Crowdscribing

I mentioned in my last post that I was looking for volunteers to help transcribe the video of my talk at Fronteers 2010. I didn’t get much of a response so I put the word out on Twitter. Then I got plenty of offers.

I owe a pint to these people:

You can see the results of their work here: The Design Of HTML5. Each volunteer transcribed about ten minutes of the talk, which equates to about an hour’s work.

As it turned out, the Fronteers folks had commissioned a transcription from Casting Words, the service built on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. You can see the result—not bad. I’ve used Casting Words in the past to get transcriptions done although lately I’ve found they take far too long for somewhat inconsistent results.

I think that, for the best results, you can’t beat hiring a professional transcriber. But, in lieu of that, I think the aforementioned volunteers did a great job, for which I am very grateful.

Incidentally, the talk—The Design Of HTML5—is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution licence so if you want to republish it or adapt it, please go ahead.

Have you published a response to this? :

Related links

Dear Developer, The Web Isn’t About You | sonniesedge.co.uk

This is absolutely brilliant!

Forgive my excitement, but this transcript of Charlie’s talk is so, so good—an equal mix of history and practical advice. Once you’ve read it, share it. I want everyone to have the pleasure of reading this inspiring piece!

It is this flirty declarative nature makes HTML so incredibly robust. Just look at this video. It shows me pulling chunks out of the Amazon homepage as I browse it, while the page continues to run.

Let’s just stop and think about that, because we take it for granted. I’m pulling chunks of code out of a running computer application, AND IT IS STILL WORKING.

Just how… INCREDIBLE is that? Can you imagine pulling random chunks of code out of the memory of your iPhone or Windows laptop, and still expecting it to work? Of course not! But with HTML, it’s a given.

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Previously on this day

23 years ago I wrote RSS Validator

Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby have released an RSS validator. This coincides nicely with the fact that I’ve just updated my RSS feed from using version 0.92 to version 1.0.

23 years ago I wrote The ElectriClerk

Remember those wonderfully retro computing devices from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil?

24 years ago I wrote The Mirror Project | Jeremy Keith | After Dinner

Jessica and I had dinner with Chris and Karin upstairs last night. Jessica cooked up some nice roast vegetables to go with the delicious kaese spaetzle that Karin made.

24 years ago I wrote Oct. 11-12, 2001 Aurora Gallery

Here’s some eyecandy for you: Aurora Borealis on the nights of October 11th and 12th.