The Hearing Mojo blog reports that AOL, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are teaming up to increase web captioning. About time...but they should have planned for captioning at the very beginning of their web video efforts..not going live at all until they had captioning incorporated. More on the Hearing Mojo blog.

Blinx.com is a new web video search engine that has a captioned category: http://www.blinkx.com/videos/captioned
Another one, which doesn't seem to have a captioned category, lets you search on captioned:
http://ovguide.com/

The Proud Geek blog has been reporting on additional methods for getting captions on your web videos. Thus far, he has posted about Jumpcut and Windows Movie Maker.

I hope Harkle.com can keep up. There are four options I have learned about this year for web video captioning:

1. Project ReadOn - lets you submit a video and request captions. http://www.projectreadon.com.
2. BubblePly - lets you make your own "captions" and is not the same thing as professional captioning. http://www.bubbleply.com. The folks behind BubblePly are also working on a similar function for subtitling.
3. DotSub - Subtitling in multiple languages, including English. Videos are posted online for viewing at DotSub.
4. Veotag - Similar to BubblePly and DotSub. Add text to a video. Videos are posted online at Veotag.
   

Now if only Google Video would add a search option for "captioned" or "subtitled." Until they do, you can search video.google.com using "captioned OR subtitled."

2007 has barely started, and already deaf bloggers are expressing concerns about the failure of technology/media companies (e.g. Apple, Netflix) to consider the needs of the deaf when developing new products and services:

• Noelle Perse (January 19, 2007)
• Sonny James (January 18, 2007)
• Michael Markman (January 17, 2007)
  

Some people may wonder why I list subtitling companies as well as captioning companies. The answer is simple: there is little difference. Subtitling software will frequently support closed captioning also. The skills involved are the same - putting words on the screen. For a prospective customer seeking open captioning services, a company that does subtitling probably could do the work.

Including subtitling services providers greatly expands the pool of potential services to select from when doing competitive shopping for captioning services.

Captioning and subtitling services, especially offline, are becoming so widely available that anyone who wants to caption something, can find a captioning service provider. This weekend alone, I added over 30 companies internationally. The database now stands at over 240 records, with some companies having multiple locations (I actually need to go back and add in more addresses for some companies).