and “Thumbs Up” icon across all devices.
How do you know whether a show or movie deserves one or two “Thumbs Up”? If you liked the genre or style of a show and want to see similar titles, a single thumb is a safe bet. For example, giving a single thumbs up to a show like Russian Doll means you'll see more mystery or dramedy shows with a woman as a leading character. Liking a show like Midsomer Murders means Netflix will serve you up even more British detective dramas.
But when you throw out a “Two Thumbs Up”, Netflix’s suggestions will become even more tailored to actors or specific creators. “...A Two Thumbs Up tells us what you loved and helps us get even more specific with your recommendations. For example, if you loved Bridgerton, you might see even more shows or films starring the cast, or from Shondaland," said Christine Doig-Cardet, Netflix's director of product innovation in a blog post.
Netflix’s thumbs-based rating system has had its fair share of critics in recent years. The platform replaced its five-star rating system in 2017, much to the chagrin of armchair movie critics everywhere. As one Redditor points out, it's hard to know what to rate a mediocre film from a director you normally love. Viewers worried that giving a “Thumbs Down” to a less-than-stellar show from a favorite genre could throw off Netflix’s algorithm. One example could be zombie fans who don’t like the movie Zombieland, or fans of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy who didn’t care for Waking Life. Hopefully the new addition to Netflix’s rating system will lead to more well-tailored suggestions. Or at least less bad ones.
