Posted by Ankit "Chunky" Gupta (Software Engineer) and Alok Goel (Product Manager)
[cross-posted from the Official Google Mobile Blog]

At Google, we are committed to giving you a consistent user experience across products and devices, and we really value the feedback you've given us about Google News for mobile. Today we're excited to announce a completely new Google News offering for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre users. (We already offer a mobile-optimized version of Google News for other phones, such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and S60, and more improvements will be coming to those in the near future)

This new version provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop. Our new homepage displays more stories, sources, and images while keeping a familiar look and feel. Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks. If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too.

Google News for mobile is now available in 29 languages and 70 editions.

So pick up your mobile phone and point your browser to http://news.google.com to catch up on news anytime and anywhere. Feel free to check out more information or leave feedback in our Help Center.

Posted by Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics
[cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Every day, people with video cameras are changing the ways we get our news. We see it during elections. We see it during earthquakes, fires and other natural disasters. We see it on our freeways, in our schools and in our public spaces. Almost any event that takes place today has a chance of being captured on camera. As YouTube has become a global platform for sharing the news, media organizations have been looking for a good way to connect directly with citizen reporters on our site so they can broadcast this footage and bring it to a larger audience.

That's why we created YouTube Direct, a new tool that allows media organizations to request, review and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from YouTube users. Built from our APIs, this open source application lets media organizations enable customized versions of YouTube's upload platform on their own websites. Users can upload videos directly into this application, which also enables the hosting organization to easily review video submissions and select the best ones to broadcast on-air and on their websites. As always, these videos also live on YouTube, so users can reach their own audience while also getting broader exposure and editorial validation for the videos they create.



Though we built YouTube Direct to help news organizations expand their coverage and connect directly with their audiences, the application is designed to meet any organization's goal of leveraging video content submitted by the community. Businesses can use YouTube Direct to solicit promotional videos, nonprofits can use the application to call-out for support videos around social campaigns and politicians can use the platform to ask for user-generated political commercials. The opportunities to use the tool are as broad as the media spectrum itself.

Already, we've seen ABC News, the Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and WHDH-TV/WLVI-TV in Boston using YouTube Direct. We look forward to seeing many more organizations to do the same.

To get started, visit youtube.com/direct.

Posted by Andy Golding, Google News Software Engineer

Given the feedback we get from publishers, we've redesigned our interface to make Google News Sitemaps more flexible and easier to submit. [As a reminder, a Google News Sitemap is a file created by publishers which gives you even more control over the content you submit to Google News].

We're currently in the midst of an exciting transition period and need your help to avoid interruption in crawling your content.

To facilitate this transition, we'll have a six-month grandfather period during which you can continue to use the old format for any existing Sitemap that was originally submitted using the old format. Any new Sitemap submission must follow the new format. Please take a few minutes to make the shift. If no change is made by the end of the grandfather period, you'll no longer receive the benefits of having your articles crawled via a Google News Sitemap.

If your site is already included in Google News and you haven't submitted a Google News Sitemap yet, we encourage you to do so in order to manage your news content. Please visit our updated instructions for details on how to start using the new format.

Main changes in this release:

• Publication Label Pulldown Menu: The publication label pulldown menu no longer exists in Webmaster Tools. Instead, you should now attach the equivalent information to each individual article in your Sitemap, as described below.
  
  Note: For previously-submitted Sitemaps in the old format, we will "remember" the last publication label you selected from the pulldown menu and use that; however, please update to the new format as soon as you can.


• New tags: In place of the publication menu, there are now three tags that you can attach to each article in your Sitemap giving the equivalent information:


• <publication>: Specifies the name and language of the publication that the article occurs in. Required.


• <genres>: Specifies the nature of the article as a comma-separated list chosen from: PressRelease, Satire, Blog, OpEd, Opinion, and UserGenerated. Required whenever any of these properties applies to the article.


• <access>: Specifies the accessibility of the article. Choices: Subscription or Registration. Required whenever either of the choices applies.

Please visit this help article for a complete description of the new News Sitemap format.


• Title tags: Article titles can be added using the <title> tag to help us identify the right title for your articles.


• More options to resubmit your sitemap: In addition to re-submitting your Google News Sitemap through your Webmaster Tools account, you can now resubmit it two other ways: robots.txt or ping. Note: The first time you submit your Sitemap, always use Webmaster Tools.

Check out this page for more details on the transition process, and please let us know if you have questions about your Google News Sitemap. Publishers can also visit the Sitemaps section of our User Help Forum, a place to ask questions, and interact with other users and Google guides.

Posted by Sharad Jain and Nilesh Agrawal, Google News Software Engineers

Today, Google News is making it even easier to follow the latest stories on whatever subjects interest you. We are happy to announce our Custom sections directory, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability to create comprehensive sections to put on their Google News home page or share with other users.

One of the great things about online news is the ability to filter by topics. Google News has long recognized this so we've allowed users to track articles based on keywords of their choice. But it has been a little tricky at times. For example, to follow news about topics related to outer space, you would have to create a pretty complex filter.

Now, if you're using Google News and can't find the perfect section, just create your own! You can do that by adding the relevant keywords. Then, if you are happy with the resulting section, you can publish it to a directory so others can benefit.



We have created an initial set of sections to get you started. There's one on Space, and others on topics such as U.S. Foreign Policy, Global Trade, Solar Power, and Hollywood. If you like them, click on "Add this section" and they'll appear on your home page.

The feature is currently available in the Google News editions for Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and we look forward to expanding it soon.

Please visit our Help Center for more information on how to subscribe to custom sections or create them.

Posted by Mikey Levine, Software engineer

Last year we announced the launch of local news in the U.S., and later in the UK, India, Canada and Germany. Today we're delighted to let you know that we're making this feature available for France.

The Local news section lets you keep track of current events in your area. Once implemented, the top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results, and our rankings also take into account a publication's location to promote local sources for each story.

We work hard to improve our algorithm, including its ability to understand the relevant locations for a news story and the location of the source that reports a story. We also train our algorithm to detect when a news article is reporting about a particular location and when it's not. The city of Paris (also a world celebrity) has proven particularly challenging in this respect.

How can I add Local News to my Google News homepage?
To get started, look for the local section on your front page and enter your city or postal code in the local search bar, shown here:

If you don't see this section, you can also set up your local news by clicking "Personalize this page" on the top right of the page. On the menu that comes up, click "Add a local section":

Once you've clicked on this local section link, you'll see a place to enter a postal code or city. Use the drop-down menu to choose the number of stories you'd like to see. Once you click "Add Section" you'll see this section on your personalized Google News page.

As always, we're always working to improve our product, and appreciate your feedback.