By W. David Gardner

Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Software for the Skype VoIP calling service, available as a free download in the Nokia Ovi store, will operate on about 200 million handsets at launch.

Nokia cell phone users using the Symbian operating system can now download software for the Skype VoIP calling service.

Nokia, which has some 37% of the global handset market, said the download is free and available from its Ovi online store. Skype users can call each other free of charge and can call non-Skype users for a low rate, generally about 2.5 cents a minute.

The development follows an announcement last month from Verizon Wireless that it, too, would offer Skype VoIP service to users of several Verizon smartphones. Until recently, most wireless carriers fought the use of Skype and other VoIP services, but as revenue for data and other carrier services has risen, the carriers have begun to climb on board the VoIP bandwagon.

The Nokia-Symbian arrangement, moreover, dramatically raises the bar for VoIP calling because nearly 50% of the world's mobile phones use the Symbian OS. Not all Symbian phones will initially be able to use Skype, but Nokia indicated some 200 million handsets will be able to use the service from the get-go.

For Nokia, the availability of Skype on its Ovi applications site is expected to boost traffic to the store. "We're seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day through Ovi store now and believe that the Skype client for Nokia smartphones increases the amount of downloads further," said Jo Harlow, Nokia senior VP for smartphones, in a statement.

Nokia indicated that Skype will also soon be available on Sony-Ericsson handsets using Symbian.

Nokia has been installing Skype apps on its phones gradually, ever since it announced a year ago that the VoIP service would be available for its N97 flagship phone's address book.

The latest Skype for Symbian application is compatible with the following Nokia models: Nokia E71, Nokia N96, Nokia N85, Nokia 5320, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia N78, Nokia N79, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia N82, Nokia E51, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia E90, Nokia E72, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, and Nokia 5530.

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By Thomas Claburn

Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

The video sharing site now allows anyone to generate captions for videos with coherent spoken English.

In a move to make its massive store of video content more accessible, Google's YouTube is making automated caption generation available to all YouTube users.

YouTube initially added a caption feature in 2008. Last November, it introduced auto-captioning for a select group of partners.

Now, any video created with a clear audio track -- unless disallowed, an option for some of YouTube's content partners -- can be captioned automatically, thanks to the speech-to-text algorithms that power Google Voice Search.

What's more, those captions can be translated from English into one of 50 supported languages at the viewer's discretion.

At the moment, auto-captioning only works in videos with spoken English, but Google product manager Hiroto Tokusei says in a blog post that YouTube plans to support the captioning of more languages in the months ahead.

In a related effort, Google is also working to turn Android phones into universal translators through a combination of speech-to-text and translation technology.

"For content owners, the power of auto-captioning is significant," said Tokusei. "With just a few quick clicks your videos can be accessed by a whole new global audience. And captions can make is easier for users to discover content on YouTube."

Captions, as text content, are useful to Google as a way to improve search relevancy. And with the volume of information that Google has to manage -- over 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute -- every improvement helps.

Although speech-to-text conversion isn't perfect, Tokusei says that Google's technology is getting better. Video owners can also improve caption files by downloading them, making corrections, and then uploading them back to YouTube.

Other Google accessibility projects include a talking RSS reader for Android devices, support for WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, in Google Chrome, and support for the AxsJAX framework.

About 650 million people live with a disability, according to the UN.

By 2015, Professor Adrian Davis of the British MRC Institute of Hearing Research estimates that more than 700 million people will be suffering from hearing loss of more than 25 dB, a consequence both of aging and of exposure to noise, among other causes.

Last October, Google consolidated its accessibility resources at a single Web address.

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By Thomas Claburn

Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

The five-year-old online photo editing start-up says there will be no changes right away.

Google on Monday said that it had acquired Picnik, an online photo editing service that works with Internet applications from several Google competitors.

"More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online," said Google product management director Brian Axe in a blog post . "But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer."

The price that Google paid for Picnik was not disclosed.

While the Picnik acquisition doesn't represent an immediate threat to Adobe Photoshop, the desktop photo editing standard for professionals, it's yet another indication that online applications represent the future.

Adobe, of course, already operates Photoshop.com , a pared-down version of its desktop photo editing application.

Picnik allows users to crop, resize, rotate, and alter online images in real-time, to apply a variety of filters, effects, and fonts, and to use browser extensions to make it easier to upload and edit images. It overlaps to some extent with Google's Picasa service.

No immediate charges are expected as a result of the deal.

But the extent to which Picnik interoperates with services like Facebook and Yahoo Mail remains open to question under Google's management. Google may well want to maintain Picnik's interoperability with non-Google services, but it remains to be seen whether Facebook and Yahoo find that idea appealing.

According to Axe, Google is working on integrating Picnik and on new features for the service.

It's also unclear how Google will deal with Picnik's premium features, which are available for $25 per year. Google has tended to offer consumer-oriented services for free.

During its earnings call for investors last October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the company was again looking for new acquisitions and that Google in the past had acquired about one company every month.

Picnik is Google's ninth acquisition in the past eight months.

Source: Techweb.com

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By Thomas Claburn

Read the Original Article at Information Week

The companies have created a non-profit to manage the process of certifying identity providers.

Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton on Wednesday at the RSA Conference announced that they have formed a non-profit organization to oversee the exchange of online identity credentials on public and private sector Web sites.

The organization, The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) , will serve as a trust framework provider. A trust framework is a certification program that allows organizations and individuals to exchange digital credentials and to trust the identity, security, and privacy assertions associated with those credentials.

With help from the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation, OIX has been authorized to serve as a trust framework for the U.S. government. It will certify identity management providers to make sure they meet federal standards.

Google, Equifax, and PayPal will be the first three identity providers to issue digital identity credentials as a way to enable privacy-protected registration and login at U.S. government Web sites.

Verizon is expected to be the fourth, once it completes the certification process.

"We're pleased to be among the first organizations to be certified by the newly created OIX," said Google senior product manager Eric Sachs in a statement. "We've already seen encouraging implementations of identity technologies in the industry, and our hope is that the work of the OIX will expand on this progress to help facilitate more open government participation, as well as improve security on the Internet by reducing password use across websites."

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Web site is the first government Web site to accept such credentials. Online visitors will be able conduct customized library searches, access training material and medical research wikis, and register for conferences while maintaining some privacy protection.

"Think about giving yourself single sign-on capability for all government services," said Ron Carpinella, VP of identity management at Equifax, in a phone interview. "In the current environement, you tend to have multiple user IDs and passwords wherever you go. I have 30 pages of user IDs and passwords because of all the different systems I have to engage with. Now, I can have essentially a single sign-on that can be shared across disparate government service providers. I don't have to register every time and place."

What makes these sorts of credentials compelling is that that they allow users to be authenticated without necessarily being identified. The technology could be used, for example, to allow someone to verify residency -- as a requirement for participation in a given online meeting -- without revealing a name or address.

Microsoft, which has done a lot of work on identity and trust, is conspicuous in its absence from the OIX founding group, but Carpinella says that he expects the company will participate.

As more government Web sites support these credentials, online visitors will be able to interact with these sites without having to register for each one or to remember separate site-specific passwords. Carpinella expects that in time OIX certified credentials will provide access to Web sites for the Department of Health and Human Services, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Social Security Administration, to name a few.

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By Thomas Claburn

Read the Original Article at Information Week

The companies have created a non-profit to manage the process of certifying identity providers.

Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton on Wednesday at the RSA Conference announced that they have formed a non-profit organization to oversee the exchange of online identity credentials on public and private sector Web sites.

The organization, The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) , will serve as a trust framework provider. A trust framework is a certification program that allows organizations and individuals to exchange digital credentials and to trust the identity, security, and privacy assertions associated with those credentials.

With help from the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation, OIX has been authorized to serve as a trust framework for the U.S. government. It will certify identity management providers to make sure they meet federal standards.

Google, Equifax, and PayPal will be the first three identity providers to issue digital identity credentials as a way to enable privacy-protected registration and login at U.S. government Web sites.

Verizon is expected to be the fourth, once it completes the certification process.

"We're pleased to be among the first organizations to be certified by the newly created OIX," said Google senior product manager Eric Sachs in a statement. "We've already seen encouraging implementations of identity technologies in the industry, and our hope is that the work of the OIX will expand on this progress to help facilitate more open government participation, as well as improve security on the Internet by reducing password use across websites."

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Web site is the first government Web site to accept such credentials. Online visitors will be able conduct customized library searches, access training material and medical research wikis, and register for conferences while maintaining some privacy protection.

"Think about giving yourself single sign-on capability for all government services," said Ron Carpinella, VP of identity management at Equifax, in a phone interview. "In the current environement, you tend to have multiple user IDs and passwords wherever you go. I have 30 pages of user IDs and passwords because of all the different systems I have to engage with. Now, I can have essentially a single sign-on that can be shared across disparate government service providers. I don't have to register every time and place."

What makes these sorts of credentials compelling is that that they allow users to be authenticated without necessarily being identified. The technology could be used, for example, to allow someone to verify residency -- as a requirement for participation in a given online meeting -- without revealing a name or address.

Microsoft, which has done a lot of work on identity and trust, is conspicuous in its absence from the OIX founding group, but Carpinella says that he expects the company will participate.

As more government Web sites support these credentials, online visitors will be able to interact with these sites without having to register for each one or to remember separate site-specific passwords. Carpinella expects that in time OIX certified credentials will provide access to Web sites for the Department of Health and Human Services, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Social Security Administration, to name a few.

Source: Techweb.com

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