Real time voice translation is on the way and Google aims to pioneer it.

The Internet giant wants to develop its smartphone technology to translate speech in real time.

The company would combine its advanced voice recognition know-how with its text translation service to create a mobile phone that acts as an instant interpreter.

Head of translation services Franz Och said: “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time. (more…)

google, tool, translation, Unified Communications

Comments

Google yesterday announced investment in a number of university research projects across the US. The University of Cambridge however is set to become the only university outside of the US to receive a grant in this round of funding.

The investment will go to Cambridge University’s green technology initiative, part of its University Computer Lab project ‘Computing for the Future of the Planet’.

Google’s funding will be spread over over three years. but exactly how much will be invested is not clear. Individual grants will range between $100,000 and $1.5 million, substantially higher than previously grants of only around $50,000 – and Cambridge will reportedly receive a “six figure” sum. (more…)

cambridge, google

Comments

Hot on the heels of the news that Windows 7 had crossed the 10% mark, the Internet Explorer team had something of their own to crow about.

Internet Explorer 8 is now the worlds single most popular internet browser, being the program of choice for some 25.6% of all internet users. Of course, as any web developer will tell you, if any of those users came at the expense of IE 6, then good on Microsoft.

Internet Explorer 8 is built by Microsoft who has pushed the browser like rickety a cart up a steep hill, with gusto. Even past their huge advertising budgets, you have to give Microsoft credit for so quickly taking their new browser to the number one spot, even in the face of a new enemy (Chrome), and an entrenched competitor (Firefox).

They almost made it look easy. (more…)

chrome, google, Internet Explorer, professional

Comments

Google has announced significant improvements in the way users search in Arabic on Google search.

Aiming to fix issues where users would miss spaces, or misspell certain words, Google believes its new algorithm changes has already seen search results improve by 10%. The algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar along with signals from historical search data. (more…)

Arabic, google, search

Comments

When Google announced yesterday that it was to start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6, a million web developers will have cheered. Is this the big catalyst the “Kill IE6″ campaign needs?

IE6 is a truly hated browser amongst web developers. It’s out of date and doesn’t support many modern web technologies properly. Yet it remains one of the most popular browsers amongst users – mainly thanks to businesses who haven’t upgraded their corporate software suite in years.

So, now that Google is throwing its weight behind the movement to consign IE6 to history, will we finally see it disappearing for good? Don’t count on it. (more…)

google, IE6

Comments

Early this month we brought you the news that Google search had a very interesting feature: when certain queries were input (surrounding the search term “Islam”), Google went blank on suggestions.

Searches for similar things around other faiths yielded different results. The search for “Christianity is” yields quite a few colorful, and some would claim blasphemous, suggestions. We called Google out on this, and with Danny Sullivan and some Digg promotion, seem to have reached them.

Google responded to Danny and us saying that it was a bug that they were working to get fixed. Whether or not that was true, it has now been corrected. Proof, from my computer just a moment ago: (more…)

amiando, google

Comments

Google does not just make money off of its gigantic search market share, but also off of myriad publishers that post their AdSense advertisements on individual websites.

Is the percentage of money that Google is making off of those website owners increasing, while their payouts to publishers decrease?

Digital Inspiration is reporting that Google is now paying out some 72% of AdSense revenues to publishers (who serve the ads to their users), down from some 75% earlier in the year. That represents a 4% decrease in relative payouts to AdSense publishers.

While the percentage my be small, it represents nearly eighty million dollars in decreased payouts to the publishers that take part in AdSense. Once you realize the dollar amount, the trend and magnitude become worrying. (more…)

adsense, google

Comments

Is there a site that you check often for updates or changes, that just does not offer a feed for their website? Well, if so, Google has a new tool for you.

Inside of Google Reader, you can now input a URL from any website on the internet, say for example “http://www.google.org/products.html,” into the  ”Add subscription” field, and with a click of the “Create a feed” button,  follow large changes to that webpage.

Just like that, no extra steps. No feed needed. You never have to return to check what, if anything, has happened. Now any website on the internet is trackable, for free, with a product (Google Reader), that you already use.

(more…)

google

Comments

This is exciting news, Google has mapped the inside of the San Diego Zoo.  This is the first of its kind for a zoo, and now, no mater where you’re from, you can take a look at the great collection of animals they have at the zoo.

The zoo, which is located in the Balboa Park area of San Diego, recently renovated its interior.  Even for someone who loves that zoo, getting around might be a challenge as they’ve renamed all their areas. There are new roads and paths.  They also rearranged old exhibits and brought in new ones. (more…)

gmail labs, google, google maps, mapping, pornography, trike

Comments

China has continued its attack on Google and the US following yesterday’s sharply worded denial of involvement in the Google hacking attacks.

A spokesman from China’s State Council of Information Office attacked Secretary of State Clinton’s statements on Chinese internet censorship. The statement, posted on China’s www.gov.cn site, stated that, “[China] bans using the Internet to subvert state power and wreck national unity, to incite ethnic hatred and division, to promote cults and to distribute content that is pornographic, salacious, violent or terrorist.  China has an ample legal basis for punishing such harmful content, and there is no room for doubting this. This is completely different from so-called restriction of Internet freedom.”

Although it is interesting that China’s acknowledging censorship here, the truly interesting developments came in newspaper editorials published today. (more…)

AP, censorship, china, google, Subversion, twitter, us, youtube

Comments