Articles and Interviews with Project readOn

Project readOn Offers Captions for Any Video May 21, 2007 — 06:02 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole. Link to Mashup.com review here

New York Times blog article about Project readOn by reporter Sarah Wheaton. Read Ms. Wheaton's blog here

Press Releases

Press Release #01

SENATOR HARKIN ISSUES PRESS RELEASE ON PROJECT READON - December 04, 2007

Senator Tom Harkin issues a press release in support of the Senators partnership with Project readOn: TOMHARKIN.COM PARTNERS WITH PROJECTREADON.COM TO PROVIDE CLOSED CAPTIONING OF WEB VIDEO TO DISABLED Harkin campaign becomes the first Senate campaign to use innovative service to provide disabled persons with access to online video. Des Moines, IA – Senator Tom Harkin's campaign website launched a new service at www.tomharkin.com/closed-captioned-video to make the campaign's online video accessible to those with hearing disabilities through an innovative closed-captioning program provided by www.ProjectReadON.com. A longtime champion for persons with disabilities, Senator Harkin authored the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 to protect the civil rights of more than 54 million Americans with physical and mental disabilities. “The Internet has been instrumental in bringing our democracy closer to the people and it is our duty as Americans to ensure that that those with disabilities can have full use of the technology,” said Senator Harkin. “The recent CNN/YouTube debates illustrated the effectiveness of online video and I am proud to be partnering with Project readON to provide technology that helps to give Americans with disabilities an equal opportunity to engage in our democracy.” Project readON is the web's leading and most innovative closed-captioning service that works toward a single goal of making online media content available to all by giving users the power to decide exactly what videos they want captioned and by giving webmasters an innovative and easy to use caption player to install on their websites. “When Senator Harkin’s office contacted us I can honestly say that this was perhaps the highest point in our professional life of working in the closed captioning industry. To be sought out by the person that wrote the very act that spawned our industry is, to say the least, an honor. We look forward to contributing to online video captioning becoming the norm across the web, and it’s a great personal pleasure to be a part of Senator Harkin’s online video message as he takes the lead in that effort!” -- Mateo Gutierrez, co-founder of Project readON. The campaign will continue to update and add additional closed-captioned videos to this innovative service. For more information regarding Project readON's innovative services and technology please visit, www.projectreadon.com or contact Mateo Gutierrez at mateo.gutierrez@projectreadon.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - March 27, 2007 8:00:00 AM PST

Any Video on the Net You Want with Captions? No Problem

Access for All is not just a slogan it’s a reality

(Austin TX March 21, 2007) Project readOn solves the problem of online video captioning. They are not just another company with captioning software handing the tools to the community to ‘do it themselves’. They are captioning online video content using a revolutionary concept of universally applicable standalone e-captions in a flash based browser window that never ‘touch’ the content itself. This method relieves all of the traditional issues of hosting, mastering, and player requirements. It’s simple and ingenious. They are a project of Rhino Moon Captioning Ltd., and were announced March 16th 2007.

Based in Austin Texas with a satellite office in Los Angeles, Rhino Moon Captioning started for Project readOn [www.projectreadon.com] 9 months ago. First they developed and filed a patent for their “Project readOn” player, described earlier. Next they built a user driven website where people can join for free, search their database of captioned content, suggest content on the net that they would like to see with captions, receive notification of when it is done, and then watch it. People are responding:

Shane Feldman of DeafDC.com says:

“If you’re like me, your frustration grew exponentially over the last several years as you fruitlessly searched for online videos that were captioned. Not many companies or individuals were willing to step up to the plate and provide a widely needed service – but now that we have one with Project readOn, we all need to show our unified support for this marvelous initiative.”

Carl Wurtz of Hyperoptix Design says:

“I’m a developer and I’ve never seen the application of a simpler and more ingenious use of internet technology to solve a very real problem for a large community of people.”

Live since March 16th 2007, Project readOn has already garnered the interest of major internet video hosting companies, investors, and the deaf and hard of hearing community. They have developed a widget and are talking to several major video hosting companies, online TV networks, and content aggregators for ways to host the widget.

Project readOn is a company to watch. They have taken a very real problem for the most emerging aspect of online technology and solved it, today.

Press Release #02

Are user generated captions really user desired? User Requested is the real solution.

(Austin TX April 26, 2007) Project readOn (www.projectreadon.com) solves the problem of online video captioning through user requested captions.

In an online world where all the rage is “User Generated” (UG), does this model really apply to captions or subtitles? Many online video content hosts seem to think so, but what about the actual user?

Project readOn announces that they are at the cutting edge of online captions by utilizing a strategy they feel is the true UG model, what they call UR or “User Requested”. Project readOn has created a simple, easy to use web interface whereby users can submit a URL for the content they want captioned anywhere on the web. Once this submission is made, Project readOn will review the content and upon approval they will submit it to their pipeline of content for captioning.

The captions that they provide are professional grade and as close to 100% accurate as it gets, “Like what you see in the best of TV captions,” says co-founder Mateo Gutierrez. Project readOn truly delivers broadcast quality captions to the internet. When compared to UG captions it is immediately apparent that UG captions can never fulfill a real need on the part of the deaf and hard of hearing to understand content in a clear and precise manner. UG captions have no standards, are created at the whim of anyone with an interest in transcribing videos either for personal, humorous, or humanitarian needs. While in concept this might sound like a good idea, consider: How does this solve the real need of people to have specific content that they want to enjoy captioned? Do they request that a friend or acquaintance caption the content for them? Do they wait for the content to become interesting to someone who likes to transcribe videos? And if they can find the right person, what guarantee is there that the transcription will be even remotely accurate? These very common concerns are highly regulated in the traditional captioning world. That’s where Project readOn scores a home run: They utilize real caption editors and editing software to create truly professional grade captions every single time and they allow the user to choose what they want to see with captions. The users identify the content to be captioned, and do not to have to wait for it ever again. Here’s what the National Association of the Deaf had to say about Project readOn:

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD, www.nad.org) advocates for full access to all audiovisual material through captioning. We appreciate the work of Project readOn to develop and deploy an independent system for producing and displaying captions for pre-recorded audiovisual material on the Internet. The NAD urges all Internet content providers to ensure that their audiovisual material is accessible through captioning.

Rosaline Hayes Crawford, Esq. Director, Law and Advocacy Center National Association of the Deaf