YouTube now uses the same voice recognition technology (called ASR) used for Google Voice to automatically generate captions on any video on the site. When you upload a video you can now include a text transcript to avoid errors, too.

Cooler still, the site can translate the captions on the fly into any language supported by Google's existing machine translation technology. The auto captions are rolling out to certain content partners this week, with a wider release coming sometime soon. The text transcript option is available to everyone as of today, though.

Look below for a demonstration video.

Since the beginning, Twitter has asked you to (in 140 characters or less) answer the question "What are you doing?" That's because the site was originally conceived as a means of delivering personal statuses ala Facebook. Over time, though, Twitter has become much more. It's become a social news aggregation system, a professional networking tool, and a new frontier in media.

As a result, the folks in the Twitter offices have finally decided it's time to stop asking "What are you doing?" Instead, the Twitter web interface will ask the more open-ended question "What's happening?" We'd say it's the end of an era, but we're pretty sure that in the long term "What are you doing?" will be forgotten by all but the most veteran social media enthusiasts.

DigiTimes is citing sources who say that the Apple tablet—which has long been rumored for an early 2010 release—will actually launch closer to the end of 2010. The delay is allegedly because Apple has decided to make a high-end, 9.7-inch, OLED-display-equipped version of the device that will retail for a whopping $2,000.

The OLED version wouldn't replace the 10.6-inch LCD model, which would still cost somewhere between $800 and $1,000. DigiTimes' sources weren't named and this is only one of many Apple tablet rumors so don't jump to any conclusions.

In related news, magazine publisher Condé Nast (best known in the tech community for Wired magazine) has officially announced that it will support the Apple tablet by delivering its content to the device.

As promised yesterday, Sony has released firmware update 3.10 for the PlayStation 3 game console. The update adds new theme customization options and a photo grid feature, but the big news is of course the integration with Facebook.

You can now set your PS3 to automatically update your Facebook wall with new trophies, in-game events, and even PlayStation Network purchases. Granted, it's not the elaborate support the Xbox 360 got yesterday, but Sony's defense of that fact makes some sense. A Sony rep said that since the PS3 has a web browser, those features aren't needed in a native app. We'll admit that it's not likely that many people are going to want to manage their Facebook profiles on their PS3s instead of their laptops.

The PS3 therefore only offers features that are unique to the platform—for now. The rep said more features are in the works. Unfortunately, Sony admits it's not working on Twitter integration at the moment.

Google's latest Labs project is Image Swirl, which lets you graphically browse images in a Wonder Wheel-esque interface.

You start out by entering search terms. For example, we typed "Chicago" for the above search. When you get your search results, you can click on any image to see related images. It's automated, of course, so it's not totally perfect, but as you can see, when we clicked an image of the Chicago Theatre on State street we got a couple other results of the same landmark.

It's fun to play with, but it doesn't really add any functionality that wasn't already present in the similar images feature. It's fancy though. We'll give it that!