Closed Captioning for Web Videos

Apparently the issue of web site accessibility and multimedia content on web pages has gotten a lot of attention lately. There is currently a bill before Congress that would make closed captioning mandatory for any web video that also appears on TV.

Right now, if this bill became law, it would only affect the major players of web-based video. But, it could eventually filter down to smaller operations as well. Some web sites like YouTube use voice recognition software to produce closed captioning, but it is still very inaccurate. To manually transcribe one hour of video costs approximately $90 (this works out to about $1.50/min). And, there are some technical hurdles that must cleared to synchronize the text with the video.

The Federal 508 web site accessibility guidelines state the following for multimedia content:

(b) Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation.

(k) A text-only page, with equivalent information or functionality, shall be provided to make a web site comply with the provisions of this part, when compliance cannot be accomplished in any other way. The content of the text-only page shall be updated whenever the primary page changes.

All web content authors should keep this issue on their radar, as it is certainly going to become a bigger one as web video becomes more and more popular.

4 Reasons Why You Absolutely Need to Use Google Places for Your Business

More and more people are using search engines to find information about local products and services. Google Places, formerly known as Google Local Search is a must have for local businesses who want to capitalize on this phenomenon.

Here are the 4 reasons why you absolutely should create a listing on Google Places for your business:

1. Google Places allows you to submit detailed information about your business for free. This information includes your street address, email address, description of products and services offered, hours of operation, payment options, photos of your products and storefront, and videos.
2. Your business will appear in Google Maps. Once you submit your listing Google will show your location on Google Maps along with the information located above. You can even adjust the map pointer if it doesn't show your location as accurately as it should.
3. You can offer printable coupons for customers. Google Places will allow you to submit coupon information complete with an expiration date that your customers can print and bring to your business.
4. Statistical information. When you are logged into your Google Places page you can view analytics showing how many times your listing was viewed, where visitors came from, what keywords they used to find you, and even how many times they downloaded your coupon.

While setting up your Google Places listing is fast and easy, I would strongly recommend that you not "set it and forget it". You or someone in your company should review the descriptions, email address, photos, and coupons in your listing to be sure they continue to be accurate and timely.

Google Helps You Make Your Site Into a Portal

Most web site owners are always looking for ways to drive traffic to their site. Google's Custom Search may be another tool you can add to your arsenal. With Google's Custom Search you can create a collection of web sites that are specific to your industry and wrap them into a search engine powered by Google.

By placing this custom search box on your home page you can attract visitors who are looking to do targeted keyword searched for topics relative to your expertise.

Setting up a custom search engine in Google requires that you have a Google account. From the Custom Search home page you simply follow the screens to name and customize your search. If you are a qualified not-for-profit or an educational organization you can even suppress the Google text ads that appear on your search results pages.

In addition, you can customize the look and feel of the results page to reflect your branding.

Google's Custom Search service is free and is different from their Site Search service which is a hosted, fee-based product that Google offers to businesses.

YouTube Solves Accessibility Problems in Video

There is no debate that web video has revolutionized the way in which web site visitors have consumed information. The problem is that videos are not natively accessible. This has left the hearing and vision impaired public largely out of this revolution.

While Google has offered a captioning service for videos uploaded to YouTube for a few years now, it still required video owners to add the captioning tracks manually. As a result the majority of videos on YouTube don't have them and they are therefore inaccessible.

Yesterday, Google announced a new automatic captioning service for YouTube. Google is using their speech recognition software to allow video owners to automatically add video captions to their videos. This new service works by having the video owner upload a text file of the speech in their video. Google's speech recognition software matches the text to the audio track and outputs the caption to the video. Since speechrecognition technology is still evolving Google is rolling out this service to a select few partners first. National Geographic and PBS are two that will test this new feature on their YouTube channels.

This new feature should significantly lower the barrier for video owners to add captions to their videos and allow a large segment of the Internet public to make use of those videos. If that weren't reason enough, it will also improve the search rankings for videos that include captions.

How to create a link to a specific spot in your Youtube video

Linking to a video on Youtube is a simple matter. But, have you wanted to link to a specific time in that video? This can be helpful if your video contains sections or chapters, and you want to allow your viewers to jump right to that specific section.

To link to a certain time on a Youtube video requires you to edit the link that Youtube gives you. But first, you need to find the time in minutes and seconds. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Go to your video on Youtube.
2. Go to the part of your video you want to link to and pause it.
3. Put your mouse over the round time cursor that moves when playing your video.
4. Note the time that pops up, e.g. 2:32 (two minutes, 32 seconds)
5. Copy and paste the URL to the video from your browser address bar into a program like WordPad. It will look something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b697zb.
6. Add to the end of this URL the following info: #t=2m32s

Your new URL will look like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b697zb#t=2m32s. You can use this new URL in your web site or blog, and when a visitor clicks that link the video will start playing at your designated time.

Expression Web Video 7 - Importing Files Into Your Site

In this session of my Expression Web video series we will learn how to import files into your site.

Be Careful What You Tweet!

The Internet has given a voice to anyone who has something to say. But, that doesn't mean you can just say anything you want without there being repercussions. Amanda Bonnen of Chicago, Illinois found that out the hard way.

The story goes like this, Amanda was living in an apartment complex in Chicago. Apparently she wasn't happy about the condition of her apartment because she posted the following comment using her Twitter account - "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it's okay."

Horizon Realty, the property manager for the apartment complex filed a $50,000 lawsuit for libel. Their claim is the statement is false and even though the tweet was deleted and Amanda's Twitter account removed, they are still pursuing the matter.

It seems like the lesson here is pretty simple, be careful what you say online, if you can't back it up you are opening yourself up to the same legal problems as if you printed it in the newspaper!