Fast Company

When it launched in 2007, YouTube’s copyright control system was far from perfect. But Content ID has grown smarter and more lucrative.

When it launched in 2007, YouTube’s copyright control system was far from perfect. But Content ID has grown smarter and more lucrative.

When Google bought the world’s biggest user-generated video site in 2006, the company knew it could also be be acquiring the world’s biggest legal headache. So a year after YouTube became a Google subsidiary, it launched a copyright management tool that only a company with Google’s scale and knack for innovative problem solving could muster: Content ID.

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Text, still images, and GIFs are now part of the mix that the service gives creators to keep their fans engaged.

Text, still images, and GIFs are now part of the mix that the service gives creators to keep their fans engaged.

Last March, half a dozen people met for breakfast at Hugo’s, a restaurant in Los Angeles. Two of them were John and Hank Green, the brothers who are among YouTube’s most popular content creators as well as the founders of VidCon, the annual festival that brings together fans, creators, and industry types for a celebration of online video.

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The company’s CEO talks about focusing on news, ramping up video, incorporating AI, balancing safety with freedom of speech, and more.

The company’s CEO talks about focusing on news, ramping up video, incorporating AI, balancing safety with freedom of speech, and more.

In a tech industry full of executives prone to loudly proclaiming their intention to transform the world in multiple ways all at once, Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey stands out for his understated approach, which involves picking a few things that matter and then obsessing over them. Our October cover story chronicles the focus that he’s chosen for Twitter: making it the best place to follow live news and events, including even NFL games and other sports playing right inside the app. That’s how the company hopes to defy its skeptics—who, more than ever, are legion—and get the world thinking of it as something other than a social network that will never catch up with Facebook in terms of sheer scale.

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It took the Chromebook just five years to become the country’s most popular education device. Here’s how Google won the classroom.

It took the Chromebook just five years to become the country’s most popular education device. Here’s how Google won the classroom.

A Mozart duet echoes through the dim auditorium of Philadelphia’s String Theory high school, performed by a pair of plaid-skirted violinists reading music off their school-issued iPads. In other classes at the performing-arts-themed public charter school, students use their iPads to plot DNA data, design graphics, and make movies. At first glance, the school is a model Apple education customer, buying into both its hardware and iOS ecosystem.

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Managing a team of rocket scientists doesn’t have to be rocket science—even if you aren’t one yourself.

Managing a team of rocket scientists doesn’t have to be rocket science—even if you aren’t one yourself.

I landed my first management position at an early-stage startup when I was just a year out of college. Whenever colleagues knocked on my door and I beckoned them in from behind my desk, it always felt like I was wearing one of my dad’s suits and just playing the part. That impostor feeling was never more acute, though, when a senior engineer would swing by to argue about something. It would go something like this:

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Photographic memory, instant artworks, instantaneous translation, lifelike virtual reality and much more are all coming to your pocket.

Photographic memory, instant artworks, instantaneous translation, lifelike virtual reality and much more are all coming to your pocket.

IPhone owners will get an upgrade on September 13 that allows them to find a picture of nearly anyone or anything, anywhere and from any time. Neural network artificial intelligence in the new iOS 10 performs 11 billion calculations in a tenth of a second on each photo snapped to figure out who people are and even what mood they’re in.

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It can be easy to slide into workaholism when you’re far away from friends and family and want your overseas gambit to work.

It can be easy to slide into workaholism when you’re far away from friends and family and want your overseas gambit to work.

Nine months ago, I boarded a plane in the U.K. with a plan to launch two businesses out of a backpack. It was to be an 8,000-mile startup pilgrimage to four countries—India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia—during which I’d bring two great business ideas to life.

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Websites and international smuggling rings are fueling a surge in overdoses thought to be due to the elephant-strength opioid carfentanil.

Websites and international smuggling rings are fueling a surge in overdoses thought to be due to the elephant-strength opioid carfentanil.

In the past few months, a string of overdoses across the U.S. has been linked to an opioid drug so potent that it’s not intended for human consumption.

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American-made label Oscar Mike grew into a successful T-shirt company by appealing to military vets—and their supporters.

American-made label Oscar Mike grew into a successful T-shirt company by appealing to military vets—and their supporters.

Strength comes in a variety of forms, including T-shirts.

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Thanks to a partnership with Foot Locker and Asics, students from the academy will soon see their designs on shelves.

Thanks to a partnership with Foot Locker and Asics, students from the academy will soon see their designs on shelves.

Some kids dream of becoming an astronaut or a fireman. D’wayne Edwards only wanted to do one thing: design shoes. He was 11 when he sketched his first sneaker using a number two pencil. But Edwards didn’t see a path forward for himself in the footwear industry. A big stumbling block was that there were no shoe design schools where he could learn the craft.

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