In continuation of our Overstream Tutorials Post, recently we had a couple of awesome Overstream tutorials created by you, our users, right here on Overstream.net:

• A very touching Overstream Review and Tutorial (by closedcaptionboy)
• An Overstream Tutorial (by DigPartyProductions) including instructions on how to import the subtitles into your YouTube video

Thanks a lot, guys and girls, for helping others to use Overstream!

To the satisfaction of many who wondered, the revolution inauguration was indeed televised captioned.

Many accolades follow, and rightly so. The NAD gave a nod. Various other captioning advocates (such as slinkerwink over at DailyKos, etc) thank the captioning team that apparently, as Washington Post reports, worked against all odds:

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

Even conservatives over at RedState commend the Obama team in this regard.

But I am going to put a damper into this celebration. Notice that YouTube seems to have emerged as a de facto provider of important communication infrastructure to the government. Which would be perfectly fine, except that it appears that YouTube got a special dispensation from the federal privacy rules.

Are we witnessing a phenomenon that is the reverse of trademark genericide? One may use “to xerox” to mean “to copy”, or “kleenex” to mean “a tissue”. We are all familiar with that. But in today’s age, it seems that whenever “online video” is mentioned, “YouTube” is understood. While this is a great compliment to YouTube, is it good when the government does it?

How does this sit with the many Obama supporters that are proponents of Net Neutrality?

P.S. In a somewhat ironic (albeit unclear in what way exactly) twist on the subject of YouTube and accessibility to the Deaf community, YouTube now mutes some videos. I just thought I’d add that in there.

US Congress is getting its own YouTube channel. Dear Senators and Congressmen: please follow the laws you passed (does Section 508 ring a bell?), and make your videos accessible. We also agree with ReadWriteWeb’s criticism of top-down nature of this development:

[Q]uite a few Senators and Representatives decided not to allow comments on their videos. We would hope that more of our elected officials would value comments from their constituents.

But while the legislators may disable comments on YouTube, they won’t disable comments for videos embedded in the blogs — or on Overstream.net, for that matter. Which would make the YouTube channels mere video repositories, rather than portals; the discussion will happen elsewhere. Thwarting the authoritarian, centralized, top-down model like only the Internet can.

And now, moving from D.C. to the Holy See: His Holiness is coming to YouTube. Since the faithful are all over the globe, it’s encumbent upon this Vatican 2.0 (couldn’t resist) to be accessible in multiple languages. ChurchCrunch wonders if a digital version of the 95 Theses is to be expected. May we suggest to the next Martin Luther that they come in a form of an Overstream? We’d set up a special Schlosskirche page just for that.

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Gaurav makes a case that “the future of online video [journalism] will be driven by translation.” We are in vehement agreement. But may we suggest that providing context is another important facet of Journalism 2.0?
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In other news, we have added support for high-quality YouTube videos. Enjoy.

The events in Gaza did not just elicit online protests, but in fact opened a sort of parallel theater of war in cyberspace. And shortly on the heels of that, another tragedy strikes closer to home.

On New Year’s Day, local transit police fatally shot a passenger, Oscar Grant, in an Oakland, California, station. This has been caught on video by numerous passers-by. The videos, rapidly spreading via Internet, left traditional media behind, of course, and generated a backlash that resulted in disturbances in Oakland (citizen-journalism footage from which are even more numerous).

The revolution will not be televised. But will it be captioned?

But there is a problem here. Even though I am not visually or hearing-impaired, it is very hard for me to understand what is going on just by watching such ad hoc videos.

We get more real-time, unfiltered news thanks to the ubiquity, cheapness and small sizes of consumer devices such as cameras and cell phones. The low prices make them available to more and more people, and the small sizes make them not only portable (and thus available to the public at any time), but also less noticeable to “authorities”.

But these same characteristics of these devices mean that the quality of the recording is far from perfect. Now add to that the ambient noise, lighting problems, crowds jostling, and general lack of professional videography experience by the amateurs. As a result, what we gain in speed of getting information we lose in its quality. We know that something happened, but can hardly be certain as to what.

This is where the great real-time reportage by those on the scene can, and should, be enhanced — both by other citizen journalists, and by professionals in the traditional media.

The citizen reporters who happened to be on the scene did their part. And now, the bloggers who sit at their computers will provide their points of view. As Xeni Jardin notes (emphasis mine):

[M]any YouTube users are annotating and re-uploading video to offer amateur opinions on what’s going on, and who did what, why.

Contribute your skills to provide clearer content and deeper context, not merely opinions.

Speaking one’s piece of mind is great, but we know full well here is no shortage of that on the Internet. Instead, those that can should contribute their time and technical ability in a more objective way. For example, those that possess appropriate skills and technology could analyze and enhance the provided video and audio, and add annotations and captions to them, so that those of us using run-of-the-mill computers to keep up with the news can get some content (and, perhaps, even some context), that is currently obscured by noise.

And as that happens, the traditional media should, in parallel, work hard to add value, in the form of deeper context and analysis, as close to real-time developments as possible. As Om Malik put it:

The eyewitness dispatches (and photos) via social media are an adjunct to the more established media — which needs to focus on providing analysis, context, and crucially, intelligence — in real time. And yet it is old media — and their next-generation counterparts, the blogs and other Internet outlets — that will have to adapt to this.

We already know that the revolution will not be televised, but it will be on YouTube.

But will it be captioned? Annotated? Explained?

Washington Post calls Obama’s “The YouTube presidency“.

Unfortunately, it is lacking English captions — to make it accessible to deaf/hard-of-hearing communities, and captions in other languages — to make it accessible to both non-English speaking US constituency and to a world-wide audience.

Yes, transcripts are provided, which follows their commitment to accessibility. But reading the transcript is not as effective as watching a video.

Thanks to Bill Creswell for quickly captioning it. I suppose this is the true Web 2.0 way — users are generating content and filling in the missing pieces. But cool as it may be, when the content provider is the government, it would do well to provide accessible versions itself.

Here is the captioned version: