PCMAG.COM is reporting that YouTube has just released their automatic captioning system for public use:
The technology still isn’t perfect, but Google is also using YouTube, with its vast array of accents, languages, background noise, and other distractions to improve its technology.
But the closed-captioning also means that millions of users who are hard of hearing, deaf, or simply speak another language as their primary language can now have a greater access to YouTube videos, the company said. “A core part of YouTube’s DNA is access to content,” said Hunter Walk, the product team lead for YouTube. “From day one, that’s what we were hoping to do with video.”
It’s worth noting that as well as opening up information access for “hard of hearing, deaf, or [non-English speakers]“, it’s also another example of Google making the world more and more machine-readable. Google Books is another massive-scale example of this.
Edit: After requesting automatic transcription of one of my YouTube videos yesterday (which features pretty clear spoken English), I’ve received a “Transcription Failed” message today. No option to retry or suggestions why. I.e. this tech might not be so fantastically world-changing yet.
I’ve just returned from the 5-day CitySwitch Architectural workshop in Newcastle organized by UTS lecturer Joanna Jakovich. The participants were asked to choose between four teams, each looking at architectural interventions of one kind or another. As well as team participation, I directed some energy into creating an online live map of the event, as an extension of my current research.
Renew Newcastle
This particular CitySwitch was conducted in collaboration with Renew Newcastle, which works to temporarily populate empty shopspace with galleries, teahouses, etc. to aid revitalization of the area. They work with a fascinating legal arrangement, non-threatening for property owners, which sets up a 30-day rolling “license to use”. The temporary occupier pays $20/week to cover insurance and minor upkeep. It is a framework that could possibly translate to spaces in Sydney. Read the rest of this entry »
Real-time tracking of police presence would just require some friends
Recently I’ve been looking at the emerging humanitarian uses of collaborative micro-blogging, and in particular Project EPIC’s initiative to define a “folksonomy” of tweet formats to aid Haiti crisis response. I’m currently building a set of Yahoo Pipes feeds that process and locate relevant tweets onto an interactive map (I’ve been hampered by outages in Yahoo Pipes services). Yahoo Pipes is a sort of rudimentary visual programming, that will allow easy reconfiguration by non-programmers once these pipes have been set up. These tools are intended to be easily extendible and “mashable” into new uses.
I’ll post about the Yahoo Pipes work when it’s completed, but needless to say I am aware and involved in the positive potential of augmented reality and surrounding technologies.
I’ve been motivated to write about the negative potential after reading Augmented Planet’s “The Case Against Augmented Reality”. Although it gained some attention as a dissenting voice against the generally positive coverage AR gets, it was a little underwhelming, and even the comments failed (for me) to really go very deep into things. I’m effectively re-posting an annotated version of my comments on that page:
Recently, Bruce Sterling featured Voxopolis (below) on his blog. The project extends Conway’s Game of Life into the 3rd dimension in order to evolve a city design. It is one of six presented in the Helvepolis – Urban Design in Vitro! exhibition, showcasing the work of students at ETH in Zurick, studying Masters of Architectural Studies in Computer Aided Architectural Design:
The ETH Masters program looks at “the use of current information technologies as an augmentation of concepts of architecture. [Exploring] new techniques and methods for design that incorporate scripting and programming languages.” As my interest in the use of computer technology in architecture lie in the areas of understanding inhabitants’ spatial practices to inform design, better engineering, and architectural modeling, I am generally quite cynical towards CAAD projects that look cool, but don’t serve actual human bodies. I have given some personal commentary to a few of the CAAD projects. I’d be curious to hear your views.
The small (simulated) depth-of-focus and constant shifting focus helps with convincing the viewer it’s actually real, and it guides the eye across a catalog of gorgeous surfaces. As much as I am concerned with a shift of perception into pure site, when the camera rounds an object and focus slides languidly over it the experience is almost tactile. Perhaps it’s a synesthesial short-circuit?
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