Tag Archives: google

YouTube Supports Captioning!

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I learned about this today, through the Google Nonprofit Newsletter:

“If you’re a non-profit organization with global membership, or you have members who are hearing-impaired, YouTube is making it easier for you to communicate. A few weeks ago, YouTube launched a new captioning feature which allows people who would not otherwise understand the audio track in a video to follow along. You can add captions to one of your videos by uploading a closed caption file using the “Captions and Subtitles” menu on the editing page. To add several captions to a video, simply upload multiple files. If you want to include foreign subtitles in multiple languages, upload a separate file for each language. There are over 120 languages to choose from and you can add any title you want for each caption.

To find out more about the new captions feature and view examples of them in use, read the full blog post here.”

Very exciting news for hearing-impaired folks! I am very glad to read this.

What do you Knol?

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Thanks to my friend Landileigh, I payed close attention to Knol today. It’s Google’s attempt to take over Wikipedia, but then again it’s a little more.

It offers a simple to use and great-looking publishing platform (blogs?) that makes me think more: they are offering a wiki platform and letting people go crazy showcasing what they know about. Of course this will sadly turn eventually into yet another outlet for spammers. But such is the reality of all things in the web.

The important thing is that it will also empower people to collaborate to create fantastic articles in ways that are not constrained by the rules of an organization, but rather by how you as the author of a Knol (that’s how they call the articles) choose to let people collaborate with you (or not).

I took a stab at it, writing my first Knol on the topic of (surprise, surprise!) Social networks and diabetes

Friendfeed vs. Pulse

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A while back I wrote about Pulse, Plaxo’s attempt at social networking through aggregating feeds that your connections add for public display (with their connections).

Yesterday, I was made aware of FriendFeed. I was wondering if anyone who reads my blog has taken a stab at it and would mind sharing how they see it being different than Pulse.

One thing is for sure (not that Plaxo’s Pulse doesn’t have smart people): FriendFeed’s team sure has a lot of talent. Quite a number of former Googlers in it.

UPDATE: I decided to give FriendFeed a shot. The interface is quite clean, though I still can’t figure out how it’s different than Pulse. Here’s my FriendFeed profile page.

Google Allows You To Search Future Content

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I was ready to give up on TechCrunch after I read Arrington’s claim as being “a very important person” and his plans to sue Facebook in an ego trip. But the news about the new product to come out of Google’s arsenal caught my eye:

Search tomorrow’s web, today!
Google Australia has introduced a new feature, enabling you to search content on the internet before it is created.

If you are curious about this new technology, check it out.

Why Microsoft/Yahoo! Will Happen

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Today is the day this deal gets decided on. I just finished reading an excellent analysis by Michael Arrington from Techcrunch, who looks at the deal and why the alternative at this point (a search-based deal with Google) cannot succeed… therefore leaving Yahoo! with no other option but to take up Microsoft on its bid.

Microsoft To Eat Yahoo!

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I woke up to the news of Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo! I was immediately propelled out of bed!

As much mixed feelings as such a move gives me, it makes business sense for Yahoo! to accept it -they seem to be in pretty bad spot in more ways than one. The combined audiences of Microsoft and Yahoo! would accomplish something that can only be good for the market: push Google to innovate even more, in the face of a much larger competitor than it has been facing until now in the search space.

It remains to be seen if the DNAs of the two companies can work together… Definitely interesting times ahead. Regardless of Yahoo! taking up Microsoft on the bid or not, these are very interesting times.

My bet? Yahoo! will say “no.” What will result of that? Talk to me a year from today. :)