Creating captions for your videos on YouTube becomes much easier today, thanks to automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology.

Auto-Timing: Upload a transcript (a simple file with the text of what’s said in the video), and through speech recognition technology we’ll turn it into synchronized captions. Timing is the toughest part of creating captions, but now this should be much easier. The technology works best for videos with good sound quality and clear spoken English.

Auto-Captions: We use the same speech recognition technology to create machine-generated captions (which can then be translated into 51 languages). You can see auto-caps in action right now on a range of educational channels, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google channels, including YouTube’s. Click on the menu button at the bottom right of the video player, then click CC and the arrow to its left, then click the new “Transcribe Audio” button. In time, we hope to expand this feature for many more YouTube videos.

YouTube and Kodak have teamed up to launch For Mom, a robust resource for anyone raising children today. The videos housed on this channel cover everything from cooking and parenting tips, to the best toys and games for kids, to easy ways to maintain your own health and beauty routine. There are even responses to some of life’s most difficult questions, like how much to pay the tooth fairy:

Browse through For Mom (and come back often!) for more videos from YouTube partners who know a thing or two about parenting, including Better, Parents TV, Lifetime and popular mommy bloggers who expertly find humor in what’s often called the hardest job on earth.

Sadia Harper, Howto & Style Manager, recently watched “Things My Kids Will Never Know.”

Anthropology professor Michael Wesch has the awesome job of studying YouTube and thinking about what it all means. We asked him to curate a playlist of his favorite videos, and he came back with an impressive list of clips that exemplify how the “wonderfully playful participatory culture” you’ve created manifests itself on YouTube. Four of those videos are on our homepage today, but he also wrote this thoughtful blog post to accompany his picks. Reading it, you’ll get a sense of how a single video or person can create a ripple that swells into something so much bigger than ourselves.

What I love about online video is the way that it has allowed more people to join a global conversation. Television was a medium whose content was controlled by the few and made for the masses. It created a one-way conversation, and you had to be on TV to get your turn. We have all been excluded from that conversation for so long, it is no wonder that so many people are now jumping in (over 1 million videos uploaded online every day by my count).

One of my first favorites was Gary Brolsma’s “Numa Numa dance,” which he posted on Newgrounds.com in late 2004. When YouTube came along a few months later and made it so much easier for people to upload videos, thousands of people joined the dance. A search for “Numa Numa” now brings up over 125,000 videos, most of which are people doing their own rendition of the now-famous dance. And it is still going. [Recently], Brolsma led the Michigan State Band (and the whole stadium) doing the “Numa Numa.”

There is a wonderfully playful participatory culture popping up all over the online video landscape.

A few days ago, I was having lunch with a guy who told me that he and his kids (ages 2 and 6) were working on their own rendition of blinktwice4y’s YouTube hit “Mario Kart Love Song”. When they are done, they will join hundreds of others who have also created their own rendition. And if you love participatory culture as much as I do, you might just find the more obscure ones to be the most entertaining (like matrock records jamming it out Brady Bunch style) and sometimes heartwarming (don’t you just love these kids playing it live? Or how ’bout these young kids acting out the video? You just know they will be watching this with the tears rolling and hearts warming in 30 years. Or even this wedding serenade).

And speaking of weddings, almost everybody saw the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, but the remixes and remakes are a real treat. There is of course the “Divorce Dance,” the live remakes at weddings everywhere (here’s one from Spain) and even babies are getting in on it.

Or remember how OK Go made their career with that amazing treadmill dance? But what could be cooler than doing it live at your high school in front of all your friends? Of course, Granbury High was not the only remake. There are hundreds, yes, hundreds of groups of high school kids who somehow wrangled together several working treadmills, rolled them into high school auditoriums all over the world, and did their thing.

Undoubtedly, some people performing on YouTube are hoping to be the next Esmee Denters. It wasn’t so long ago that Esmee was just a young girl singing (beautifully) in front of a crappy webcam — until one day she was singing a Justin Timberlake song in front of a slightly better camera, which slowly panned right to reveal that none other than Justin Timberlake himself was in the room, and that he had just signed her to a record deal.

There’s still a lot of unsigned talent out there, like Megan Tonjes or mandyvbats, who was brought to my attention by the absolutely amazing work of Kutiman, a musician who brought together snippets of YouTube artists from all over the world, working in so many genres, to create such beautiful music (which to me is the real YouTube orchestra).

But my favorite online video moments are those where the participatory culture spills out into the real world. There is probably no better example than the Free Hugs movement. Now three years old, it is still going, and it’s global. But of course it wouldn’t be participatory culture without the clever parody, which Greg Benson of mediocrefilms performed brilliantly by offering his “Deluxe Hugs” for $2.

The tools for such clever commentary and remixing are always growing, and several of my new favorites are coming from the creative uses of Auto-Tune. The Gregory Brothers have really mastered this with their Autotune the News series. Melodysheep is now bringing his amazing talents to set the beautiful insights of the best scientists of recent years (like Carl Sagan) to some moving music.

So much of this creativity relies on the freedom to remix and build on the material created by others, a freedom that’s constantly being challenged. Which brings me to one of my more serious recommendations: Brett Gaylor’s RIP: A Remix Manifesto. Or for a wonderfully artistic statement within the same theme, one of the most amazing videos on all of YouTube is Us by Blimvisible.

My favorite video of all time still remains MadV’s “The Message.” It comes from the early days of YouTube, when so many of us were still just amazed that we could reach out to millions of people through our webcams. MadV invited us to write a message for the world on our hands. The resulting compilation may just become one of those iconic videos that our descendants hundreds of years might look back on and say, “So this is what they had to say when they first wired up all those computers and cameras throughout the world…” He’s now doing an HD version if you want to join in.

If you are interested in how we try to make sense of all of this in anthropological terms, check out “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube,” where my students and I discuss many of these videos and a whole bunch more:

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University

Adobe just announced a bunch of upgrades to Acrobat.com, its suite of web collaboration applications. The most important: It’s releasing an application for the iPhone and BlackBerry.

Mobile support has been a big missing piece for Acrobat.com, since a big selling point of applications like Adobe’s (as well as Google Docs and the upcoming web versions of Microsoft Office) is the ability to access your documents anywhere. Now Acrobat.com users can not only read and share files from their phones, but also upload documents and send faxes.

Acrobat.com started out as a free service, but in June it launched premium versions, where users pay for web meetings and the ability to create PDF documents. The mobile app follows that model. Free users can send two faxes and upload up to five documents from their phone each month, but if you want to do more, you’ll have to upgrade to a pay version.

The other major improvement is the creation of a central environment to view all your files in Acrobat.com, rather than having to view all your documents in Buzzword, all your spreadsheets in Tables, and all your presentations in, uh, Presentations. This may be what Product Manager Erik Larson was referring to when I asked him in June about future improvements, and he said, “I don’t necessarily think presentations, spreadsheets, documents are these three separate things, even though I know that’s the way the world thinks right now.”

The new version of Acrobat.com will launch at 3am Pacific on Saturday, Nov. 21. Larson told me in June that the site has 5 million registered users. (I’ve asked for more recent numbers and will update if I receive them.)

Facebook has banned offer providers Gambit and Tatto Media from providing offers in games and apps on the social network.

The development is one of the results of the recent scandal around the quality of offers in social games and apps. Some of the offers have been tainted as scams because they don’t tell consumers about hidden obligations or fees. Earlier today, Offerpal said that it was issuing a set of standards for its advertisers to follow in order to meet the highest ethics standards.

Tatto Media has had a history of problems with alleged deceptive ads, but Gambit has reportedly been trying to play by the rules. Facebook outlined the actions it was taking on Nov. 5, but it did not name the banned companies at that time. The reason was repeat violations of Facebook’s guidelines for offers. A spokesman for Facebook confirmed that the companies mentioned in the post were indeed Tatto and Gambit.

Curiously, Gambit said today in response to Offerpal’s announcement, “We at Gambit are really glad to hear that Offerpal is taking these steps. For our part, Gambit’s AdControl suite of tools has been in effect since the earliest days of Gambit, so we see this as great news because it validates our product development choices. … Because of the recent limelight on our industry, we think we can look forward to lots more announcements like this as more and more payments and offers companies realize that ‘monitor’ and ‘filter’ are key components to ‘monetize.’”

Gambit has also addressed the scam issue in its own blog. Apparently, Gambit’s approach isn’t good enough for Facebook, which has begun cracking down on scam offers as a result of the controversy. Gambit hasn’t yet responded to our query about the Facebook ban.

The offer crackdown is serious, since Inside Social Games reported today that the offer business accounts for 30 percent of revenues in the $1 billion virtual goods business. And Inside Social Goods reported that as much of 20 percent of the offer business may be based on questionable promotions. Thus, the crackdown on Facebook and other social networks could have a significant slowing effect if all of the questionable offers are removed.

Offers are special ads that are used to monetize otherwise free social games on Facebook and other social networks. In an offer, a user will agree to sign up for a Netflix subscription or credit card offer. The business has been lucrative because the offers guaranteed some kind of direct benefit for the advertisers, who are willing to pay more. And these offers are appealing to gamers who didn’t want to pay for virtual goods with credit cards. Offer companies like Offerpal, Super Rewards, Gambit, Trialpay and others have been at the forefront of the industry.

But as with other online media, complaints arose that some offers were scams. The scandal ignited last month as Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington challenged former Offerpal CEO Anu Shukla over the legitimacy of most offers at the Virtual Goods Summit. Shukla said that less than 1 percent of the offers have generated complaints from users. But the ensuing debate led to changes in policy regarding offers at Zynga, RockYou, and other companies. Facebook renewed its crackdown on scams and actually stopped one of Zynga’s games, FishVille, from launching until Zynga removed controversial offers. Zynga has also stopped using offers until it could set up a system to properly vet them. Zynga is now in the process of restoring offers, using companies that include Offerpal.

If you’ve followed coverage on R2EV, you already know that some are skeptical about the company’s battery, designed to be swapped out in a network of “Greenbox” facilities nation wide.

Perceived problems with interoperability, improper installation or short circuiting and decreasing life cycle of a fleet of batteries have all been cited as reasons to stick with a more conventional battery pack. Talking to chief executive Alex Livingston, though, one gets the impression he’s already thought of all this and has a solid plan to prevent such mishaps. In an interview at GreenBeat 2009, he clarifies some key points about his company’s product.

First, R2EV batteries aren’t some proprietary formula only available from R2EV and compatible with their Fuel 2.0 products. R2EV will be sourcing their cells from any battery manufacturer able to produce them within some basic parameters controlling the voltage and physical form for compatibility’s sake. The initial launch will be at the larger storage level and the primary consumer is expected to be the military, at least at first.

As the day-to-day realities of using Fuel 2.0 energy systems are figured out by the military (probably the toughest customer R2EV will ever have to deal with), the company will start expanding into the automotive market. This is where the real fun begins — because if battery change stations are strung out frequently enough, you could drive across the country with no more charge-time than an average ICE car would require fueling-time. Expect major cities and strategic transit stops on interstate highways to be their first locations opened. With time R2EV will adopt next-generation batteries with greater capacity.

This leaves a few questions about safety, though. After all, if Jiffy Lube can burn up an occasional engine with the wrong oil filter, could a similar type of station blow up a battery? Probably not, says Livingston. First, there will be only one way to plug a cell into the pack’s receptacle: the correct way. Second, there will be testable relays and display lights to indicate whether or not a cell is safe and fully charged. If a cell was showing substantially decreased capacity, Livingston says it would be taken out of automotive circulation and probably sold twice more for less demanding uses before it was recycled or disposed of.

This still leaves problems of adoption. While automotive companies are contracting their battery production to major cell makers it remains unclear which path to adoption R2EV is taking. They could sell their design to automakers and operate the swap facilities. They could also hit the after-market and offer a swap kit similar to their products for commercial fleet vehicles. This seems less likely to make it into the mainstream for personal commuter vehicles. According to its site, R2EV is “working with the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer to change the customer experience.”

Hopefully we’ll see the fruit of this labor soon.

Is an iPhone price war about to break out in the UK? After Vodafone and Orange bagged the iPhone – when O2’s two year monopoly expired in September – we learn today that Tesco, the UK supermarket leviathan, is to sell the iPhone on Tesco Mobile, its MVNO joint venture partnership with O2.

This news just sent the iPhone directly into the mainstream. UK iPhone app developers are looking at an even bigger gold rush than before.

Both iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS handsets will be sold in Tesco Phone Shops and online through Tesco Direct in the UK, possibly before the Christmas holidays.

Tesco Mobile normally focuses on the low end of the market with voice and text, and we’re told the prices will be “competitive”. As an MVNO, Tesco has a fairly free hand regarding the the markets it goes after. O2 says it has sold over one million iPhones since September 2007, clearly to early adopters.

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KIDO’Z, the Israeli company behind the eponymous media browser for kids, has released a new version of its program and insists that we now refer to it as a Web OS for kids instead.

It’s certainly not an invalid point, since the new KIDO’Z incorporates communication features besides content consumption elements only, and the company is making strides in signing up computer manufacturers to have the platform pre-installed on machines.

KIDO’Z (an Adobe AIR desktop application) has put a social layer on top of the content part, enabling kids to communicate with each other as well as their parents aside from browsing pre-approved websites and playing videos or games online. Clearly, this is an oft-requested feature, as we’ve noticed when KIDO’Z competitor KidZui recently implemented a bunch of sharing and communication options as well.

Parents can now approve ‘friends’ for their kids to socialize with, which can be other children, the parents themselves, grand parents, and so on. A newly integrated Mail application enables kids to send and receive e-mails, e-cards, drawings, animated backgrounds, stickers etc., allowing the children to express themselves creatively even if they haven’t yet mastered reading or writing skills.

Also new is the addition of Places, which are essentially virtual rooms where kids can socialize with others in a cartoonesque setting. Kids can create an avatar and visit and create their own rooms, and communicate with other kids or exchange virtual gifts in a safe, child-friendly environment.

The Israeli company behind the application has now also added a premium version dubbed KIDO’Z PLUS, enabling parents to unlock more features (statistics, advanced security settings, etc.) for a monthly fee that ranges from $4.18 to $7.5 depending on how long you’d like to subscribe.

The company informs us that KIDO’Z already comes pre-installed on over half a million MSI computers, and that it expects to be on 6 million computers next year. Also worth noting: the startup has managed to attract former National Geographic Kids Entertainment President and Founder Donna Friedman Meir as its Chief of Content and Strategy.

Give KIDO’Z a whirl and let us know what you (and your kids) think.

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You would think that, almost exactly 4 years after opening up to the public, WordPress.com would have a way for people to subscribe to blogs by e-mail, right? You’d be wrong, at least until today.

While there has always been the possibility to subscribe to blogs by e-mail using FeedBurner or other RSS facilitators, WordPress.com’s parent company Automattic has now added an email subscription feature to the popular free blogging service.

To enable this, simply install the Blog Subscription widget on your WordPress.com blog and you’ll enable anyone to get updates from your blog in their e-mail inboxes, whether they’re WordPress.com users or not, on a per post basis, daily or weekly. Evidently, all subscriptions require confirmation by the address owner and can be canceled at any time.

E-mailed blog posts will come in as HTML, although users can opt to receive them in plain text too should they still be using a mail client sans HTML reading capabilities (seriously, does anyone still use those?).

I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that Automattic has only added its very own e-mail subscription feature now, on the verge of entering the year 2010. E-mail is such a huge deal still, and shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought even by ‘new media’ companies like them.

Good thing they ask us to stay tuned, because they have a ‘lot more plans for email’. What, like the ability to send in blog posts for publication by e-mail like Posterous and Tumblr have been doing for quite a while? Update: as Automattic’s Ranaan points out in comments, that was already possible, my bad. Looking forward to their future plans with e-mail.

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Pune: Hockey India (HI) president Ashok Kumar Mattoo appears to have brought about at least a temporary truce between the players and national coach Jose Brasa.