Can I Upgrade my Computer to Windows 10 for Free?

Windows 10, the latest version of Windows, will be released on 29^th July. The new Windows OS has received rave reviews from people who are currently testing it as part of the Windows Insider program but there has been some confusion around the upgrade path. Will you be eligible to download a free upgrade of Windows 10 or will you have to pay for the license?

Who Can Download Windows 10 for Free?

This quick flowchart breaks it down in simple English.

If you have a computer that is running a genuine copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you will get a free upgrade license of Windows 10. If you are running a pirated copy of Windows, or if you have Windows Vista or XP installed on the machine, you’ll buy a new license for Windows 10 and perform a clean install.

The Windows 10 Home license will be $119.99 while the Windows 10 Pro version would cost $199.99.

If you would like to try Windows 10 but without affecting your existing Windows installation, you can join the Windows Insider program, download the Windows 10 ISO and install it as a Virtual Machine using VirtualBox. These preview builds will however expire after some time and the fresh builds are automatically installed as and when they become available.

You can follow the official Windows blog to learn more about the upcoming Windows 10 release or join the Windows Insider program to download and use the Windows 10 beta before it is generally available.

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The story, Can I Upgrade my Computer to Windows 10 for Free?, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 23/06/2015 under Windows 10, Software.

Mobile Google Search Tests Oversized Header

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a new Google experiment, but I've noticed a different mobile search interface that uses more space for the header. There's a Google logo, a search box and a list of specialized search engines below the search box. It's based on the experimental interface I've mentioned in a previous post.

If you enable the search tools and restrict results to a certain date range, the new header uses even more screen real estate.

For some reason, this experimental interface is only used when searching from Google's homepage. Chrome's search box sent me to the compact UI.

Google Promotes Privacy Checkup

There's a new promotional message that's displayed when you sign in to a Google account. Google encourages you to use the Privacy Checkup feature from the new My Account page and "take control of your Google privacy settings".

The page lets you "review and adjust what data Google uses to personalize your experience, and update what information you share with friends or make public."

You can choose what Google+ profile information you share with others, manage what you share on YouTube, personalize your Google experience by enabling or disabling features like Web & App Activity, Location History, YouTube Search and Watch History. You can also manage ad settings and opt out of ads based on your interests.

All of these features were previously available, but this is a simplified step-by-step guide, just like the Security Checkup. Google wants to make sure you are "always in control of your data and information".

Google Apps Menu

When you mouse over your name in Google's navigation bar, there's a tooltip that says: "Looking for Google+? Click the Google Apps icon to the right."

Mouse over the grid icon and there's a new tooltip: "Google Apps".

This used to be called Google App Launcher, since it was similar to Chrome's App Launcher. Google's help center articles still use this name: "To switch between Google products, click the App launcher icon and select the one you'd like to use."

Google Apps is the name of a suite of productivity tools for business, education, nonprofit organizations and more, so it's a bit confusing to use the same name for the launcher feature.

How to Transcribe Video Files to Text with YouTube

A college professor is looking to transcribe some audio files as text and publish them online. He wrote – “We have some old lectures recorded on reel-to-reel tapes. We have digitized the audio lectures using Audacity and would now like to transcribe the audio and publish the lectures as text. What is the best way to proceed?”

A quick Google search will return a list of paid transcription services where you can hire people who will accurately transcribe and convert the audio content of your digital files into text. However, if you are looking for an inexpensive and automated option, YouTube can help.

When you upload a video file to YouTube, it will automatically generate subtitles or closed captions for that video. Google uses speech recognition to transform the speech portion of your video into closed captions that are displayed in the video player when the viewer hits the CC button (see screenshot).

If a YouTube video has the “CC” button, you can download the transcription as text.

If your video has decent audio quality and there not too many people speaking in the video at the same time, YouTube will automatically make a text transcript that may not be as accurate as human transcription but would do the job. The transcript is hidden inside obfuscated JavaScript but there’s a way to download it as plain text file.

Download Audio Transcriptions from YouTube

Here’s a quick guide on how to transcribe audio or video files to text with the help of YouTube.

1. Go to youtube.com/upload and upload your video file. If you have an MP3 audio file, you may use a tool like Windows Movie Maker, iMovie on Mac or FFMpeg to convert the audio into a video file before uploading to YouTube.
2. Wait for YouTube to completely process the video. The machine transcriptions may not immediately become available after uploading the video.
3. Open the YouTube video page in Chrome and look for the CC button in the player. If it exists, the transcribed audio can be downloaded as text.
4. Press F12 on Windows, or Option+Cmd+J on Mac, to open the JavaScript console inside Chrome Developer tools and paste this code:

if(yt.config_.TTS_URL.length) window.location.href=yt.config_.TTS_URL+"&kind=asr&fmt=srv1&lang=en"

It will open the transcribed text of the uploaded video in the current browser tab as shown in this short video. Save the file with a .html extension and double-click to view the transcription in plain text.

The same trick can help you download the closed captions of any video on YouTube even if you are not the uploader. And you can replace “en” in the URL with “fr” or “es” to download the transcriptions in another language.

Download the audio transcription from YouTube as text

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The story, How to Transcribe Video Files to Text with YouTube, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 23/06/2015 under YouTube, Internet.

Google Notifications Settings

Google's notifications box from the navigation bar has a new settings button. For now, it shows a single service (Google+) and it lets you enable or disable notifications from Google+. If you disable Google+ notifications, you'll actually disable all notifications.

Here's a screenshot that shows the only option that's currently available: "allow notifications here from Google+". For the first time since Google+ was launched, you can now disable Google+ notifications from the navigation bar.

Maybe in the future Google will show notifications from other Google services: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, YouTube. That's why the title is now "Google Notifications" instead of "Google+ Notifications".

{ Thanks, Mukil Elango. }