For a company that vowed one year ago to reinvent the wheel of social networking, Google has generally remained an abstract force to even the most loyal users, who cooled on the idea of using G+ to share with their circles — even if enhancements suggest that the courtship is still in progress.

So, it was a surprise to learn of a YouTube Workshop being held in Toronto on Tuesday at OCAD — just one stop on a cross-Canada tour — with the promise of insights on how to go viral, reach the right audience and profit from the creation of original online videos. Could this be the beginning of more outreach in the city where its presence — at least outside of advertising sales — has been a long-distance shadow cast from Silicon Valley?

"I don't have all the answers," cautioned audience development strategist Andres Palmiter — who is neither a YouTube creator nor engineer but an erstwhile employee of producer Next New Networks, which Google bought last year. "I'm just giving you the ingredients and you make the recipe yourself."

The ongoing transformation of YouTube is a feature story in the current issue of The New Yorker — a reflection of the fact that Google has developed more plans for it than just hosting user videos in perpetuity. Getting people to watch its content with the same dedication still granted to cable TV is the next natural step.

A growing consensus is that all the platform needs to show itself worthy of many billions more in annual advertising dollars is the first must-see smash hit series. Where exactly the breakthrough is going to come from remains a bit of a mystery.

While the company has developed partnerships with amateur content producers, the bigger news has been a $100 million investment in the rollout of professional channels, designed to hook in viewers for more than an occasional distraction. Whether that means an increased potential of exposure for independent productions, or if the most oddball ideas will have to work harder to draw eyeballs, also remains to be seen.

Calgary.ca earned some attention this week for being transformed into what a press release deigned to claim is the "first search-based website in Canada."

The venture is powered by Google Search Appliance, even though the home page looks more like rival engine Bing, with the search bar augmented with large photos of the resurgent city.

Indeed, the effort combined Microsoft Share Point software with other Google tools, and was highlighted on the promotional blog for the Search Appliance. Predictably, the new format was motivated by complaints that would be familiar to anyone who ever wrestled with a government website.

While the launch fit into the outreach narrative threaded by Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, his Toronto counterpart was exposed for being trigger-happy on Facebook — even if Rob Ford has delegated social media management to others in his office.

Questioning the fact that Ford showed up to dance in his dress pants at the Caribbean Carnival, while steering clear of anything to do with Pride week, was not welcome on the wall. Asking for answers about his behaviour is apparently enough to have your "like" undone.

Amidst the other communication-related shenanigans surrounding Toronto City Hall, though — including a Ford administration support group on Facebook where the administrator, city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, promised to block the input of any communist he could smell — the idea that the elected leader of the city would stifle discussion from citizens couldn't stir up any new outrage.

Facebook came up in conversation over dinner with a group of friends from university. We all attended McGill between 2004 and 2008, and we entered university at exactly the same time that Facebook began to be available outside of those first Ivy League schools, the first Canadian school they expanded to being McGill.

In a sense, we're Facebook veterans. We remember before liking, before fan pages, before grown-ups or high school kids could have profiles. We remember when the Wall was anonymous, when you logged in at http://www.thefacebook.com and all the many upsets of Facebook design changes.

And so it's now that I am beginning to worry, now when the flames of fury that we felt about every minute change have finally died down. Resignedly, we discussed the new features of the site ("why can't they stay the same? it worked fine!"), and trotted out the same tired "I'm seriously thinking of committing Facebook suicide." lines. But whereas we once complained about the privacy policy and the Beacon advertising system, we now bemoan the sorting of the News Feed or the 'comment by hitting enter' aspect.

Similarly, this Techcrunch article outlines a handful of concerns Orli Yakuel has with Facebook redesigns, but, as with my friends, the concerns are with cosmetic changes, not the privacy issues or data-mining tactics Facebook is angling to implement. There's a reason for this:

Recorded Future is a temporal analytics engine that attempts to predict the future by understanding the past and the present. It does this by analyzing archived data, partly to look for recurring patterns that lead to predictive outcomes, but also by focusing on language that points to time, possibly indicating intent. Weather forecasting is an obvious area in which this kind of calculation already takes place, with historical and real time data combined to predict short and long term weather patterns. The company behind Recorded Future is taking a similar approach, but seeks to apply it much more broadly.

The technology Recorded Future employs is reminiscent of a search engine with three fields: What, Who/Where, and When. When these are completed, the engine attempts to answer the query, displaying a visualization that shows historical data, current trends, and forecast events or patterns. It costs 150 USD per month to use the search engine and visualization tools, but "future alerts" are provided free. These alerts are basically "blind searches" as you're using the search engine, only getting the results emailed to you one at a time as they are predicted.

At five years old, YouTube serves two billion videos daily and is a dominant player in the global media industry. Taking a step back, it's interesting to consider how YouTube got here and what the relationship between Google and YouTube has produced.

I know this may seem a little tardy, but I thought it would be nice to collect a few of the most interesting musings on Google, in case you have somehow missed the biggest non-Apple news of 2010. This has already been a big year for Google, between the announcement that it was leaving China, the launch of the Nexus One, Google Buzz, and their energy and broadband initiatives. Without further ado...