YouTube rolled out automatic captioning for Japanese videos, utilizing the same kind of speech recognition technology that’s also used to auto-caption videos in English. The video sharing site announced the launch of the feature late last week on its Japanese blog, and a YouTube spokesperson confirmed Tuesday via email that this is the first time automatic captioning is available in a language other than English. “We look forward to continuing to expand this feature to additional languages over time,” he added.

Users can now select automatic captioning for Japanese videos by clicking on the CC button and then selecting Transcribe audio:

YouTube rolled out auto-captioning for English-language videos in late 2009. The site expanded the feature to all of its English-language videos in March 2010.

Captions for online video recently came into the spotlight when disability advocates sued Netflix and CNN for failing to provide subtitles for each and every video the companies are serving up online. YouTube’s effort to bring auto-captioning to Japan has been hailed by the country’s Federation of the Deaf, but Google Technical Program Manager for Accessibility Engineering Naomi Black cautioned on Monday that publishers should merely understand the auto-captioning provided by the site as a starting point. On Google+, she explained:

As someone who posts content to YouTube, I wouldn’t rely on auto-captions without review, but it’s a great starting place for making accurate captions, since the video owner can download and edit the captions. And as a viewer, if the video owner hasn’t provided any captions, it does give you some insight into what the video is about.

There’s also another big benefit for publishers and Google alike in expanding automatic captioning: Captions make videos searchable, expanding the discoverability of videos both on YouTube itself as well as via Google. This could help to add more views and improve monetization of video assets.

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This may be the greatest sentence ever written in the English language: “As IT industry analysts label 2010 the ‘Year of the Cloud,’ a new report by Greenpeace shows how the launch of quintessential cloud computing devices like the Apple iPad raises fresh questions about how the Internet is powered and whether the IT sector will continue to fuel climate change by increasing demand for dirty coal power.” Dirty Coal Power: on tour this summer (with special guest Limp Bizkit)! In other words, does the iPad hate freedom? Obviously.

Greenpeace actually makes a couple of good points. Devices like the iPad (and Google Chrome OS) pretty much rely upon cloud computing in order for them to work.

Cloud computing requires pretty big data centers in order for them to work. So big, in fact, that Greenpeace estimates that by 2020, these data centers will demand more electricity than is currently demanded by France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany combined. That’s around 1,963 billion kilowatt hours just for you to run a couple of applications.

The implication, of course, is that devices and services that rely on cloud computing, including the iPad, will drive up this planet’s energy consumption, and thereby everyone of your carbon footprints.

So, in a manner of speaking, the iPad isn’t very green. That may not matter to y’all, but it certainly matters to folks like Greenpeace, and people who live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Just a few more days till iPad Day, which I’m going to guess won’t be nearly as big as the original iPhone Day.

Hey, something’s happening in China vis-à-vis piracy! The country’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has been fiddling with downloads there for the past few days, and people are complaining that they’re not about to access the content they were once able to.

The new action affects BitTorrent download and has all but taken down VeryCD, which is supposedly the country’s biggest download site. (As if I know anything about China download habits.) Someone told China Daily, and English language newspaper there, that he’ll “never be able to download Hollywood movies or classical records again.”

SARFT has shut down some 530 BitTorrent sites in the past few days.

And if you’re looking to kill a few minutes, you may want to read this list of films that are for whatever reason banned in China.

I see that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was banned. Lucky China.

If you spend your free time going gaga over cell phones, here’s a chance to make money from your Twilight-level geeky admiration. Cell Phones Etc. (cellphones.ca) is looking for writers, those with a masterful written command of the English language, and with a sense for the latest cell phones (duh), including what they can do.

Just email branden -at- cellphones.ca (replace “-at-” with “@”) for more information. Here are some things the site requires:

Regular Contributor: 1-2 articles / how-to’s a week (ie. “10 Hottest Phones Under $10″, “A Look At The Richest Men in Mobile”, “The Complete Roundup of iPhone Clones”, “How to beat roaming charges while traveling abroad.”

Columnist: A weekly or monthly opinion column covering a mobile topic of your particular interests or expertise.

Phone Writeups: We need some help with short writeups for each phone that we add to our database. Those should be 1-3 paragraphs, not a review, rather a general overview of the device, who its designed for, etc. Think a Coles Notes version of wikipedia entries. Unbiased, concise but more consumer friendly.

What about compensation? More from Branden:

Payouts will depend on the length of the piece of course. Shorter blog posts and commentary will run between $5-10 per post. Longer length articles / features will run $15-$50. All will depend on the piece, the quality of writing and how big of role the individual takes on with our new site.

This opening looks intriguing enough; if my schedule wasn’t so full, I would’ve started pimping my articles on cellphones.ca on The Gadget Blog by now!

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Want to find out the origins of Halloween or when Samuel Pepys was born while walking round the park with your inquisitive six year old but don’t have an internet connection? Then the WikiReader might just be worth checking out. A palm-sized electronic encyclopaedia designed for all ages, it contains more than three million English language entries from Wikipedia that can be immediately accessed any time, anywhere without an internet connection. Developed by Openmoko WikiReader turns on instantly and will work for months on two AAA batteries. The large monochrome screen uses a touch interface, articles are scrolled with a stroke of the finger and hyperlinks selected with a simple tap. Updates for the WikiReader are provided quarterly and available for free download via their website. A yearly subscription plan for updated microSD cards is also available for $29. “We created the WikiReader to be fun, easy, informative and entertaining for all ages,” said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. “WikiReader is a whimsical look at the joy of learning in the digital age. It’s personal and it’s fun. We’re extremely excited about sharing our device with the world.” Costing $99 the WikiReader is available from Amazon.com starting today. For more information on WikiReader visit http://thewikireader.com.

Want to find out the origins of Halloween or when Samuel Pepys was born while walking round the park with your inquisitive six year old but don’t have an internet connection? Then the WikiReader might just be worth checking out. A palm-sized electronic encyclopaedia designed for all ages, it contains more than three million English language entries from Wikipedia that can be immediately accessed any time, anywhere without an internet connection. Developed by Openmoko WikiReader turns on instantly and will work for months on two AAA batteries. The large monochrome screen uses a touch interface, articles are scrolled with a stroke of the finger and hyperlinks selected with a simple tap. Updates for the WikiReader are provided quarterly and available for free download via their website. A yearly subscription plan for updated microSD cards is also available for $29. “We created the WikiReader to be fun, easy, informative and entertaining for all ages,” said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. “WikiReader is a whimsical look at the joy of learning in the digital age. It’s personal and it’s fun. We’re extremely excited about sharing our device with the world.” Costing $99 the WikiReader is available from Amazon.com starting today. For more information on WikiReader visit http://thewikireader.com.