Google Translate iOS icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently, I was in Beijing and I witnessed something really amusing and impressive.

I went to a street hawker who was selling computer junk and I tried communicating with him. Well, apparently – China is a Mandarin speaking country with people having limited knowledge of English. So communicating with them is a big issue. Many many times, we just give up on communicating with a local in Beijing.

Now, our street vendor turned out to be an intelligent & indigenous guy. He knows that if he doesn’t communicate effectively with us, he will lose business and will ultimately lower his earnings.
So, How does he solve the problem?

He is selling technology, so simple - he uses technology to abridge the communication barrier. and how does he manage it – By using Google Translate. ( for those who don’t know about Google translate, its a google online application which can be used to convert one language into another – This amazing tool can be used to translate between 42 most widely used languages in the world ) His method of using the tool. He connects to a wi-fi network in one of the buildings in Haidian area. ( Haidian is the IT capital of Beijing and it houses majority of IT companies in China. )
Then, he goes to Google Translate (translate.google.com) and writes his message for us in Mandarin. He translates it into English. After reading the message, I can type my message in English in another browser window, which can be translated into Mandarin.
This is how we communicated and it was very lucrative for him. Our gang must have done over RMB 500 of shopping from him.

My learning from this incident is that – no matter how complex the problem is, if you want a solution badly enough, you will get it !!!

Another point I want to make is that Google is such an amazing company. I don’t see any revenue avenues for Google from Google Translate. However, they are still maintaining the product and are investing the dollars into it. The ideology & passion of the company to make internet is a better place is mind boggling. HATS OFF folks !!

Introduction to Author : Blog

Mr Amit Agrawal  - Having worked across 3 continents as a Technologist, Technopreneur, Retail Analyst and a Small Medium Business owner, He had experienced work culture in large multinationals to small 10 employee firms. 
This diverse set of experiences have inculcated a wider perspective about priorities of different businesses and key strategic goals for them.  Please visit Linked-in profile to get more information about him.

Search engine Yahoo has released its results for the top 10 search terms of 2011.

Image via CrunchBase

This year, the most popular search were dominated by the usual news stories, celebrities and natural disasters, but there was also one big surprise. A gadget (see slideshow) topped Yahoo’s list of the top ten most-searched terms, a rare occurrence, according to Yahoo.

“In the 11 years that Yahoo! has compiled its annual list of top searches, PlayStation 2 (2001 and 2002) is the only other device to have captured the top slot,” Yahoo wrote in a post accompanying the list. “This year, [a gadget again] led the queries, bypassing a reality TV divorcee and America’s most wanted terrorist.”

Rival search engine Bing, which is owned by Microsoft, recently released its own year-end recap of the most-searched gadgets. Interestingly, the gadget that lords over Yahoo’s list appears in fourth place on Bing’s list.

As part of the company’s 2011 year in review, Yahoo has also put together a compilation video of the year’s most inspiring moments, a list of the 10 worst trends of the past 12 months, and much more. Visit Yahoo to see all these year-end goodies.

• iPhone

• Casey Anthony

• Kim Kardashian

• Katy Perry

• Jennifer Lopez

• Lindsay Lohan

• American Idol

• Jennifer Aniston

• Japan Earthquake

• Osama Bin Laden

Related articles

• iPhone more searched than Kardashian on Yahoo in 2011 (news.cnet.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Google users were delighted recently by the discovery of a new Search trick, ”do a barrel roll”. Here’s how it works: Type the command “do a barrel roll” into Google’s search bar and watch the Search interface perform a 360-degree somersault before your eyes. And this isn’t the only goodie to be found within Google’s vast web of Internet properties.

Google engineers are surprisingly committed to injecting otherwise ho-hum internet searches with a bit of whimsy.Their iconic logo alone has been updated over 1,000 times to celebrate holidays, birthdays and historical events. Some of these so-called Google Doodles have featured complex animated videos, such as the epic birthday tribute to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, while others offered hilarious interactive surprises, like the playful Muppet animations on Jim Henson’s birthday.

There are also goodies to be found in other products like Google Maps, Google Earth, YouTube and Gmail.

• Do A Barrel Roll - Wanna feel like you’re flying a fighter jet while you look for things on the internet? Type “do a barrel roll” into the Google search bar and watch the whole page roll over.

• What Is The Loneliest Number? - You shouldn’t be afraid to ask Google the hard questions. Query “What is the loneliest number” and Google’s calculator will tell you that it is “1″. The calculator returns the same answer when you query “the answer to life, the universe, and everything,” as well as “the number of horns on a unicorn.”

• Askew - Get Google a little tipsy when you search ”askew”.

• Google Gravity - Tired of Google being so weightless all the time? Bring it down to Earth by entering “Google gravity” and clicking “I’m Feeling Lucky”. Once the search bar, buttons and logo have collapsed into a heap at the bottom of the page, you can toss them around the page by clicking, dragging and releasing them.

• Recursion - You know when you’re in a bathroom with lots of mirrors and you look into one and see your reflection repeated into infinity? That’s called recursion. According to Merriam-Webster, the word means “a procedure that can repeat itself indefinitely.” If you Google with the word “recursion,”Google will suggest the following at the top of its list of search results: “Did you mean: recursion.” If you click Google’s suggestion, a new page will load, but “Did you mean: recursion” will remain at the at the top of the results list. (With the time and inclination, you could go on and on like this forever.)

• Where Is Chuck Norris? - Google saves you from a roundhouse kick to the face by coming up empty when you attempt an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search for “Where is Chuck Norris?” Instead users are taken to www.NoChuckNorris.com, which displays text that reads, “Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.” The page also gives users an option to search “pages from Chuck’s Beard.”

• Once In A Blue Moon - The Google Calculator also returns more complicated answers. Query “baker’s dozen” and the calculator returns “13.” Searching “once in a blue moon” yields a comically small number (seen above).

• Google Pig Latin - Otay eesay Oogle’sgay omepagehay anslatedtray intoway Igpay Atinlay, ypetay “ooglegay igpay atinlay” intoway Ooglegay andway ithay “I’mway Eelingfay Uckylay”.

  You can also customize your Google search to display text in a number of languages, such French, German and Japanese, as well as Latin, Pirate and Klingon.

  

• Tilt –  Get Google a little tipsy when you search Tilt.

Related articles

• Make google do amazing things (shankee.com)
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Image via Wikipedia

Google has launched a campaign promoting online safety, in association with the UK’s Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

The campaign, which will include adverts in newspapers, on public transport and online, is being run with the hope of encouraging internet users to take more care over their online activities – including using more secure passwords, and remembering to log out of websites when they have finished using them.

Awareness campaigns about online safety like this are important, as it’s clear that most internet users are pretty clueless about how to best secure their computers and surf safely online.

This isn’t because the public is disinterested in protecting themselves, but due to the fact that many people simply don’t know where to turn, or how to translate complicated buzzwords, geek talk and terminology into simple easy-to-understand English.

So, campaigns like Google’s “Good to Know” one are a *good* thing, as they translate sometimes complicated safety advice into simple terms.

Google, of course, has an interest in people not turning their backs on the internet – it wants users to feel safer online, as that will ultimately increase the popularity of the internet and help Google grow.

To their credit, Google provides a number of technologies to help users defend their accounts from being hacked – but only a minority of users seem know about them. If you haven’t already done so, check out my advice on how to stop your Gmail account being hacked, for instance.

It’s notable that part of the “Good to Know” campaign appears designed to reassure internet users about the data that Google collects about them to provide its services.

The critical thing, however, will be what I call my “Aunty Hilda test”. If the only people who hear about this advertising campaign are people who are already techie geeks or people who work in information security then it will have failed.

If, however, my Aunty Hilda hears about the campaign – and genuinely learns something about how to protect herself online – then it truly will have succeeded.

With cybercrime and internet fraud on the increase – it’s never been more important to raise awareness and give people simple instructions on how to be safer on the net.

You can find out more about the “Good to Know” campaign atwww.google.co.uk/goodtoknow.

Related articles

• Google teams up with the Citizens Advice Bureau to promote online safety (thenextweb.com)
• Google teams up with Citizens Advice Bureau (telegraph.co.uk)

Image via CrunchBase

Google has unveiled g.co, a new URL shortener that will link only to Google products and websites.

The search giant already owns goo.gl, a URL shortener it launched in 2009. Unlike g.co, the goo.gl URL shortener can be used for any link on the web via the Google Toolbar.

“We’ll only use g.co to send you to webpages that are owned by Google, and only we can create g.co shortcuts,” Google VP of Consumer Marketing Gary Briggs stated on the company’s blog. “That means you can visit a g.co shortcut confident you will always end up at a page for a Google product or service.”

The tech titan, which has been using the goo.gl URL shortener for its products until now, clearly wants to limit the confusion about where its goo.gl links lead to. Separating Google products from goo.gl should go a long way to solving that problem.

Google isn’t the only company to use .co as its official URL shortener. Twitter obtained t.co last year to improve how links are shared and secured on its platform.

Source :- http://mashable.com

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We know that Google has big ambitions for flight search, as the search giant dropped $700 million on travel search software developer ITA Software. Today, the company just announced a few new flight search features that have been integrated into search (but do not use ITA’s technology….yet).

Now, when you search for a destination on Google, you can see which airlines serve that specific route and when they fly. For example, if you search for flights from ‘New York to Chicago,’ you’ll see schedules of all the non-stop flights that serve that route, which airlines fly, and times. You can access the full timetable by clicking on “Schedule of non-stop flights.”

You can also see all the destinations with non-stop flights from a particular airport. So if you are in Chicago, you can search for ‘flights from Chicago’ and Google will show you a number of routes from Chicago’s airports and which airlines fly from the airport. Similar to the schedule feature, if you click “Show all non-stop routes,” you can get the full list of destinations and from there, you can click to get more flight details.

In the post, Google software engineer Petter Wedum writes that the company is ‘eager to begin developing new flight search tools’ that are integrated with ITA’s software. Of course, the DOJ has mandated a number of conditions that Google has to abide by with regard to ITA’s presence and integration into the search company. It should be interesting to see what Google has up its sleeve for travel and flight search.

Source : – http://techcrunch.com

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• Google Unveils New Travel Search Feature, Does Not Include ITA Features (nytimes.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Most people think about search as a simple series of actions: type in a phrase, cross your fingers it brings up what you need, and then click around a page of blue links till you get what you were looking for.

But Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft‘s search engine Bing, says that we should expect more out of our search experience. He criticizes “traditional” search engines — namely, web giant Google, Bing’s main competitor — for failing to keep up with the changing needs of users by sticking with the the search model they’ve always used, which is based on an algorithm measuring the strength of backlinks.

“When Google launched, they wanted to organize the world’s information, that was their mantra — it still is,” Weitz said in an interview. “It was a great vision that assumed really the web of yore, which is a web of documents, literally pages and the connections. Google’s whole mission was to leverage those connections and say, ‘Okay, I can see that the connection between these two pages is almost as important as the page content itself in defining what these things are about’ — it was a brilliant, brilliant model.”

But what worked ten years ago doesn’t work as well anymore, Weitz said, noting that the amount of information available online today, and the range of activities people seek to do there, have made the simple search that currently exists less effective.

“Search itself hasn’t changed fundamentally in the past 12 years,” he said. “Traditional search is failing. The standard notion of search … looking at the texts in the page, the backlinks, all that stuff doesn’t work
anymore.”

Yet for all the flaws Weitz might find with Google, Bing offers a similar set of features, such as searches keyed to news, images, and maps, as well as the ability to calculate sums, define words, and check the weather. Moreover, Google has maintained its dominance in the search market. It claims 65 percent market share to Bing’s 14 percent — a dominant position that has attracted scrutiny from government regulators, who are investigating whether Google’s search dominance is anti-competitive. Microsoft, itself convicted of antitrust abuses, has supported regulators’ investigation of Google in Europe, and Weitz added that in his estimation, the government probe into Google’s activities is understandable, given Google’s power in the area.

“I think whenever you have a player who has, depending on who you’re looking at, two-thirds of the market, it’s natural for regulators to look into this,” he said. “In Germany they have 98 percent share. It’s natural for folks to just look into what’s going on there. This is a place that controls so many people’s livelihoods, you want to make sure its a level playing field.”

Google has started to include social results in its search in an attempt to make searches more relevant to users. Its new +1 feature lets users “like” results in search and see when friends and other users have “liked” that result as well. But Weitz said he didn’t think the feature was particularly useful.

“+1 today is only on search results,” he said. “I don’t really like search results very often. I like the sites, but I don’t like the result itself. I don’t know how helpful it is, frankly, to like the results.”

Bing is attempting to get a leg up on Google with its own take on social search results. The company recently unveiled a feature that pulls information from Facebook to show what sites, articles and other content Facebook friends have “liked.”

Bing’s approach to social data is to focus on delivering what it believes will characterize search in the future: An engine that anticipates a user’s needs and helps make decisions, finding the most relevant information without the user having to put in an undue amount of effort. But whether it will be able to distinguish itself from Google’s efforts to go social remains to be seen.

“Our mission is literally to deliver knowledge by understanding intent. What that implies is that we understand the web as this digital representation of the real world,” Weitz said. “We’ve now mapped almost every single square inch of the planet, we know where buildings are, we know who the people are, we know what tasks people are accomplishing — we are literally creating a semantic model, or a model, for everything in the world.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Bing head says ‘traditional search’ is dying (news.cnet.com)
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Image via CrunchBase

It is just like Facebook Like , but can do more

After unveiling the +1 button in March, Google has started rolling out the button for third party websites. Google previewed this button, which works like the Facebook Like button, at the Google I/O conference and confirmed that this button will be launched within this week.

The +1 buttons will be in different sizes – Small, Medium, Standard and Tall, with and without the +1 counter, and websites can tie the buttons into their own site logon systems to know which pages are accessed more by users, to keep a record of this. After sufficient number of people have the +1 page on their website, users can view different data such as age and sex of people who recommend those particular pages. This can be done using Google s Analytics system.
Is Google stepping up its social networking strategy? Yes, it is doing it steadily and surely. They tried it with Buzz, not long ago, and it didn t quite succeed. Now they are trying other ways to step up to Facebook in Facebook s backyard. Will they succeed? Only time will tell.

Source :- http://www.techtree.com

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Image via CrunchBase

Google has begun testing a new design for its search engine results page, one that sports a new color scheme and a lot more white space.

A Google representative confirmed to us the company is conducting one of its user tests. As you can see from the screenshot below, the redesign results page incorporates a tweaked color scheme. The greens, purples and blues are not as harsh as the current set of colors used on Google.com.

The bigger changes focus on separating and spacing out individual search results. There is simply a lot more white space around each search result and each link. Also, each search result is divided by a dashed line.

Combined, the changes are rather dramatic for a search engine used by millions of people daily. Google is gathering data on how people react to the new changes. Those numbers will determine whether or not these changes will move out of testing and become permanent.

This isn’t the only Google experiment to make headlines this month. On Monday, the tech giant began testing Voice Search integration on Google.com.

Check out screenshot, and let us know what you think of the changes in the comments.

Screenshot courtesy of TwitPic, chanian

Source : – http://mashable.com

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Will give predictive search results as you type keywords in the search bar

Image via Wikipedia

Like they say, better late than never.

A good half a year after Google launched interactive prediction based search feedback service Instant, Yahoo India just announced that it will launch its own version of Instant dubbed Search Direct. Don’t hold your breath yet, because the service will not be available till the second half of 2011. Just like Google’s Instant, Yahoo’s Search Direct predicts search results as you type in the keywords into the search bar. The announcement comes a week after Yahoo launched Search Direct in U.S. in the beta stage.

“The new search engine predicts search results as fast as a person types – character by character, and presents those results dynamically, generating a fast, simple search experience that goes beyond mere blue links,” said  Prabhakar Raghavan, chief scientist, senior vice-president and head of Yahoo Labs. Despite competition from Google, Yahoo reaches out to 30 million unique users per month in India, which is about 74 percent of the Indian Internet audience. Loyal Yahoo users therefore finally get one of Google’s most innovative features on the search engine of their choice.

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