Google
Podcasts is Google’s first take on a standalone app for podcasts, and it is
integrated with both Google Assistant and Google Home. The free app is fairly
minimalist, sporting an uncluttered interface and a handful of features, though
the company already has more features the works.
Google
Podcasts is not ready to compete with the plethora of third-party podcast apps
for Android, but it has great potential. One of Google’s goals is to eventually
use artificial intelligence to improve the listening experience, according to
Lifewire.
How Google
Podcasts works
The Google
Podcasts home screen displays available podcasts sorted into categories, such
as trending, comedy, news and politics, and business. Once you start
subscribing and listening to podcasts, your home page changes to show more
targeted recommendations based on your listening activity. Currently, there is
no rating system or any way to rate podcasts.
From the
home screen, tap any podcast to learn more and see recent episodes, then tap
‘subscribe’ if you like what you see. Some podcasts, such as those from
National Public Radio, also have a ‘donate button’. Podcasts you are subscribed
to are listed at the top of your home screen; below you can find podcasts with
new episodes, podcasts you are currently listening to, and podcasts you are
currently downloading. To unsubscribe from a podcast, go to the podcast’s page,
tap subscribed, then tap unsubscribe on the pop-up asking if you are sure.
From the
episode description page, you can also download the episode or mark it as
played.
When you hit
play, you will see a small module at the bottom of your screen with the podcast
logo, episode name, and a pause or play button. Swipe up to see more controls
for playback speed, rewinding 10 seconds, and forwarding 30 seconds; tap and
move the playback slider left or right to fast-forward and rewind quickly.
There is
also a button to change the playback speed from 0.5x to 2.0x, and 14 options in
between and to trim silence from podcasts.
Google
Podcasts features
The Google
Podcasts app has several useful features, including downloading an episode for
offline listening and syncing podcasts across devices so you can quickly resume
an episode. Unfortunately, there is no web or desktop version yet.
Due to its
integration with Google Assistant, you can also use voice commands to control
the app; say something like “Play this American life” or “Listen to the latest
episode of The Sporkful” to begin listening to those podcasts. Other commands
include “next episode,” “pause,” and “what’s playing?”
If you are
listening to a podcast while commuting and you have still got an episode to
finish when you get home, you can transfer the audio to your Google Home. Just
say “Hey Google, play this American life,” and it will respond before resuming
the episode from where you left off.
Google is
also working on a speech-to-text transcription tool to add closed captioning
for those with hearing loss and aims to translate that into multiple languages.
Furthermore,
since only about a quarter of podcasts at the top of the charts are hosted by
women, and even fewer by people of colour, Google is also working with the
podcast industry to pave the way for underrepresented voices, via the Google
Podcasts creator program.
#Takeaway
Content
scraping
Content
scraping is an illegal way of stealing original content from a legitimate
website and posting the stolen content to another site without the knowledge or
permission of the content’s owner. Content scrapers often attempt to pass off
stolen content as their own, and fail to provide attribution to the content’s
owners.
According to
Techopedia, content scraping can be accomplished via manual copy and paste, or
may use more sophisticated techniques, such as using special software, HTTP
programming or HTML or DOM parsers.
Much of the
content that falls prey to scraping is copyrighted material; reposting it
without the copyright owner’s permission is a punishable offence. However,
scraper sites are hosted all over the world, and scrapers who are asked to remove
copyrighted content may just switch the domains or disappear.
Content
scrapers are able to drive traffic to their websites by scraping high-quality,
keyword-dense content from other sites. Bloggers are particularly susceptible
to this, probably because individual bloggers are unlikely to launch a legal
attack against scrapers. Scrapers are encouraged to continue this practice
because search engines have not yet found an effective way to filter out unique
content from scraped content, allowing scrapers to continue to benefit.
Website
administrators can protect themselves against scraping through simple measures,
such as adding links to their own site within the content. This will at least
allow them to get some traffic from scraped content. More sophisticated methods
of dealing with scraping by bots include:
Commercial
anti-bot applications
Catching
bots with a honeypot and blocking their IP addresses
Blocking
bots with JavaScript code
Punch
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