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Google has given users the ability to caption their YouTube videos for a while now. But that can be a cumbersome, time-intensive process and most of the millions of videos hosted on YouTube are uncaptioned. That could change soon, as Google is beginning to roll out a new automatic captioning system that will analyze speech in videos and create machine-generated captions.

This means that users who are hard of hearing will have an easier time using YouTube. And because Google can translate text into 51 different languages, it means that you'll have a much easier time understanding those German and Japanese videos you're so fond of watching.

The technology for the machine-based captions is the same as the tech that allows Google Voice to automatically transcribe your voicemail messages and send them to you as emails. That is to say, it's not perfect, and we can expect to see a fair number of mistakes in YouTube captions for the foreseeable future. But this is an excellent start at making web video significantly more accessible.

Automatic captions are only available on a handful of YouTube channels right now, including Google, YouTube, PBS, National Geographic, MIT, and UCLA. A wider release is scheduled soon, with auto-caps expected on English videos by the end of the week.

Google is holding a press event to talk about the upcoming Google Chrome Operating System. The company is not ready to release the OS yet, and won't actually have a finished product ready for another year. But Google announced that starting today the project is open source, which means that you can download the source code today.

So what exactly is Chrome OS? It's an operating system based on a web browser called... Google Chrome. The idea is that you won't have to (or be able to) install a single application directly on your PC. Rather, all of your apps will be run from the web and all of your data will be stored in the cloud.

That doesn't mean the computer won't be able to play games or interact with USB peripherals. For instance, Google demonstrated that you can plug in a camera and watch videos using a web-based video player or copy files to cloud-based storage. And because Google has been working to give web apps access to your PC's hardware, even video games with 3D graphics should be possible as long as you have a video card that's supported by ChromeOS.

The version of ChromeOS that Google demonstrated today is still a work in progress, and we were told that the user interface could change significantly before the final product is released. But the OS already boots in just 7 seconds, and Google says it takes another 3 seconds to launch applications.

The screenshot above shows an app menu that you can use to launch some web apps. You can create permanent shortcuts to these programs by "pinning" them to the ChromeOS toolbar. See those tiny tabs at the top? Those are pinned tabs.

There will also be persistent "panels" that pop up and stay on top even when you flip between browser tabs. For instance you can bring up a Google Talk panel, a music player, or a notepad.

ChromeOS will be automatically updated each day by connecting to the web and making sure that you have all the latest updates.

What do you think? Are you ready for an OS that's effectively useless without an internet connection? While the operating system stores some data on a local storage partition, Google says it's basically just a user cache area and that data will all be synced with the web. That means if you lose your netbook or buy a new one, you should be able to pick up where you left off without missing a beat.

Stay tuned for details. The news conference is still underway. In the meantime, you can check out a few more photos after the break.

Update: You will be able to perform some tasks while offline. For instance, you can cache movies, music, or eBooks and access them while you're on a plane. But the OS is primarily designed for interacting with web services.

Update 2: If you have absolutely no intention of picking up a machine with Google Chrome OS, there's good news: All of the new features that show up in Chrome OS will be able to work with the Google Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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While YouTube, MTV, Vevo, MySpace, and other online video sites compete for the title of "Hulu for music videos," it looks like Hulu is hoping to get in on the action itself. Hulu has made a name for itself as a destination site for professionally produced TV shows and movies. Sure, it's only available in the US, and it doesn't have nearly as many TV episodes or movies as you can find from your friendly neighborhod BitTorrent tracker. But Hulu is 100% legal, the ads aren't that annoying, and the video quality is pretty good.

Today Hulu is announcing a deal with music label EMI. No, you won't find music videos from all of EMI's artists. Just one: Norah Jones. There's a new Norah Jones channel on Hulu with a few dozen videos including music videos and concert clips.

While this could certainly be the start of something big, right now it's pretty small. As much as I'd like to see Hulu become a one-stop shop for all-things web video, it seems like Vevo is much further along in working out partnerships to actually supply a fair amount of content. Now if only the site would go live.

Update: The folks at Vevo just annoucned that the service is set to launch on December 8th.

[via NY Times]

Remember that rumor last week about how Google was going to unveil the first beta release of its upcoming Chrome operating system this week? Yeah, it's looking like that's not going to happen. But the company is holding an event Thursday morning to talk about Chrome OS and show some honest-to-goodness demos for the first time so that we can all stop using conceptual mockups with every blog post on the topic.

Google Chrome OS is expected to be available sometime next year, although it's still possible that a beta could be launched before the end of 2009. From what we know, the operating system, which will be initially aimed at netbooks is designed to blur the lines between desktop and cloud by essentially treating an always-open browser as the desktop. For instance, that will make it just as easy to save documents to Google Docs as to your desktop, if not easier.

The now-defunct Google Page Creator made it easy to create a reasonably attractive web site without an advanced degree in HTML or CSS. But Google has killed off Page Creator and replaced it with Google Sites, a service which has often been described as a tool for creating Wiki-like pages that are hosted for free by Google and which allow you to collaborate with other people on tasks such as planning a vacation or managing your office calendar and workflow.

You can also use Google Sites to create a public web site. But it's much trickier to make a page on Google Sites look, well... good. But this week Google rolled out an update that should make the service much more attractive, literally. There's now a template gallery allowing you to select and customize a template for any new page you create.

Currently there are templates arranged in categories such as business collaboration, activities & events, schools & eduction, and Personal & family. Google is also making it easy for users to submit their own templates to the gallery, so the number of available designs to choose from should climb pretty quickly.