These include National Geographic, Columbia, as well as most Google and YouTube channels.

The software engineer behind the technology, Ken Harrenstien, is deaf.

Currently YouTube offers a manual captioning service but video makers tend not to use it.

“The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me,” Mr Harrenstien wrote in the Google blog.

His solution combines automatic speech recognition with the current caption system.

The translation is not always perfect (in a demonstration the phrase “sim card” becomes “salmon” in text), but Mr Harrenstien says that the technology “will continue to improve with time”.

Alternatively users can upload a transcript of their video and auto-timing algorithms will match the text to the words as they are spoken.

Vint Cerf, vice president at Google, is widely recognised as a founding father of the internet. He is also hard of hearing and has worn a hearing aid since the age of 13.

“One of the big challenges of the video medium is whether it can be made accessible to everyone,” he told news agency AFP.

Earlier in the week YouTube announced the launch of YouTube Direct, a feed of uploaded amateur videos of newsworthy events such as protests and extreme weather conditions.

It is aimed at the media industry, and editors who subscribe will be able to request the phone numbers of contributors. So far it has been trialled by a select group of radio stations, newspapers and websites in the US.

BBC

Named the Forest School, its three pods were designed and built by Robert Gaukroger of Kita Design Company, who lives in the same town as the school, Windermere. Due to the school’s extremely tight budget, Gaukroger donated some of his design time and building effort that equated to the cost of one of the pods. He even donated the chairs the students use to keep the design consistent.

The classrooms sit high above the flora and fauna and are constructed from a ribbed timber frame which sits on atop Douglas fir stilts. Buildings are clad in English chestnut shingles and the deck, which connects the three classrooms, can be used as an outdoor teaching environment when weather permits.

As with many of Gaukroger’s projects, the treehouse school focuses on “up-cycled, re-cycled and low-impact architecture and design”. The pods received a BREAM “excellent” score and feature a high efficiency heating and cooling system that utilizes a ground-source heat pump. Rainwater is collected to cut down on potable water use, and solar panels are mounted along the center of each roof to provide lighting for each building.

The views afforded by this tree-top school surely must be some of the most inspiring for young minds.

Gizmag

Due to ship in mid-January, the Asus Eee PC 1201N is based on Intel’s dual-core Atom 330 processor rather than the more common single-core N270 or N280 versions.

The device ships with Windows 7, and has an Nvidia Ion graphics chip unlike most netbooks which typically rely on the embedded graphics in the Intel chipset.

This makes the system ideal for anyone wanting to watch high-definition video, share and edit photos, play games, and convert video for a portable media player, the company said.

With a 12.1in 1,366 x 768 WXGA screen, the Eee PC 1201N is a little on the large side to be called a netbook, as these typically come with screens no larger than 10in.

Another characteristic of a netbook is good value, however, and the new Asus fits the bill here with a suggested retail price of £399 including VAT.

The rest of the specifications include 2GB or 3GB of memory, 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

It has VGA and HDMI graphics outputs, three USB ports, Ethernet, SD Card slot for Flash storage and audio jack sockets, and weighs in at 1.46kg.

Battery life for the Eee PC 1201N is quoted at up to five hours from its six-Cell 63Wh lithium ion battery pack.

v3.co.uk

Egypt, whose only World Cup appearances were in 1934 and 1990, forced the playoff by beating Algeria 2-0 on an injury-time goal in Cairo last Saturday. That left the nations tied atop Africa Group C and set off several violent outbursts.

Algeria, which also appeared in the 1982 World Cup, completed the African field for next year’s tournament, joining Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and host South Africa.

Yahya scored with a right-footed volley that beat goalkeeper Essam El Hadary.

AP

The semifinal second-leg between Hong Kong’s South China and Kuwait SC drew a record 38,000 fans to the Hong Kong Stadium, the most for any match in this tournament.
To reach the final, Kuwait beat Hong Kong’s South China 3-1 on aggregate in the semifinals while Al-Karamah defeated Vietnam’s Becamex Binh Duong 4-2 over two legs.
The two sides met in the group stages with each winning their home game 2-1.
The head of Asia’s football governing body, Mohammed bin Hammam noted earlier that the clash between the Kuwaiti and Syrian clubs in the final round of  the competition  was  a clear sign of the high standards of the sport in West Asia. On the threat of the Kuwait Football Association (KFA) receiving international suspension he explained that the KFA general assembly was faced with two scenarios; the first being agreeing to a 14-member local club committee as mentioned in the Kuwaiti constitution, and the other, agreeing to a five-member committee as seen by the AFC. “The choice taken by the general assembly we will back strongly,” he remarked.

“We have to find an end to this tragedy which has solely affected Kuwaiti football,” he added, saying he hoped Kuwaiti clubs would stand firm in time to come and would be up to the task of taking a decisive decision.
The president also said that the AFC would be “damaged” by the suspension of Kuwaiti football.
On his part, administrative head of Al-Kuwait SC Marzouq Al-Ghanim welcomed the AFC president’s visit, saying he hoped the match would be a spectacle worthy of the reputation of Kuwait as a major sports event hosting centre.
Al-Ghanim also said he looked forward to a full-house attendance at the 18, 000 seater Kuwait SC Stadium on Tuesday.

A The Illinois Department of Public Health processes vaccine orders within the state and oversees the order in which providers receive shipments. Kelly Jakubek, a spokeswoman, said doctors’ offices should get their orders filled as more vaccine is produced and assured that retail drugstores will not have it before physicians have it.

“We currently are only placing orders for hospitals and health departments, which we consider the front line of health care,” she said.

Chicago vaccine providers are under a similar system in which the first shipments go to places that serve the most at risk, said Dr. Julie Morita, medical director of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Her department places the orders and selects the providers to get the first H1N1 vaccine shipments.

“Our priority is to get the early vaccine to high-risk providers,” Morita said, “and once the majority have gotten vaccinated, then it can go to retail providers. We can’t guarantee a limitless supply, so there may be breaks in supplies for a time, and then get orders filled later on.”

Q My daughter, 10, got the nasal vaccine for H1N1 (and four days later had) a high fever, chills, dizziness, sore throat, cough and congestion. (She) missed a week-plus so far of school. Can you get swine flu from the live vaccine? It seems she has.

A Vaccine experts say the virus in the nasal vaccine is so weakened that it is impossible to get flu from it. But it takes several days to two weeks before the vaccine’s protective immune response kicks in, said University of Chicago infectious-disease specialist Kenneth Alexander. It is likely that your daughter had the misfortune of catching the flu before the vaccine could take effect and protect her from it.

“Alternately,” he said , “she might have had either the seasonal flu or another viral infection altogether.”

Q My dad had Guillain-Barre syndrome. Should I get the H1N1 vaccine?

A A vaccine developed for a 1976 swine flu pandemic was blamed for causing a rise in incidence of the rare neuromuscular disorder, but the uptick was so slight “that it makes it hard to know if there is a real relationship with Guillain-Barre and that vaccine,” Alexander said.

Health officials have been watching closely ever since, and no subsequent vaccine has been linked to the disorder, Alexander said, so you should be safe.

chicagotribune.com

Google said late Monday that new users of its service will be able to have the calls that they don’t answer forwarded to a special Google Voice electronic mailbox, essentially bypassing the voicemail provided by their phone carriers.

Google Voice offers a variety of voicemail management features, including unlimited storage and text transcription of voicemail messages.

The service also allows consumers to make low-priced international calls by routing portions of the call over Google’s infrastructure and the Internet.

Until now, using Google Voice required adopting a special Google phone number. The new feature allows people to retain their existing phone numbers.

Craig Walker, a group product manager for real time communications at Google, said the company will provide users with a special code to enter into their phone which forwards unanswered calls to a Google-maintained voicemailbox.

Walker said the call-forwarding feature did not require striking special deals with the phone carriers.

“Virtually all the carriers already allow this,” said Walker.

He noted that cell phone operators generally approve of call-forwarding since the carriers charge airtime minutes even after a call has been forwarded to another phone number.

“It allows them to continue running the meter, they charge per minute while I’m on that diverted call,” said Walker.

Google Voice, which was launched in March, is available to a limited number of people who have received invitations from Google or from other Google Voice users.

Walker said the company hopes to make the service open to the general public relatively soon, though he would not specify when. He also declined to say how many people use Google Voice, but said the company has been pleased with the numbers.

The product has earned positive reviews in the technology press as well as some degree of controversy.

Google has said that Apple Inc rejected the Google Voice application for the iPhone, while Apple has maintained that it is still studying the software. The dispute has drawn the attention of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

And earlier this month, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on the FCC to investigate reports, cited by AT&T Inc, that Google Voice was blocking costly calls to phone numbers in certain rural areas in order to cut down on expenses.

(Reuters)

In order to improve the photo-sensitive nature of the stacked compound layers, Sharp replaced the germanium base layer in the triple-junction cell with indium gallium arsenide. Germanium generates a lot of current but much of this is wasted, the new compound is more efficient at utilizing the current generated.

Before creating the new structure, Sharp managed an impressive 31.5 percent conversion efficiency. Using the new compound has increased this to 35.8 percent, confirmed by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in September.

Sharp points out that these results have been achieved at the research level using a 1cm cell which means that the technology has not yet been incorporated into satellites. Encouraged by the results however, the company’s researchers will push towards achieving even greater conversion efficiency.

Gizmag

The announcement came just hours after Microsoft announced non-exclusive deals with Twitter and Facebook to integrate search results into Bing, which has already resulted in a Twitter search that promises less spam and more useful information compared to Twitter’s standard search.

Both Microsoft and Google had separately made efforts to acquire Twitter in the past, but the deals never came through. One of the reasons for this is that estimating the company’s true value is proving challenging as Twitter is not turning a profit but hosts an incredible wealth of data that, if used correctly, could truly add a new dimension to Web searches.

Companies like Google and Microsoft have long realized the value of real-time, user-generated updates like the ones provided by Twitter: Google’s Trends is reportedly growing more and more popular among users, to which the search giant has recently reacted by integrating hot trend results in standard search for popular queries.

Twitter counts 20.9 million users in September (up an impressive 18-fold from last year, according to marketing research firm ComScore) but, like other very popular sites such as YouTube, it still hasn’t managed to capitalize on this on the financial side, which is why the company is considering generating revenue by displaying advertisements on the site and giving marketers deeper access to its data. In this perspective, the deals with Google and Microsoft are certainly a breath of fresh air for the company.

Judging from their statements, Microsoft and Google will try to use Twitter data to focus on two different aspects: while the integration with the Bing user experience is aimed at providing “all the latest chatter” to users including breaking news, gossip and sports talk, Google wants to exploit users’ tweets for “real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort.”

Twitter integration will also probably play a big part in the upcoming Google Social Search, which is due to launch in a few weeks as a “Google Labs” project and will let users display results from people in their social networks. As for other applications — aggregation of user reviews, most discussed topics, etc. — we’ll just have to wait and see.

Gizmag

The commission has recommended that a plant in Hatfield, near Doncaster, should receive £164m of EU funding.
The sum would be matched by a similar sum from the UK government.

If the plan gets the go-ahead it is thought 1,500 jobs will be created by the plant’s construction. Work would begin in 2010, for completion in 2015.

The Hatfield scheme was judged as the third best in Europe by the commission.

It beat off rival applications for money from the Longannet coal-fired station in Fife and a proposed new power plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.

Thousands of years

The Hatfield plant will use new carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

The CCS technology captures the carbon released when coal burns and pipes it under the North Sea where it is stored for thousands of years.

Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies last year steered carbon capture and storage legislation through the European Parliament. He said: “Yorkshire is the best location in Britain from which to start CCS development.

“A network of pipelines connecting power plants and major industrial installations in the area could allow us to divert 70m tonnes of CO2 annually within 15 years.”

However some climate protesters doubt the effectiveness of CCS.

Catherine Roberts, of the Camp for Climate Action, said: “Clean coal is a fairytale. CCS isn’t even a proven technology yet and we urgently need to start imagining a future without coal.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “The UK is in a strong position on CCS and we expect to be one of the first countries in the world to demonstrate this technology.”

EU member states will hold further discussions on the scheme in the European Parliament in November.

BBC