Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Friday 16 May 2008, 11:53 AM
Google soft-launches translated search
For all the easy mockery that automatic translation services can inspire, they are nonetheless much better than nothing. However, they are generally a fairly unidirectional affair - you bung in the URL or paste the text, and out comes the translated version.
But what if you want to search another language's part of the web, despite being hamstrung by not knowing what keyword you're looking to use? Easy enough to solve in part - translate the keyword - but that still leaves you with a bunch of results you can't understand. However, Google has come up with something rather clever. And very simple.
Visit this page, put in your keyword in English (or whatever language you choose) and select the language you want to search in. It'll translate your keyword into that language, find the results in that language and send you back the results, with links to translated pages, in your language. I don't think I've seen this done before.
Rather than a unidirectional translator, it's more like having a 2-way interpreter. Say you're going off on holiday somewhere where you don't speak the language. You want to look for a hotel, but if you search in, say, English, you'll be missing local websites that might alert you to stuff the big international hotel sites might miss.
Although it's dead simple to do, I reckon the very idea of 2-way translated search may be viewed down the line as a notable event in the web's development. Not sure Google realises it, though - I only found out about it in the middle of this blog post about 10 new languages getting added to Google Translate...
Thursday 15 May 2008, 4:54 PM
First sighting of the Atom Eee?
Pictures purporting to be of the Asus Eee 901 are currently doing the rounds on them intarwebs, and the reaction seems to be mixed.
Some people are chuffed that it looks a bit curvier than previous models. Some are whingeing about the chrome-covered row of buttons that seems to have appeared just below the screen.
Me? If this really does have the Atom in it, then great. As long as the price doesn't go up by 50 percent, as it did from the 701 to the 900, then I'm happy. And I want one.
Thursday 15 May 2008, 11:17 AM
Google and the Atomic iPhone
Much speculation coming out of Germany about the new iPhone, specifically over the issues of screen size and processor. First came a quote from Intel bod Hannes Schwaderer that seemed to suggest Apple's next-gen smartphone would have a bigger screen and be based on the Atom chip. Then came the denial.
Funnily enough, only last week I asked Ashish Patel of Intel Capital whether we'd see the Atom in smartphones, and he said no - not until the second generation of the Atom, which is anticipated to land sometime next year (the first generation we'll see next month, hopefully, but that'll be going into subnotebooks and MIDs).
Nonetheless, checking out the story reminded me of the joy of Google's automatic online translation. "Thus, the new iPhone with nuclear-processor look like" is now one of my favourite picture captions of all time.
Wednesday 14 May 2008, 3:55 PM
More on mobile Linux smartphones
Following the news that the LiMo Foundation is going to try push mobile Linux into the enterprise zone, more hints have arrived that the technology is not going to stay purely consumer.
On the LiMo/Verizon conference call today, Verizon's vice president of network, Kyle Malady, said the operator expected to carry everything "from entry level handsets to more sophisticated smartphones and PDAs".
Although Verizon will continue supporting its technology-agnostic approach, "we expect that Linux mobile will rapidly become our preferred operating system [and] developers should check out LiMo and Linux mobile first".
Exciting times!
Wednesday 14 May 2008, 1:18 PM
Google: We Care A Lot... about IPv6
"We care a lot about the health of the Internet", says Google (I'll bet it does! Not much business around for it otherwise...), which is why it's making its search facility available for users of IPv6. Those of you who are lucky and forward-thinking enough to be IPv6 users can find this facility here.
"With current operating systems such as Windows Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux providing high-quality support for IPv6, we hope it's only a matter of time before IPv6 is widely deployed," says Google. "We will be doing our part."
A timely and welcome reminder of what is going to become an burning issue for many businesses awfully soon.
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