2021

Movies and TV can make us laugh, cry and even shape who we are. Our watchlists can be surprisingly revealing. We’re teaming up with entertainers, artists and cultural icons on a newWatch With Meseries on Google TV to share their top picks and give you a behind-the-scenes look at the TV and movies that inspired them.

You may know Taraji P. Henson from her iconic roles in “Baby Boy,” “Empire,” “Hustle & Flow,” “Hidden Figures” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” While she dominates the big screen, she’s been using her platform to promote representation. “I didn’t get into acting for fame. I do it for the lives that I can touch because representation is very important and helps build empathy for others.”

Taraji is also passionate about eradicating stigmas around mental health and believes entertainment can help bring awareness to the pain that people may be facing silently. “When I found myself doing work in the mental health field, I realized how much movies and TV help depict the struggles that others go through for us to relate to and how we should all be a little more empathetic when we’re dealing with others.”

We sat down with Taraji to learn more about her work and what she watches.

What does your watchlist say about you?

Taraji P. Henson: My watchlist says that I’m someone who loves to laugh and I’m always rooting for the underdog. My picks should hopefully give you insight into people’s lives and how we should open up our hearts and minds.

What’s your favorite holiday ritual?

Taraji P. Henson:My holiday ritual is watching “The Christmas Story” on repeat.

What’s your top choice genre?

Taraji P. Henson:Comedy is my top choice. I always want to laugh! And I think the best way to teach is through Comedy because you get to laugh, but you also don’t feel like you’re being preached to.

Do you have a favorite guilty pleasure?

Taraji P. Henson:I love watching reality TV, especially any of the Real Housewives franchises!

What’s one rule you have for watching TV or movies with a group?

Taraji P. Henson:Shut up and be quiet! I don’t want to hear you next to me talking or crunching on your popcorn.

Who’s your favorite person to nerd out about shows and movies with?

Taraji P. Henson:My best friend since the seventh grade. She was also an art student with me, and we grew up watching the movies on my watchlist together like “Sixteen Candles” and “Beaches.”

What’s the best way to watch your watchlist?

Taraji P. Henson:Wear some comfy sweats or PJs on the sofa with the lights off. Be sure to turn the sound on loud!

So get comfy and settle into Taraji’s watchlist on Google TV, rolling out over the next few days. Be sure to share with us your favorites using #WatchWithMe!

When Google moved to “work from home” due to COVID-19 in 2020, I was a Founder-in-Residence in Area 120, Google’s incubator for experimental products. I had spent the prior two years in Area 120 developing Kormo, a jobs marketplace for the “next billion users” in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. With time at home to revisit my passion for music and writing, I had a chance to reflect on my belief in creator entrepreneurship, and how to make it part of what I built next.

After spending time with dozens of creators, we consistently heard that building a digital creator business is time-consuming and difficult. This sparked a new project idea: Qaya, a product that provides web storefronts for creators who want to sell products and services directly to their audiences. Today, as part of Area 120, we are announcing Qaya’s U.S. beta launch.

Qaya is a small and agile team dedicated to helping creators build businesses on the web. Our project began with a simple idea: creators are the next generation of entrepreneurs. As the CEOs of their own businesses, they need the same commercial tools as any successful founder. Since we began live testing in early 2021, we’ve learned a lot from creators on Qaya, their fans and other creator economy projects.

Creators on Qaya sell everything from trapeze workout guides to wellness training videos, photo filters, beat packs, ASMR read-alouds, productivity templates, knitting patterns and much more. We support pay-gated and free products, with tipping, subscription and other monetization types coming soon.

Creators use Qaya as the hub for their business activity across the web. Many link to their Qaya storefronts from their social media bios, and showcase digital products they upload or products and services hosted on other sites. We provide custom yourname.channel or qaya.store/your-name URLs, with payment functionality built in.

We also developed customer management and analytics tools that creators use to connect with their fans and understand sales and content performance.

Lastly, we know it’s important for creators to grow their audiences. So we’ve started to integrate with other Google products, including YouTube’s Merch Shelf. If you’re an eligible YouTube creator, you can now promote products from Qaya directly below videos on your YouTube channel.

We’re focused on the U.S. today, but hope to bring Qaya to more countries soon. And, we’re exploring ways to support creators as they experiment with other types of digital goods.

Google has always invested in creators, from publishers on the early internet to YouTubers today. Our goal with Qaya is to explore new ways to continue this work: giving creators tools to build successful, owner-operated businesses on the web.

If you’re a creator and you’d like to work together, you can request an invitation from Qaya’s site.

Android (Go edition) launched in 2017 with the goal to help more people access the best of Android and Google through affordable, entry-level phones. Fast forward to today — over 200 million people actively use an Android (Go edition) phone.

With the recent release of Android 12 (Go edition), we’re building on what you care about — creating a faster, smarter and more privacy-friendly experience than ever before. We’re also making these phones more accessible by improving features for multilingual users and introducing new ones that keep data costs in mind.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the features coming to phones in 2022.

Faster app launches

Apps on your Android 12 (Go edition) device will launch up to 30% faster and with smoother animation — meaning they’ll open instantly, with no more waiting on a blank screen. We’ve also created the SplashScreen API so all developers can provide a consistently smooth experience when users launch their apps.

Longer battery life

Android 12 (Go edition) will automatically save battery life and storage by hibernating apps that haven’t been used for extended periods of time — which is particularly helpful for devices with limited storage capacity. Meanwhile, the updated Files Go app will allow you to recover files within 30 days, so you can confidently delete unnecessary files to free up space in the meantime.

More intelligent features

Android 12 (Go edition) also makes understanding your content easier. By navigating to your recent apps screen, you’ll see options to listen to the news and translate any on-screen content into your preferred language.

Easier app sharing

Apps are a core part of the smartphone experience, but downloading them can sometimes mean extra data charges. With Android 12 (Go edition), you’ll be able to save data by sharing apps directly with nearby devices using Nearby Share and Google Play.

Simpler device sharing

Share your device with your friends or family without worrying about privacy. We’re simplifying the guest user experience on Android 12 (Go edition) by making profiles available directly on the lock screen. You’ll be able to easily switch to a guest profile before sharing your device, and reset it once they’re done.

More privacy control

Android 12 (Go edition) will give you more transparency around apps that are accessing your data, and more controls to decide how much private information your apps can access.

To do this, we’re adding a new privacy dashboard. You’ll see a snapshot of which apps are accessing particular types of sensitive data, like the microphone, and revoke permissions if needed. And the new privacy indicator on your status bar will tell you when your apps are specifically accessing your microphone or camera.

We’re also giving you more control over how much information you share with apps. With new approximate location permissions, you can limit apps to see only your approximate location instead of a precise one. For example, limiting your weather app to your approximate location will still give you an accurate forecast.

Enjoy these upcoming features, and look out for new devices launching with Android 12 (Go edition) in 2022.

Gabby Beckford is an expert planner, even when things don’t work out as expected. Shortly after graduating from college and getting her first job in engineering, she realized that working in an office wasn’t for her. But this didn’t throw her off course, it presented an opportunity. Over the next two years, she used savings from her job to become a full-time travel blogger. On her website Packs Light, Gabby writes travel tips for Gen Z, offers influencer guides and services and runs occasional partnerships with travel brands and companies.

In February 2020, Gabby planned to go to Bali for a month. But just a week later, the lockdown took hold and airports started to shut down. True to form, she decided to turn things around. “When the pandemic hit, I was in a reactive state anyway,” she says. “It was actually a benefit because I could pivot kind of easily.”

Luckily, she could live at her mom’s house and had a consistent, if small, income from the blog. Even though she (and everyone else) was stuck at home, she doubled down on travel writing — but now, she was pitching publications.

Gabby is happily traveling the world again, and now incorporates guidance on doing so responsibly during the ongoing pandemic. She has some tips for how creators can pivot in the face of unexpected challenges, and even uncover new prospects for growth and success.

Don’t quit, adapt

Gabby noticed that many travel bloggers shifted their focus to topics like beauty or fitness, but she decided to stay true to her core mission. “I knew that no matter how long this pandemic lasts, there would be a travel reboot eventually,” she says. “So it was an investment in myself to stay in this industry and continue building when the competition was low.”

Sticking to her mission while pivoting to evergreen topics, like how to apply for a passport or travel as a full-time student, also aligned with what her followers were interested in. “Just because people stopped traveling doesn’t mean all 10,000 of my Instagram followers stopped caring about what I did, or about travel in general,” she points out. This continued focus cemented her reputation as a dedicated travel blogger.

Be ready to jump on opportunities

In the corporate world, Gabby was used to planning things a year in advance. But the uncertainty of the pandemic forced her to think just a few months ahead. “Every three months, we were reassessing,” she says.

Luckily, growing up in a military family that moved around a lot prepared her to react quickly. She started proactively reaching out to write content. “In the beginning, brands were screaming, ‘Someone give us an idea, our content schedule is out the window,’” she remembers. “It was a very unique opportunity to partner with brands I probably would never have partnered with before.”

Focus on community building

Sharing opportunities with other creators helped promote her brand and expand her network. “[On] Patreon, I’ll share if a brand comes to me for an opportunity and I can’t take it because the rate isn’t right or it’s not my brand,” she says. She also posts paid travel opportunities on her site.

Building a community grounded in generosity was essential not just for business, but for Gabby’s mental health during the early months of the pandemic. “You want to make sure you’re on the same page as everyone,” she says. “Is everyone feeling the same way I am? Is anyone else still indoors?”

Trust yourself

In difficult times, it’s natural to second-guess your choices. But indulging in doubt can be damaging. “You don’t have to have everything figured out, but you have to have the confidence and trust in yourself that you can figure it out,” she says.

Eight cousins. Six aunts and uncles. A couple of toddlers (both mine). Two (adorable) felines. Some of us will be together, while others will be staying home for the holidays this year.

Sound familiar? Thankfully, many of us have learned a thing or two about “hybrid” gatherings over the past two years. I figured if it could work for…well, work, why not for the holidays?

I’ll be using Google tools to help me host with ease no matter where my friends and family are this year, and I’ve come up with a list of tips so you can, too.

Ready to soirée? Follow these four steps to fête across technical devices and state lines.

Step 1: Draft up a pun-heavy holiday invitation in Gmail. Tailor it for your party and include a Google Calendar invite and link to the Google Meet in the invite. And if you want to keep things extra organized as responses come in, you can make a group and label it “Holiday Party 2021.” Pro tip: Set up an automated reminder to go out to your guests 24 hours before the party.

Step 2: Ahead of party time, send a note to guests attending via Google Meet about the itinerary and let them know what they’ll need to participate. For instance, if you’re hosting a cookie-making party, send the recipe ahead of time. Or if you’re going to vote on ugly sweaters, let them know about Meet’s hand raise feature and polling features so they can be sure to get their vote in (available with Google Workspace Individual).

Step 3: Make everyone feel like they’re together. Whether you host the Google Meet call from your laptop, Pixel or Google Nest Hub Max, you can cast the party to your TV using Chromecast so everyone who’s there IRL can get a good view. Ahead of party time, scope out a good spot for the device that’s hosting the meeting so those on the other end of the call can see and hear everyone. (And so your virtual guests feel present, include the instructions for casting a call to a TV in the note you send before the big day, too.)

Step 4: Welcome your guests and make room for all. With Google Workspace Individual, you can show off the hand raise feature so everyone gets a turn to tell a story or joke, enable live captions so all guests can follow the conversation flow easily, and cut out background sounds (like noisy pets!) to reduce distractions. Kindly point out where the mute button is at the start of the party, too. Distracted by the mirror image of yourself on the video call screen? Turn it off with a few clicks! Use the Layout feature so everyone is on the screen at once — no matter where they are.

Step 5: Make it fun! Tap your much cooler niece to create a party playlist on YouTube, and then screen share the tab open to your YouTube playlist for the party. (You can let your guests know they can unpin the shared tile so it doesn’t take up the whole screen.) You and your guests can also use a virtual background (you could even upload a festive backdrop like your favorite photo memories!) You can use Google Jamboard — a free-to-use, virtual whiteboard —and play an IRL-meets-online edition of Pictionary.

Step 6: Give thanks. Send a thank you email after the party wraps. If you have a Google Workspace Individual account, you can record the party for your loved ones who couldn’t attend live — just make sure to let attendees know ahead of time.

Hope you enjoyed this crash course in hybrid holiday hosting.