Accessible webcasts

Making audio and video content accessible has long been a challenge and when you’re dealing with webcast screen sizes, simply slapping on subtitles on the video feed doesn’t really cut it.

It’s good to see that Welsh webcast company MultiStream are one of the first organisations to offer a live webcast subtitling service that takes output from a Stenographer and presents a real time transcript of the spoken content along side the video.


The service was developed specifically for Disability Wales conference, and DW used it live whilst the event was on, and I see now that an on demand archive of the conference is also now available.

NOTE - I say this is *one* of the first examples as I was aware that the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) used a similar solution.

The Ten Most Hated Words On The Internet

You couldn't make it up...unless, of course, you do it on the internet. If you are fed up of the seemingly never ending and relentless stream of newly invented words that sum up our online lives then you're not alone.

YouGov website did a small survey and apparently there's plenty of us who feel the same way. I'm too busy cruising the blogospshere and wikiscape to go into detail here, but if you're curious as to what the most irritating made-up-on-and-for-the-internet words actually are then check out the article on Ars Technia for more.

iPhone fever

The Apple iPhone launches in the US this Friday and looks like being the one of the most anticipated tech product launches ever.

Apple are entering an extremely competitive and crowded marketplace and the iPhone is yet to undergo the mass-usage feedback that will ultimately decide whether it hits or misses. However, early reviews from both the tech and mainstream press are overwhelmingly positive with the New York Times stating the “iPhone matches most of it’s hype” and Bloomberg reporting that it’s a “beautiful and breakthrough mobile device that lives up to the hype and will inspire lust in technology shoppers.”

The Financial Time also offers it's analysis here.

We’ll keep an eye on how the iPhone is received but if anybody is heading over to the states and gets to play with one, get in touch and let us know what you think.

My work is a game, a very serious game.

I see Welsh digital agency Sequence have announced that their Creative Director is sitting on the judging panel of the BBC Blast ‘Design a Doctor Who game’ competition.

In a nutshell punters come up with a game based around ‘new Doctor Who then the winner gets his/ her built. The rumour is that the winning game will be built in Wales by Sequence (which is nice), but you didn’t read that here....

Keen as mustard (in your eye)

Mr Keen caused me to shout at the radio whilst driving in to work this morning. He’s on the circuit promoting his new book ‘The cult of the amateur’ in which he shares his thoughts that “Today’s internet is killing our culture”.

Did desktop publishing kill off design houses, FrontPage web agencies or video kill the radio (star)? Does the fact that I’ve a digital camera mean I’m as good as David Bailey or the fact that I’m able to write this here imply that I’m on a level-pegging with Jon Simpson, Jon Ronson or John Humphrys?

No, of course not. If anything it makes the 'Profession’ raise their game and like all other new channels that present themselves - the professional will need to evolve or die.

I’ve got to go now as I need to make a posting on Trip Advisor. I’m sure Paul Theroux is quaking in his career.

Welsh Blog Awards 2007

Prolific polyglot Sanddef Rhyferys (he blogs in Welsh, English, German and Castellano!) is organizing a competition to find the best Welsh blogs, via the Welsh Blog Awards 2007.

The awards are at an early enough stage that it doesn’t have any categories set as yet, but true to the spirit of blogging, Sanddef called for nominations of categories in which to recognise the efforts of Welsh bloggers.

The final list of categories will be released later this month and then it's on to the heady days of nomination and judging. More updates as and when the info becomes available.

Windows users flock to Safari

Windows users were blindingly fast off the mark to grab a free copy of Safari for Windows, which Apple announced at the start of the week. Just 48 hours later, more than a million copies of the software had been downloaded by droves of mere mortals and at least one celebrity.

Apple claims that Safari 3 is the fastest browser running on Windows, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2, based on industry standard benchmarking tests. There were some security bugs reported, which Apple patched with the release of Safari 3.0.1 a few days later.

Safari 3 for Windows requires Windows XP or Windows Vista, a minimum of 256 MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor.

Intranet envy

"Intranet" is one of those terms that's bandied around fairly liberally, with no clear definition: some companies are blogging, twittering, collaborating, sharing documents, best practice and who knows what else; others make do with a shared directory on a network drive. The trouble is, unlike with web sites, they're always behind firewalls, so you can never tell what features people really have, and more importantly really use. It's all too easy to feel your organisation might be falling behind.

So it's with relief that I read the folks at Intranet Dashboard have done a survey to gauge the real state of the market, and it's a lot more conserative than you might have thought:

Blogs were not the only social networking tool that was generally shunned, however. Only 31 percent had included discussion forums, and 26 percent plan on adding them. RSS feeds, podcasting and wikis were not even on the map — nobody offered them.

Download the full survey here

That's so beta

Via Daniel at datblogu, I found myself on the website of Cymdeithas Meddalwed Cymraeg (that’s the Welsh Software Association yn Saesneg).

Daniel seemed pleased that there was some activity on the membership mailing list, signs that the CMC which was founded in July 2005 and launched its print publication, Byd Technoleg, at the National Eisteddfod in August 2006, has not completely faded into oblivion.

Wanting to renew my membership (I used to receive their notices but for some reason I have no copy of the mail that Daniel mentions), I went to the site and clicked ‘Join’ — and was horrified to be presented with a copy of their paper-based ‘registration of interest’ form to be printed and sent by snail mail to Bangor.

I know that Byd Technoleg is targeted at non-technical readers, but surely a web form with the option to print and post would be a more elegant, not to mention efficient alternative?