"One of the big challenges of the video medium is whether it can be made accessible to everyone," said Cerf, who also holds the title of "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google.

Speaking at Google's Washington office, Cerf noted that he has a "great personal interest" in the closed caption capability. Cerf, 66, is hearing impaired and has been wearing hearing aids since the age of 13.

Since last year, YouTube users have been able to manually add captions to videos but the feature is not widely used and most content on the site does not have captions.

Noting that over 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, Ken Harrenstien, a deaf Google software engineer who led the caption project, said "the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me."

Google uses Automatic Speech Recognition technology to generate captions and Harrenstien noted that it is not perfect -- the word "sim card," for example, came out as "salmon" during one demonstration.

Google audio engineers said background noise and strong accents pose a challenge to creating precise captions from the spoken word, but Harrenstien said the technology "will continue to improve with time."

"Today I'm more hopeful than ever that we'll achieve our long-term goal of making videos universally accessible," he said in a blog post. "Even with its flaws, I see the addition of automatic captioning as a huge step forward."

Although the automatic captions can only be generated from videos in English for the moment, they can be simultaneously machine-translated into any of the 51 languages Google supports.

In addition to the automatic captions, Google announced a new feature that will make it easier for users to add captions to their videos.

Called automatic caption timing, it involves creating a text transcript of the video and uploading it to YouTube. Speech recognition technology is then used to create and synchronize captions for the video.

"This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don't have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks," Harrenstien said.

Both features will be available in English by the end of the week.

The university partners whose videos will allow automatic captioning include the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Los Angeles, Columbia University, Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Yale and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

National Geographic's YouTube channel will also include the feature, as will most of Google and YouTube's own channels.

Thursday's event was attended by representatives of Gallaudet University, the largest US university for the deaf, as well as the National Association of the Deaf, the American Association of People with Disabilities and other groups.

With so much attention focused on adding new stuff, you've got to wonder what the future has in store for search and whether this feature war is getting out of hand.

The Battle for Search

It's nothing new to try and suck the life out of a competitor's product by making a competing major announcement around the same time. Palm and Sprint tried to do that to Apple with the launch of the Palm Pre. Not to mention that Google Wave launched on May 28, the same day that Bing made its debut. But lately, the battle between Google and Bing is getting to be like a tennis match that never ends, just a constant rally back and forth as each side tries to outmaneuver the other.

Look at Wednesday: Bing announces some interesting new features that integrate the computational power of Wolfram Alpha into its search results. As an added bonus, Bing gets limited Facebook integration and tweaks its weather results.

How does Google respond? An announcement about tweaked movie searches, and password protection for your SafeSearch settings--Google's filter for explicit content. Improved SafeSearch is worth talking about and likely a welcome improvement, but the Google Movies announcement looks like a desperate plea to prove that Google can be just as consumer oriented as Bing.

The Future

Although competing announcements can get a little tiring, there's a lot to love about the heavy competition in the search market. Google and Microsoft realize that search is where the online money is, which is why they spend so much time on new features and products that will keep you coming back for more. Increased competition could lead to helpful technologies emerging like improved semantic search, hyper local features, voice activated search on your PC and who know what else?

It's an exciting future for search--I can't believe I just said that--and Google and Bing are working hard to deliver the latest and greatest features to their loyal users. I just hope they don't lose focus on basic things like filtering search spam and phishing detection in the rush to deliver new features before the other guy does.

taken from: tech.yahoo.com

As soon as those regulators give approval, the agreement goes into effect worldwide, although implementation in a specific country would be postponed if regulatory approval is required but not yet obtained. That should not postpone implementation in other places, a Microsoft spokesman said.

Microsoft believes the deal will close in early 2010, and that they can make significant progress on integration in one or two major markets next year.

Ongoing Michael Jackson Coverage

Prince Michael Joseph, 12, Paris Michael, 11, and Prince Michael II, a k a "Blanket," 7, have never attended a day of school. They've never known a neighborhood friend. They sleep together in the same room. And the only outsiders they know are strangers their father would bring in to entertain them.

Last Christmas Eve, Jacko and his dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, -- the suspected father of the two oldest children -- arranged for Carrie Fisher to surprise the kids by reprising her role as Princess Leia in "Star Wars" at their rental mansion in Holmby Hills, Calif.

"Michael brought the kids down in their pajamas and said, 'This is Princess Leia,' " said family friend Stephen Price. "They were so excited! She did her famous speech for them -- the 'Help me, Obi-Wan' speech."

"They are the greatest kids you'll ever meet," Price told Us Weekly of the Jackson kids. "They didn't act like they had silver spoons in their mouths. They are nice and not Hollywood brats. Paris is very polite, a little reserved. Prince is the most outgoing. And Blanket is a sharp kid, but also pretty quiet. When I asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said, 'I just want a stuffed animal.' "

To entertain his kids, Jacko would often take them on midnight shopping sprees in stores specially opened just for them. They hopscotched around the globe from California to Las Vegas to Bahrain to Ireland to New Jersey to Switzerland.

He showered the children with indulgences. In 2007, he shut down parts of the New York, New York Hotel in Las Vegas so he and the kids could play video games and ride the roller coaster. And the kids would show up bleary-eyed at bookshops and toy stores around the world for private shopping sprees at 2 or 3 a.m.

They ate Jackson's favorite -- KFC -- for lunch and dinner.

"Prince I, Paris and Prince II were his life," Michael's longtime pal Dieter Wiesner told Life & Style. "He made breakfast for them -- a lot of people don't know this side of Michael."

taken from nypost.com

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The viability of the PTC business model has been questioned, as fraudulent clicks have ramped up the expenses for advertisers.^[1] With lawsuits filed against the internet search companies, the burden has been placed on Google, Yahoo and others to determine the valid clicks from the fraudulent ones,^[2] although PTC site may just be used as advertising, to direct traffic to one's site. Moreover, many users registered in PTC websites are bots.

Some PTCs are also used to mimic mass human traffic which can help a botnet stay undercover and perform click fraud activity in 2nd and 3rd tier ad networks. Many PTC owners also pollute the ads with malware and botnet rootkits.

Scams although exposed on various PTC forums are still heavily used by new-comers who are drawn in to the websites by search engines. Scam PTC sites are known to attract new users with cheap offers for upgrade and referrals and disappear without trace after a short time. If you subscribe to a new site it is wise to be aware of those signs.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword.

Determining cost per click

Flat-rate PPC

The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards. However, these rates are sometimes minimums and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility. These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, which allows for a high degree of targeting by advertisers. In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads.

Bid-based PPC

When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs. All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc. are then compared and the winner determined. In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid. The ad with the highest bid generally shows up first, though additional factors such as ad quality and relevance can sometimes come into play.

In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties with whom they have partnered. These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf of the network. In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross revenue paid by advertisers. These properties are often referred to as a content network and the ads on them as contextual ads due to the fact that the ad spots are associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are found. In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are less highly valued. Content network properties can include websites, newsletters, and e-mails.

Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower. This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.

To maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid management systems can be deployed. These systems can be used directly by the advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that offer PPC bid management as a service. These tools generally allow for bid management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by a highly automated system. The system generally sets each bid based on the goal that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic at breakeven, and so forth. The system is usually tied into the advertiser's website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids. The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and quantity of the performance data that it has to work with - low-traffic ads can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools useless at worst, or inefficient at best.

”a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong emphasis on how work is done within an organization, in contrast to a product focus’s emphasis on what. A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across time and space, with a beginning and an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs: a structure for action. ... Taking a process approach implies adopting the customer’s point of view. Processes are the structure by which an organization does what is necessary to produce value for its customers.”

This definition contains certain characteristics a process must possess. These characteristics are achieved by a focus on the business logic of the process (how work is done), instead of taking a product perspective (what is done). Following Davenport's definition of a process we can conclude that a process must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output, that it consists of smaller parts, activities, which are ordered in time and space, that there must be a receiver of the process outcome- a customer - and that the transformation taking place within the process must add customer value.

Hammer & Champy’s (1993) definition can be considered as a subset of Davenport’s. They define a process as

”a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer.”

As we can note, Hammer & Champy have a more transformation oriented perception, and put less emphasis on the structural component – process boundaries and the order of activities in time and space.

Rummler & Brache (1995) use a definition that clearly encompasses a focus on the organization’s external customers, when stating that

”a business process is a series of steps designed to produce a product or service. Most processes (...) are cross-functional, spanning the ‘white space’ between the boxes on the organization chart. Some processes result in a product or service that is received by an organization's external customer. We call these primary processes. Other processes produce products that are invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management of the business. We call these support processes.”

The above definition distinguishes two types of processes, primary and support processes, depending on whether a process is directly involved in the creation of customer value, or concerned with the organization’s internal activities. In this sense, Rummler and Brache's definition follows Porter's value chain model, which also builds on a division of primary and secondary activities. According to Rummler and Brache, a typical characteristic of a successful process-based organization is the absence of secondary activities in the primary value flow that is created in the customer oriented primary processes. The characteristic of processes as spanning the white space on the organization chart indicates that processes are embedded in some form of organizational structure. Also, a process can be cross-functional, i.e. it ranges over several business functions.

Finally, let us consider the process definition of Johansson et al. (1993). They define a process as

”a set of linked activities that take an input and transform it to create an output. Ideally, the transformation that occurs in the process should add value to the input and create an output that is more useful and effective to the recipient either upstream or downstream.”

This definition also emphasizes the constitution of links between activities and the transformation that takes place within the process. Johansson et.al. also include the upstream part of the value chain as a possible recipient of the process output. Summarizing the four definitions above, we can compile the following list of characteristics for a business process.

1. Definability: It must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output.
2. Order: It must consist of activities that are ordered according to their position in time and space.
3. Customer: There must be a recipient of the process' outcome, a customer.
4. Value-adding: The transformation taking place within the process must add value to the recipient, either upstream or downstream.
5. Embeddedness: A process can not exist in itself, it must be embedded in an organizational structure.
6. Cross-functionality: A process regularly can, but not necessarily must, span several functions.

Frequently, a process owner, i.e. a person being responsible for the performance and continuous improvement of the process, is also considered as a prerequisite.

In addition to number of employees, other methods used to classify small companies include annual sales (turnover), value of assets and net profit (balance sheet), alone or in a mixed definition. These criteria are followed by the European Union, for instance (headcount, turnover and balance sheet totals). Small businesses are usually not dominant in their field of operation.

Small businesses are common in many countries, depending on the economic system in operation. Typical examples include: convenience stores, other small shops (such as a bakery or delicatessen), hairdressers, tradesmen, lawyers, accountants, restaurants, guest houses,photographers, small-scale manufacturing etc.

The smallest businesses, often located in private homes, are called microbusinesses (term used by international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation) or SoHos. The term "mom and pop business" is a common colloquial expression for a single-family operated business with few (or no) employees other than the owners. When judged by the number of employees, the American and the European definitions are the same: under 10 employees.