We profiled Amara last June in our Nifty Websites Collection. The need for translation of videos on the web continues to accelerate as global sharing increases. Amara fits that need and then some.

How It Works

Using Amara is incredibly simple and now with YouTube availability on all personal channels, creators can enlist the aid of their viewers to translate the videos and spread their knowledge, message or all out hilarity to the world.

Channel owners/creators simply need to visit Amara.org and connect their channel. Moving forward, all videos on that channel will include a link for viewers to offer up translation for videos.  Here’s a direct link to the connection page.

[blockquote align=”center” style=”style1″]The only way to get a video translated into the world’s languages is to invite the world’s viewers to help. No YouTube creator speaks every language and automated transcription and translation is still not high enough quality to understand the content of a video. But viewers watching from around the world are excited to help others watch,” said Nicholas Reville, Executive Director of Amara[/blockquote]

About Amara

[blockquote align=”center” style=”style4″]With customers such as, Netflix, Twitter, PBS, TED Talks, Udacity, and Coursera, Amara gives individuals, communities, and larger organizations the power to overcome accessibility and language barriers for online video. Amara’s revolutionary crowdsourcing approach offers a robust API that allows companies to use the platform for internal collaboration as well as allowing individual customers to translate video content. Backed by a million dollars in funding from the Knight Foundation and Mozilla, Amara has received awards from the Federal Communications Commission, the United Nations and TechAwards. For more information, visit Amara.org and follow @AmaraSubs on Twitter.[/blockquote]

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The post Amara Crowd Subtitles Land On YouTube first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Amazon’s MP3 Shot at Apple

Amazon launched a mobile web version of its MP3 store. On the surface that may not seem significant, but as a mobile version based in HTML5 code, Amazon is able to offer another source for cheap tunes to iOS users.

Apple has historically made sure that iTunes is the de-facto way for iOS users to obtain content. To that end, many iOS users don’t bother to take advantage of other means of acquiring digital media as the walls of Apple surround them.

Now, Amazon is delivering the easiest of sources via a simple website address that any user can access. Hit up Amazon’s MP3 Store to check out the music offerings.

MediaFire Delivers 50GB to Android

In case you’ve been living under a rock, cloud storage services are everywhere right now. Between extremely popular services like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and SkyDrive, users are covered from every angle. The only downside being that space can be an issue.

MediaFire this week announced that they’ve finally released an Android version of their app. While iOS users have been enjoying MediaFire’s free 50GB accounts for some time now, Android users finally get a taste of that huge chunk of cloud storage.

MediaFire is still a minor player in the cloud storage market, but with 50GB of free cloud storage they’re making a rather large footprint.

Facebook Adds Voice Calling for iOS

Take that Google Voice! Perhaps not. A new Facebook feature is aimed at giving mobile users free voice calls over Wi-Fi or cellular networks. While it is a promising development, there are limitations and it is by no means a serious challenge to Google Voice or other VoIP services.

Currently, the feature is only available to iOS users (by tapping the “i” button), can only call those with the Facebook Messenger app installed and cannot handle landline calls (which Google Voice can).

Still, it is early in the feature’s life cycle so anything is possible down the road.

Other Stories of Note

LinkedIn shuts down LinkedIn Answers

It’s being reported by Mashable that LinkedIn Answers will be expired to make way for other avenues of engagement between its members. End date appears to be 1/31/13. Reasoning behind the move points to limited interaction from users.

The news isn’t exactly earth shattering, but the Answers section was a good place to browse for information. Perhaps all the browsing wasn’t interactive enough to keep Answers alive.

MySpace Re-launch Sort of

MySpace has extended its arm from the grave with a new look. The cleaner more modern look appeals to the music side of users. Connecting through music is very much what MySpace is all about now. The idea is solid and if MySpace was named something other than MySpace, it would probably do well. As it stands, we’ll have to wait and see if MySpace can extend more than an arm from the grave.

Private Dell – A Sign of the Times

Although not set in concrete just yet, it appears Dell is moving towards a buyout on their way to becoming a private company. The computer industry as a whole has struggled amid the onslaught of tablets and smartphones. Dell in particular has taken huge hits with PC sales in a slump and a less than enthusiastic response from the tech world about Windows 8.

Going private may refocus Dell and empower them to think beyond traditional PCs, a gamble that must be taken to revitalize the company moving forward. If everything goes smoothly, expect news of Dell going private sometime in late January.

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The post Tech Stories You Might Have Missed [January 13-19, 2013] first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Currently the option to send voice messages is only available through the separate Messenger app for Facebook though we expect that to expand eventually.

How To Send Facebook Voice Messages

[list style=”square” color=”cobult”]

• First, head over to your device’s app store, search for and install Facebook Messenger. [info]Facebook Messenger for iOS
  Facebook Messenger for Android[/info]
• Open the app and press the + sign to start a new message.
• Enter in a friend’s name in the ‘To:’ field.
• Press the + sign next to the ‘Write a message’ field.
• You’ll notice several options. Tap ‘Record Voice’.
• Press and hold the record button (circle with a red dot in the center) and speak your message.
• Release the record button when you are finished.
• Messages are automatically sent once the button is released.

Once the recorded message is sent, users can listen to it at anytime by pressing play inside their message center.

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Google has been, not so quietly, introducing service after service lately. With those services comes cloud integration and as such mobile access. The downside of all those services is that they’re scattered and access is separated between apps. Not any longer. Google Play is the newest re-branding from Google. It combines several media sources into one cloud supported navigation area.

Google Play combines apps from the former Android Market, Google Movies, Google Books and Google Music to deliver a full service media destination. Moving forward, as users update their Android devices they’ll notice that the Android Market is now replaced with Google Play. All media (movies, music, books, apps) items are stored in the cloud which means syncing is instantaneous as long as you’re using your Google Account.

For those living in the US, all services are available. Users in other countries will be limited to just apps or a combination of other services, falling short of a complete entertainment hub. Google Play is a positive, logical step forward and probably should have been done sooner. Combing all media entertainment under one umbrella should make cross-promotion easier and increase overall visibility for lackluster services like the seldom promoted Google Movies.

Some may view this as another attempt to mimic Apple, since iCloud has been available for some time now. The similarities are visible and while Google Play may look like an attempt to copy the competition, this re-branding move is more common sense than an attempt to duplicate an Apple product.

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The update fixes voice recognition issues for those who speak languages other than English. The update dropped early this morning and was later sent out via Tweet from @majornelson. There have been no reports of problems or interruption in Xbox Live services from this update.

You may recall back in December the Xbox team rolled out an interface update which changed the layout and added a number of new features, including voice recognition.

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