[OLPC library] activities and bundles for G1G1, and more

Mon Oct 20 03:56:11 EDT 2008

Okay, I must admit:  I am blown away by your website.  This tool is
really cool.  I have already had long discussions with friends on this
subject who could not understand the purpose of universally translated
subtitles would be.  Your effort is certainly to be commended.

However, I find myself wondering: Is this a web only technology?  This
technology would be much more useful if it was also available offline. 
Kids with XOs may not be connected when they go home (even when their
range is extended by the mesh).  What is the possibility for subtitle
files being shared with each video file?  What is the possibility for
sharing subtitles for non-web video formats (not encapsulated in
Flash)?  Also, will there be some protocol for sharing subtitle files
automagically?  How about machine translation of an existing subtitle
file?  How about movies?  How about YouTube videos?  Is there a way to
add this functionality to websites that do not have it?  Like a browser
plugin?  What about subtitle files that already exist?  There are lots
of .srt files on the web.

Also, what about cutting and pasting?  Can the children copy subtitles
to quote them?  Can they use those in text based conversations and
research papers?  Or are they completely locked up in the Flash file? 
Obviously, the child could screen scrape the wiki, but it would be much
nicer to have a subtitle app that would allow the same text to be
seamlessly shared with say Write, Browse, and whatever the multimedia
viewing activity may be called.  Children should also be able to
subtitle their own video and audio files.

Should there be a Subtitle activity?  Or should subtitling be an
intrinsic function which is available in other activities?  This might
be a good idea for the annotation of books with shared comments or whatnot.

In any case, this web based system is a good start, but Sugar should
probably have built in functionality for this.  Speech is what all this
is about, right?  Education through communication, I assume, is one of
the goals of the XO.

Sincerely,

LuYu

Michael Smolens wrote:
> Thanks for the intro SJ - nice seeing you, however briefly, in NY at
> OneWebDay.
>
> Sebastian - would love to have a call to see how we can integrate
> dotSUB captioning/subtitling functionality into what Daily Motion is
> doing with OLPC, as well as perhaps other aspects of your offering.
>  The easiest thing to do is to set up a time for a phone call so we
> can have a show & tell together.
>
> And Natalia - no one ever thinks about subtitling music videos - but
> we feel there would be so much greater connection if people could
> actually understand the lyrics in their native languages as the
> listen/watch the video.  Here is a link to a music video in 20 languages
>
> http://dotsub.com/view/e72dd5fd-1729-4d6e-bb32-34a8f49faebe
>
> In general, dotSUB enables web based video to be captioned subtitled
> from language A to language B either using an open, wiki type process
> for allowing users to do the work as volunteers, like Wikepedia for
> video, or in a closed environment, for corporations or projects that
> want professional translation.  As far as we know, we are the only
> technology available like this.
>
> You can see how this works at the Twitter home page at
> http://twitter.com - hit the watch video tab, you see a video open
> with an embed from our site - pick any of the 41 languages on the
> 'choose language' pull down menu, and the video will play with
> subtitles from that language.  Hit the down arrow on your keyboard,
> and scroll through the languages.  All these were done with volunteers
> - and even more powerful this video is embedded on over 1500 other
> URLs, sites and blogs, of which 85% are in languages other than English.
>
> All this was done with no phone calls, no money changing hands, and
> the video has been viewed more than 750,000 times, about twice as many
> times as the same video on YouTube.
>
> We want to enable as much video into as many languages possible on
> OLPC as we can, so hopefully we can work together to make this happen.
>
> Thanks again SJ
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Michael L. Smolens
> Founder & CEO
> dotSUB llc - Any Film Any Language
> 360 East 72nd St. #C3104
> New York, NY 10021 USA
> michael at dotsub.com <mailto:michael at dotsub.com> - email
> 1-917-742-0158 - tel
> 1-646-403-9944 - fax
> mlsmolens - Skype
> http://dotSUB.com <http://dotSUB.com/> - website
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>
>> Dear Sébastien,
>>
>> Two introductions :  Please meet Natalia Tsarkova, who runs
>> i-concerts.com and is getting music videos from Africa (and  the music
>> tracks behind some of them) for release as bundles for G1G1 this year.
>> She is interested in feeding part of the olpc portal on DM, and
>> producing some new content every month for release over the coming
>> year.
>>
>> Meet also Michael Smolens, who runs dotsub, a multilingual video
>> subtitling project.
>>
>> Natalia and Michael, Sébastien is spearheading the olpc projects @
>> Dailymotion (such as dailymotion.com/olpc).  The portal he has set up
>> has a good framerate and encoding for the laptops, and he can help
>> convert other media formats as well.
>>
>> All - we have a draft set of software, activities, and collections for
>> this winter's OLPC giving program, which you can see here:
>>    http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/G1G1/8.2
>>
>> I would love to add more audio and video bundles to the lot.  10MB is
>> a good size for a content bundle, as a rule of thumb.  I copy Joy and
>> Siobhan and our public library list to keep everyone in the loop.
>>
>> Regards,
>> SJ
>> --
>> 617 529 4266              skype:metasj
>>
>> ps - if any of you need XOs for your testing or work, or know
>> developers that do, let me know.
>
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>
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-- 

LuYu 	

"How a society produces its information environment goes to the very
core of freedom."

	-- Yochai Benkler

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