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Google's YouTube video caption feature was developed in 2008. In November of 2009 Google released auto-captioning for a small, select group of partners. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google's Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer.

The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages -- all in just a couple of clicks.

Google is now opening up auto-captions to all YouTube users.

There will even be a "request processing" button for un-captioned videos that any video owner can click on if they want to speed up the availability of auto-captions. It will take some time to process all the available video, so here are some things to keep in mind:

• While Google plans to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
• Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can't be auto-captioned. President Obama's speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
• Auto-captions aren't perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they're accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient -- our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
• Auto-captions should be available to everyone who's interested in using them. We're also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you're having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit Google's Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.

For content owners, the power of auto-captioning (AND translation) is significant.

With just a few quick clicks your videos can be accessed by a whole new global audience. And captions can make is easier for users to discover content on YouTube.

Twenty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making some of these videos more accessible to people who have hearing disabilities or who speak different languages, not only represents a significant advancement in the democratization of information, it can also help foster greater collaboration and understanding.

Where's the beef? Well...meeting value, that is.

Architect Scott Simpson described a concept KlingStubbins called a team structure and the industry now calls Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The concept is key for a collaborative project approach, but its importance is more universal. The phrase that stuck with me was "decision-ready information".

Decision-ready information consists of the key facts required for a meaningful, final decision about a subject to be decided.

In an IPD project, major decision-makers are expected to attend every meeting, so that decisions made in the meeting have meaningful buy-in and closure. These meetings can be intense, not to mention very expensive.
 

It's the responsibility, therefore, of each team member to bring decision-ready information for the decisions on the agenda.

Wouldn't this information design approach make meetings more valuable...and engaging!

The green marketing opportunity here is to demonstrate the sustainability, incentives, and cost saving attributes of your green solution.  Manufacturers can arm their representatives with decision-ready information.

Think about what information -- what key metrics and performance demonstration --  about your product might drive project decisions, and make sure it's available in an easy format for your representatives to bring to the table.

Read more at BuildingProductMarketing.com

Think Green Alliance offers the following services to help businesses outline a sustainability strategy with the goals of establishing a step-by-step plan with carbon reduction targets, using tools for sustainability and carbon measurement/management, as well as ensuring the sustainability plan meets business and ROI goals.

• Strategic Sustainability Blueprint Development
• Carbon Measurement, Reporting and Benchmarking
• Sustainability Audits and Reviews
• Sustainability Best Practices
• Sustainability Whitepapers and Research
• Custom Sustainability Consulting
• Sustainability Project Consulting
• Project Management

The Think Green Alliance is a community of businesses and organizations that are committed to providing environmentally and economically sustainable services, products and goods. As of February 2009, the Alliance membership represents a total of 159.7 billion dollars of annual global revenues and over 250,000 full-time employees.

The Alliance was founded in March 2008 by Jean Jerome Baudry of Baudry Cybernomics Corporation.

For more information, please contact Kim:
projects@thinkgreenalliance.com
416-915-4048 ext. 304

This site deserves its "7" page rank! Check out the clear design, comprehensive information and quality links. Who says that Internet data has to be less reliable than print?

The Art's Butterfly World website describes over 34 years of data collected by Dr. Arthur Shapiro, professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, in his continuing effort to regularly monitor butterfly population trends on a transect across central California. Ranging from the Sacramento River delta, through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains, to the high desert of the western Great Basin, fixed routes at ten sites have been surveyed at approximately two-week intervals since as early as 1972.

The sites represent the great biological, geological, and climatological diversity of central California. As of the end of 2006, Dr. Shapiro has logged 5476 site-visits and tallied approximately 83,000 individual records of 159 butterfly species and subspecies.

This major effort is continuing and represents the world's largest dataset of intensive site-specific data on butterfly populations collected by one person under a strict protocol. We have also collated monthly climate records for the entire study period from weather stations along the transect.

This website was built as a portal for Dr. Shapiro's data and observations, supported by National Science Foundation.

It helps to have significant funding and partnering arrangements!

This site deserves its "7" page rank! Check out the clear design, comprehensive information and quality links. Who says that Internet data has to be less reliable than print?

The Art's Butterfly World website describes over 34 years of data collected by Dr. Arthur Shapiro, professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, in his continuing effort to regularly monitor butterfly population trends on a transect across central California. Ranging from the Sacramento River delta, through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains, to the high desert of the western Great Basin, fixed routes at ten sites have been surveyed at approximately two-week intervals since as early as 1972.

The sites represent the great biological, geological, and climatological diversity of central California. As of the end of 2006, Dr. Shapiro has logged 5476 site-visits and tallied approximately 83,000 individual records of 159 butterfly species and subspecies.

This major effort is continuing and represents the world's largest dataset of intensive site-specific data on butterfly populations collected by one person under a strict protocol. We have also collated monthly climate records for the entire study period from weather stations along the transect.

This website was built as a portal for Dr. Shapiro's data and observations, supported by National Science Foundation.

It helps to have significant funding and partnering arrangements!

How serious are people getting about the environment? How serious are suppliers getting?

As more companies find ways to work recycled materials into their products, and reduce supply chain GHGs, and end of life toxic dumps in our neighbors around the world... the more we'll see in the growing field of mobile devices.

Phones might look as disposable, self-destruct materials like compostables that just melt when subjected to heat. They are about that disposable anyway!

With more than ONE cellphone for EVERY PERSON ON EARTH... we can't look at cell phones and mobile devices the way we could just a few short years ago. This electronic waste is piling up...and we need to let manufacturers know that we are concerned about toxic landfills and unrecyclable cases and short term usage of billions of pounds of consumer products.

Samsung's Reclaim from Sprint has probably been the most aggressively marketed green phone to date in the U.S., starting with its name and green color. Made from 80% recyclable material and released in August, Current Analysis called it the first eco-phone people may actually want to buy.

Even if the Reclaim is meeting or beating sales expectations, it would be hard to separate its success from qualities that would make it a good phone even if it were made out of regular plastic. Apart from any regulatory or legal requirements, it's not likely manufacturers will focus more on environmental considerations until they see them as an important differentiating factor for consumers.

New research suggests demand for environmentally-friendly devices will power sales of "green" phones in the coming years. A recent study by ABI Research found that nearly half of U.S. consumers would choose a green handset over a conventional phone if price, features and performance were the same.

ABI estimates the proportion of properly recycled handsets will grow from 8% in 2009 to 17% in 2014. A separate Juniper report predicts that even with an incremental shift in consumer attitudes, shipments of green phones will grow from 250,000 in 2009 to 105 million by 2014.

FACT: Adults 21-29 are very interested in music as a cultural language.
FACT: Birds sing for mating during their prime years.

CONCLUSION:  Music is a mating language!

But we know that music is a language of far more than mating in the human species.

We don't usually think about popular culture's role in our very physical heritage... instincts and species behaviors -- but many of our behaviors are primal.   Music is one of them.

We have wisdom passed down such as "music soothes the savage beast",  lullaby baby, love songs, and music to dance to.  All these uses of music are primal, are very human.  Part of green marketing is helping people solve a need, a hunger, and helping our communities and customers in wholesome ways.

Music can do that.  Music for the sake of community, that is.

When the lyrics are deliberatly infused with commercial messages to reach the subliminal parts of the brain and other body parts --- well, that's not very sustainable, responsible or respectful.  But music as part of life's festival, relaxation, community building and enjoyment of our ability to sing and dance and listen to melody and beat and poetic expressions -- that can be a powerful way to contribute beauty and joy and strength to your community.

Here's singin' with you!
Caroly