submitted by Catharine

I recently took notice to an article I found on Twitter: “Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should be Worried.” This article addresses the recent rise of companies that produce and create hundreds of bits of content per day. Sure, I’d love for Keen Guides to be able to do that, but can it be good, QUALITY content? I’m not convinced. The author, Richard MacManus, comments that such content lacks passion and knowledge of the topic at hand. Tech Crunch founder Michael Arrington provides an analogy with fast food: it is content produced quickly and made to order. That is the very, very, very last thing that I want to be described of videos distributed through Keen Guides, if by some oversight, they manage to get on our platform.

I’d like to ask our audience. (Please, I hope we still have one!?) What would you consider as “quality content”? We’ll take your answers very seriously!

submitted by Catharine

Google has yet again, impressed us with their developments. You guys rock, really. I love your mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It’s so simple yet it packs a lot. It gave me great joy to sit among representatives from national Deaf and Hard of Hearing organizations at Google’s announcement of machine-generated captions from the Washington, D.C. office. Ever since I received the invitation by e-mail a week prior to the event, with the subject line: “Google Announcement: Auto-generated captions in YouTube” I kept wondering what it could possibly mean. This is a tidbit of the dialogue in my head that whole week:

“Auto-generated captions in YouTube? What could that possibly mean? Real-time captioning? No way. That would be too good to be true. We’re a long, long way from that.”

Boy, was I wrong! I nearly jumped out of my seat when Ken Harrenstein, the software engineer behind this project, announced that he and his team are making it easier for YouTube Channel Owners (e.g., people who post videos on YouTube) to provide captions on their content with automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. It became immediately apparent that only a handful of the millions of videos posted on YouTube are provided with captions. The launch of YouTube captions in 2008 required significant work by the Channel Owner. For example, at Keen Guides, in order to get captions on our videos, we’ve had to a.) upload the text file, and b.) listen to the video, and match up the time-codes with the text to assign each caption. This process easily took me an hour for a 2-minute video.

The two new advancements that Google announced are: 1.) automatic timing, and 2.) automatic captioning. Today, automatic timing is available to everyone. I’m excited about automatic timing, because the step of b.) listening to video, and matching up the time-codes is virtually eliminated for me. Yes!! Here’s an excellent video overview about the new developments. I encourage you to view it if you have 2.5 minutes:  Automatic Captions in YouTube demo

Also, I wanted to mention, that the captions on YouTube also come with a translation feature using Google Translator. I hear it’s quite accurate, really. This is big for us because we’re all about creating accessible experiences for everyone, including people who speak foreign languages. When you view a video with English captions, as a viewer,  you can have those same captions transcribed to one of the 51 languages. AWESOME. Now you can tell the world about what’s so special about the giant 5-ton rubber band ball. (Oh, how I’d love to see that bounce), but on a more serious note, from venues on the National Mall, like our video on the Lincoln Memorial. (If you click on the bottom right corner, you can turn on the captions, and then have them translated to French or any other language!)

I better go – I have quite a handful of text files to upload to my Google Videos to get captioned!

submitted by Catharine

Either I’m hearing more about new accessibility initiatives with captioning / as well as goof-ups, or I’m paying more attention to the news. I thought I’d share a few with you!

1. The FCC is listening. A lot of content online is not captioned, eventhough the number of U.S. broadband households watching premium online content via online has doubled to 25 million in the last year according to Broadband, Communications, and Entertainment Bundles, a new study from Parks Associates. That’s a lot of online content! There was a recent FCC Field Hearing by members of the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technologies (COAT) testified on a panel at Gallaudet University to call for better captioning online and on TV. (Captioning has not transferred well with the transition to HDTV)

2. Google: What’s up? can you give us a hint? In the latest issue of the DC Magazine, the featured article profiles Vint Cerf, the Google Chief Evangelist. (Page 58-59, specifically) This article highlights his awesome work in:

1. Starting the Internet (thank you. I don’t know what we’d do without the Internet.) and;
2. Developing sweet Web interfaces that would help people who are deaf or blind. His lips are sealed until the public debut in November. I’m sitting at the edge of my seat, wondering what this could possibly be?! He quotes, “Google represents the idea that all things should be egalitarian,” …”And accessibility to everyone should be the underlying principle.”     Bingo.

Oh, and also, not to promote ourselves too much or anything, but if you keep flipping through the magazine to page 140, you’ll see an article about Keen.

3. Mobile TV available with captions: To my great surprise, in a new initiative for media using mobile DTV (Yes, you read it right: watching TV on your phone), captioning is being included. WOW. This is huge – and rare. Captions is almost always an afterthought. Not for mobile TV and you bet, I’m going to do everything I can to support those initiatives. (If you want to get technical, the DTV standard supports CEA708 (HD CC)). You can thank the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) for their efforts! www.atsc.org

4. DIY Accessibility: The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) created guidelines for content providers who would like to create accessible iTunes media via captions, subtitles, and audio descriptions. This is great because it helps content providers realize that taking steps to ensure accessibility can be relatively simple. It’s really not that complicated to ensure that as many people can access your content. A content provider? Read here to learn how to do this.

5. Uh-oh. Kind of embarrassing: Disney releases the movie “Up” without captions. Big whoops. Marlee Matlin tweets, “I and 36 million deaf and hard of hearing people are not special features.” Read article in the Consumerist. I’m just hoping that it was a bit of an unintentional oversight!

Last but not least! Watch this space. If I can, I’ll post some pretty awesome insights about emerging technology on Thursday. Stay tuned.

submitted by Catharine

It was an unexpectedly insightful week for Keen Guides in the days leading up to Halloween. We spent a lot of time meeting people and hearing from our community, which resulted in a renewed sense of direction and motivation for us! I have five little tidbits highlighted below:

1. An Enterprising Audience: Keen Guides along with LaunchBox team & friend, TapMetrics, presented to the Baltimore/DC chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum. We were pleasantly surprised by the engagement and response of the audience (it was a full house!). Our panelists and audience expressed that our product really applies in multiple verticals. This was a relief for us to hear because our past audiences were locked into thinking we were only in the museum market.

2. DC Magazine Back Cover Feature Release: We’ve told you how important it is to network, right? When Martin Franklin attended Tech Cocktail 6 in August, he met a reporter from DC Magazine who became interested in doing a story on Keen. This resulted in a back cover feature of the November edition of the magazine. Here’s a link to the online version of the magazine. (Go to Contents  (on top left side)> Look Who’s Talking (at the bottom))

3. “Inclusivity Rocks” – attitude talent: We spent a few days producing the Gallaudet University campus tour. I was absolutely amazed by the talent we selected. Not only were they fabulous on camera, but also willing to participate in dialogue about the different modes of communications or languages presented on this tour. They had the spirit of inclusion and attitude of inspiring students to submit an admissions application. Here’s a quick TwitPic of our talent in the art gallery.

4. Reconnecting with Network at Bootstrapmd: This group brings entrepreneurs together to share advice and resources on how to run a lean and successful technology business. We had a great time reconnecting with fellow entrepreneurs we hadn’t seen in a while. Here are some takeaways from the panel discussion:

• be fast and quick to market. The product does not need to be perfect upon release. In fact, you should be embarrassed by the first launch.
• iterate, iterate, iterate.
• have the right team.
• if your product is good, the market will pull you in.

Click here for upcoming Bootstrapmd events – and to learn about the panelists.

5. Helping America reduce the Unemployment Rate: We’ve finally posted a career opening for a Software Engineer. We’re very excited about opening this position up to an energetic software engineer-slash-maven. You can help us by referring to people you may think be a great match. This person will be a vital asset to our team and we can’t wait to get started.

Watch this space for a new campus tour …