Automatic Captioning & Automatic Timing from Google

I had a pleasant surprise today as I was researching how social media technology supported d/D participation. As of November 2009, Google offers automatic captioning (uses the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video) and automatic timing service (attach a script without time codes and Google will do the rest for you!) in YouTube. So, if I watch a Spanish video on YouTube, I can simply click on the cc button and have Google transcribe it into English or any of the 51 language options that are offered on the menu. Here's the Google Announcement in 2009:

For Google's blogpost and announcement on this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html

Google Software engineer Ken Harrenstien also talks about it here.

Note: Automatic captioning is NOT available for all uploaded videos yet because they are still perfecting the technology. As posted on their blog:

"It is available for now to educational partners for the initial launch: UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google & YouTube channels."

Definitely check it out!

Unaffiliated Sites

Last night, I locked up my blog for security.The downside of social media.

http://movie-ozone.com.- This site on movie review claims I'm a fellow blogger along with medical doctors researching dementia and fishing enthusiasts. I would not mind someone following my blog if I know who they are. However, there is no name or contact information on their site. Any writer on the blogosphere with the intent to share knowledge does not go about nameless, without even a pseudonym. There is a blogger's code of conduct.

http://pingywebedition.somee.com/ - This site has been linked to my blog for some time. I'm listed among antique Greece, gods and goddesses and blogwriters award. Again, I'm not fond of being linked to some unknown author site.

Please note that I'm NOT in any way affiliated with these two sites.