YouTube added a feature that generates video captions. "We've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video."
Another new feature is auto-timing, which lets you upload the transcription of a video and it automatically generates the time codes. "All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we'll use Google's ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video."
Since Google's speech recognition technology is not perfect, it would be useful to generate the captions and then to manually edit them to correct the mistakes.
Automatic captions make YouTube videos more accessible: you can watch videos with the sound off and you can translate the captions into another language using Google Translate.
Google will announce more information about Chrome OS at a press event that starts at 10:00am PST. Google will offer "an update on Google Chrome OS and provide at the work that has been done thus far, an overview of the technology, and launch plans for next year. Speakers will include Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS." You can watch the live webcast here.
Chrome OS is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian that uses a lot of open-source software: Host AP Linux drivers, PAM (an authentication mechanism), Syslinux (a lightweight bootloader), IBus (Intelligent Input Bus for Linux / Unix OS), ConnMan (Internet connection manager), XScreenSaver and other software. More on this later.
Chrome, the foundation of Chrome OS - Chrome has 40 million users - Chrome focuses on: speed, security, simplicity - new stuff: Chrome for Mac/Linux and extensions
HTML5: making the web more powerful - powerful web apps - web apps should use threads - offline web apps
Converging trends - netbooks have an explosive growth - millions of users are living in the cloud
Chrome OS: - instant boot - Chrome on Chrome OS is faster - every app is a web app - all data is in the cloud - browser security model
Demo: - 7 seconds boot time - the UI is a work in progress - easy to access favorite apps - app menu - panels: persistent lightweight windows (example: Google Talk) - file browser - local files open in web apps (including Microsoft Office online apps) - native video player
Under the hood: - design documents - no hard disks, only solid-state drives - verified boot - security: the OS does not trust any app - read-only root file system - user data synced to the cloud - automatic updates for the entire OS
Market: - reference hardware - you can't download Chrome OS and install it on your machine - the only way to install the OS is to buy a Chrome OS machine - the target launch time: the end of next year
What is Google Chrome OS? - the web browser is the most important program on your computer - your browser is your operating system
For many people web addresses aren't very useful and that's why they continue to use their favorite search engine to search for [yahoo], [youtube] or [facebook] instead of typing the obvious web addresses.
Some web sites use breadcrumbs for navigation. "Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a web page, usually below title bars or headers. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page or — in hierarchical site structures — the parent pages of the current one. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point."
Google started to detect web pages that use breadcrumb navigation and replaced the URL displayed below the snippet with the web site's structure. "Often, URLs are too long, too short, or too obscure to add useful information. The new text provides useful information about the page." As an added bonus, each hierarchical element links to the corresponding site category, so you can easily navigate to a more general category.
Unfortunately, Google's search results pages no longer look consistent and you'll sometimes have to mouse over a search result's title to find the URL.
Search Engine Roundtable spotted a new flavor of Google AdSense ads: featured ads. The ads include a yellow star similar to the one used for bookmarks in Google Toolbar, Firefox and Google Chrome.
According to the description from "Google in your Language", the message is used for "an ad that is determined to be particularly likely to be useful or relevant for a user".
I wonder if the new feature is related to Google's interest-based ads, which "associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. [Google] may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads."
Semakin cepat koneksi internet yang kita miliki, tentu akan membuat kita semakin asyik berenang di dunia maya. Siapa sih yang mau surfing dengan koneksi lemot-lemot gitu? Untungnya Mozilla Firefox menyediakan addons atau plug-in untuk mengatasi semua hal ini. Setidaknya, koneksi internet kita bisa sedikit banyak lebih cepat ketika kita menggunakan addons ini. Lebih baik daripada tidak sama sekali.
Google released a new Google Labs experiment related to image search: Google Image Swirl. The service "organizes image search results based on their visual and semantic similarities and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface."
Google Image Swirl clusters the top image search results for more than 200,000 queries and it lets you explore the clusters and the relation between images.
"Once you find the group of images you're interested in, you can click on the thumbnail and a cluster of images will "swirl" into view. You can then further explore additional sub-groups within any cluster. Image Swirl expands on technologies developed for Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to discern how images should be grouped together and build hierarchies out of these groups. Each thumbnail on the initial results page represents an algorithmically-determined representative group of images with similar appearance and meaning. These aren't just the most relevant images — they are the most relevant groups of images," explains Google.
Try queries like: jaguar, flowers, van Gogh and keep in mind that this is an early demo, so not all the queries will return results.
Google has two other visualization tools: "wonder wheel" for exploring related searches and YouTube Warp, an interactive way to visualize related YouTube videos.
Hai teman-teman, kemarin di daerah sekitar kost-an ku kena pemadaman bergilir. Menyebalkan memang, tapi mau bagaimana lagi?? Padahal lagi asik-asiknya nonton tivi. Akhirnya saya bersama teman kost memutuskan untuk membeli lilin di toko dekat kost kami. Setelah itu saya dan teman kost yang lain (bertiga) main Kartu Remi sampai listrik hidup kembali. Sangat menyenangkan rasanya main kartu remi di teras depan kamar kost sambil diterangi cahaya dari lilin yang kami beli. Continue Reading »
When Google Chrome launched, many people complained that the browser didn't detect feeds. Apparently, this feature has been implemented in an extension that will come preinstalled in Google Chrome.
The extension "adds a button to the URL bar when a page has a feed that can be subscribed to". When you click on the orange button, the extension previews the feed and it lets you subscribe using a feed reader.
The support for extensions is only available in Chrome's dev channel. Google will soon launch an extension directory at https://chrome.google.com/extensions and the first beta version that supports extensions will be released in early December.
Google Translate has a new design and some new features. The service translates your text as you type, so you no longer have to click on "Translate" every time you edit the text. Getting real-time feedback helps you improve the original text and get a better translation.
If you translate a text into English, Google has a text-to-speech service that lets you listen to the translation.
Google has improved the translation service for non-Roman languages: you can now read Chinese, Russian, Greek, Hindi, Korean, Thai or Japanese texts written phonetically in English. There's also a transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian and Hindi.
Google Translate is now accessible from Google's homepage: you can find it in the "more" navigation menu. The service has been added to most international Google homepages in March and now it's available at google.com.
