Daily Archives: 2009-10-02

How could you hack open subtitles?

Art, Pals, Politics, Video, , , , , , ,

The Miro open subtitles project just got funded at kickstarter.

The promise is an open source of subtitles for video. Now the subtitles won’t be restricted to the people who made the video. They are anticipating use for the hearing impaired and for translations.  Why am I excited?

The project is also designed to make this decentralized, so that it can be implemented by other video players, and so that users can subscribe to multiple sites of subtitles.  That’s the interesting bit!

I’m seeing subtitles as commentary, subtitles with contrasting dialogue, snarky notes about continuity issues and product placement, or political connections…  Imagine the amazing ShiftSpace web experience 1, or Google’s Sidewiki, but for video.

It’s just cream that the project was funded by tiny donations from lots of strangers 2.

  1. I know Mushon through Eyebeam and Add-Art   (back)
  2. I’m one of them   (back)

links for 2009-10-02

Links
  • Reason Magazine : Typing Errors
    The old story: "Qwerty keyboards exist to slow down typists, but took hold and that's why we have these inferior keyboards. If markets worked, we'd all be on Dvorak keyboards."
    Reason argues that Dvorak cooked the books on his studies, that qwerty keyboards survived brisk competition from many other layouts, and that very high speeds were possible during this time.
    Careful refutation of a solidly established story.
    (tags: myth disinformation mythbusting antichump myths common.knowledge)
  • Pollux: Automatically Organize and Fix Your Music Library
    Never worry about organizing your music library again
    ✹ Completely automatic and easy to use
    ✹ Tags name, artist, album, album art, genre, year, and lyrics
    ✹ Analyzes the track's unique fingerprint, so it can never be wrong
    ✹ No existing track information necessary
    ✹ Automatically corrects each track's information as it is added to iTunes
    You can donate to support via paypal
    (tags: itunes music tagging mac freeware mp3)