AllThingsD » language

Take a Note: Typing With No Hands

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 01:08:24 +0000

I am writing this paragraph on an iPhone. But I am not typing it on the phone’s virtual keyboard. I am dictating it using a little-known feature that allows you to employ your voice instead of your fingers, wherever text entry is possible on the device.

[ See post to watch video ]

And now, for this paragraph, I have switched to an Android phone. Once again, I am composing these words using only my voice, and not typing them on the virtual keyboard.

Those two paragraphs, dictated as emails and then cut and pasted into this column on a computer, required far fewer corrections than you might think, given the bad reputation for accuracy that voice input on digital devices has acquired. I only had to add a comma I’d forgotten to specify in the first paragraph and capitalize the word “Android” in the second paragraph.

For me, a daily user of virtual keyboards, the process was quicker and more accurate than typing would likely have been, even for the relatively short blocks of text typically composed on phones.

So, on the suspicion that dictation on smartphones might prove useful for others as well, I’ve been testing it heavily over the past week. I used a top phone with Google’s Android software, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and an Apple iPhone 4S. In general, I found that, while dictation could occasionally fail badly, it worked surprisingly well in a wide variety of environments and applications.

On both leading smartphone platforms, I found that relatively short dictation—such as emails, texts, tweets, Facebook posts and notes—was at least as accurate, and often more, as typing on a glass screen. It was better in quiet environments, but did OK even in most noisy places like grocery stores, coffee shops and carwashes. It was also faster, since, as long as you don’t have to correct numerous errors, speaking is usually faster than typing on glass.

For this review, I am not mainly referring to Siri, the widely publicized, voice-controlled feature on the new iPhones, which can do things like tell you the weather, or stock prices. Nor am I discussing the “voice actions” on Android, which can perform Web searches and other tasks. Both can also help with some text dictation. I concentrated on a much simpler feature of both platforms: a small microphone key that’s included right in the phones’ on-screen keyboards.

Apple’s dictation system did better at capitalizing proper names.

Android phones have had this microphone key for a couple of years, and Apple added it to the latest iPhone, the 4S, last fall, and to the new iPad, when it came out last month. But I’m guessing that many users of these phones either haven’t used this special key, or haven’t even noticed it.

While the microphone keys work a bit differently on the two platforms, they are basically similar. When the keyboard appears, ready for you to type, you can instead hit the microphone key and simply dictate what you want to say. The phones then send your spoken words to a remote server, which rapidly translates them into text and sends them back to the phone’s screen. If corrections are needed, you make them by typing, though both platforms make this easier by indicating the likeliest errors, and suggesting alternatives.

A couple of caveats are in order. I didn’t compare dictation to typing on a phone with physical keys, whose devotees are often speedy and accurate. Instead, I thought the apt comparison was with a virtual keyboard, which is becoming the norm on phones, but is still a source of frustration for many users.

But Android was more reliable.

I also didn’t try dictating a long document, like this column, because phones are rarely used for lengthy composing.

I found that both platforms’ dictation systems worked well enough for me to recommend them. In case after case, both phones got it right, or close enough to require little correcting.

But there are differences. Android has an advantage in that, in the newest version of its operating system, it displays the dictated text almost in real time, lagging just slightly behind your spoken words. On the iPhone, the system only reveals its rendering of your dictation after you’ve tapped on a “Done” button.

Android’s dictation system also supports many more languages than Apple’s—40 languages and dialects, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. On the iPhone, only English, French and German are currently supported, though Apple says Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish will be added later this year.

However, I found the iPhone 4S worked better than the Galaxy Nexus in noisier environments. For instance, in a crowded shopping-mall food court, while neither phone was perfect, the iPhone understood me to say: “I am dictating this email from the very noisy Court at Montgomery Mall on the iPhone”—missing only the word “food” and capitalizing “Court.” The Android phone mangled a very similar sentence as: “I am dictating this email on droid phone from the bearing noise for it montgomery mall.”

Google notes that, unlike Apple, it supports many phones, and that the results might have differed on another model, with better noise cancellation. Apple says the iPhone 4S does have noise cancellation. And, in any case, the two phones’ results were more comparable in quieter settings.

Apple’s system also did better at capitalizing proper names, like Stradivarius, or Red Sox, or even Google (which my Android phone, ironically, always rendered in lowercase). But Google says it will be updating its dictation feature in weeks to better handle proper names.

On the other hand, I found that, when Android did err, it had a more extensive and easier to use manner for correcting those mistakes than the iPhone did. Android was also more reliable; sometimes the iPhone returned no text at all.

Still, I found these differences less important than the fact that, for me, the results on both platforms were impressive. On both, if you say words like “period” or “comma,” you generally get the punctuation mark (though both try to make the distinction when you actually want a word like “period.”)

And, in test after test, both did a good job. Errors were generally fewer than if I had typed the words quickly.

Both have a downside: Because they do the transcription on their servers, and they are anxious to improve, they do retain some information about what you’re saying. Both companies say they respect your privacy, but, if you worry about transmitting your messages or notes to Apple or Google, don’t use dictation.

Otherwise, especially for those who find typing on glass clumsy, the microphone key on Android and the new iPhone is something you might want to add to your arsenal of ways to use your phone.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Woody Speaks Mandarin: Disney Brings Chinese-Language Apps to iPad

Lauren Goode — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:25:30 +0000

In an age where hardly a conversation can be had about the economy without mentioning China, it’s not surprising that the world’s most populous country is also influencing language education across the U.S.

And, of course, there are apps for that.

Disney Publishing has just released the first in a series of new Chinese-language apps for the iPad, based on the international teaching method known as Diglot Weave. The first app, called Learn Chinese: Toy Story 3, includes multiple versions of Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” broken up into five parts that offer layers of Chinese-language instruction with sequentially increasing degrees of difficulty.

That’s right: Woody and Buzz speak Mandarin!

The app offers background music and sound effects, audio and visual translations of individual words (using Pinyin, the standard system for transcribing Chinese into Latin script) alongside one-tap pronunciation guides, and voice-recording capabilities, so users can practice and compare their pronunciations with the audio narrator.

It’s available for iPad only, though Russell Hampton, president of Disney Publishing Worldwide, says Disney plans to expand eventually to other tablets, and will offer more apps and Disney-owned titles. This one costs $4.99 in the iTunes App Store.

There are currently more than 300 Chinese-language instructional apps for kids in the App Store; more than 200 results come up for Mandarin-language apps in the Android marketplace, though it appears that many of these are for adults and are also geared toward traditional language learning through repetition and exercises. The Diglot Weave method that Disney is going with involves teaching the language through a story that’s told partially in the learner’s native language and partially in the foreign tongue, gradually increasing the level of foreign language used throughout the narrative.

Disney has been pushing foreign-language instruction since 2009, when it launched a handful of schools across China. While Disney said at the time that its goal was authentic English-language learning, the push was also seen as a way for Disney to expand its brand reach across a nation known for tightly-controlled media.

The New Science of the Birth and Death of Words

Christopher Shea — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 01:21:24 +0000

Can physicists produce insights about language that have eluded linguists and English professors? That possibility was put to the test this week when a team of physicists published a paper drawing on Google’s massive collection of scanned books. They claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Google+'s Horowitz Talks About Joining Board of Wordnik, as Online Dictionary Site Garners $8M More in Funding (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:14:34 +0000

Google+ kingpin Bradley Horowitz has joined the board of Wordnik, which has also just raised another round of funding of $8 million.

It’s the first board seat ever for Horowitz, who has been a bit busy of late launching the search giant’s first successful social networking product.

Wordnik, which claims to have the word’s most complete map of the language you are currently reading, was founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary.

On its Web site, Wordnik notes it has “billions of words, 965,125,300 example sentences, 6,690,770 unique words, 223,693 comments, 168,573 tags, 121,180 pronunciations, 61,144 favorites and 936,294 words in 30,038 lists created by 70,054 Wordniks.”

Its grand aim is to be the company that powers definitions and context for publishers of all kinds around the Web — from blogs to articles to even tweets — much as a mapping company might render navigational information.

The aim of owning the world’s largest word graph is ambitious and innovative, although the effort to create a viable business out of it all will be its next job. Wordnik now has 18 employees at its San Mateo, Calif., HQ.

McKean gave a demo of its Smartwords feature at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in 2010, after it had earlier raised $4.8 million from a number of venture firms and other angel investors.

Here’s an interview I did with McKean, Horowitz and Wordnik CEO Joe Hyrkin, who came on board in March, this weekend outside Buck’s in Woodside, as well as the video of the D8 demo of Wordnik:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is the official press release about the new funding and Horowitz appointment:

BRADLEY HOROWITZ NAMED TO WORDNIK BOARD;
WORDNIK RAISES $8 MILLION IN SERIES C FUNDING

Horowitz Accepts First Board Appointment; New and Existing Investors Support Wordnik as it Takes Innovative Word/Context Discovery Capability to the Marketplace

SAN MATEO, Calif. – July 25, 2011 – Wordnik, maker of the most innovative word navigation system, today announced that Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Product Management for Google and longtime Silicon Valley executive, would join its board of directors. This is Horowitz’s first board appointment.

In addition, Wordnik has raised $8 million in its third round of venture capital funding, led by new investor Lucas Venture Group. Mohr Davidow Ventures, FLOODGATE, Baseline Ventures, Roger McNamee and additional private investors also participated in this round, which is earmarked to fund strategic growth as Wordnik builds out a range of new product and service offerings. This Series C investment brings Wordnik’s total funding to $12.8 million.

One of the most highly respected executives in the high-tech industry, Bradley Horowitz oversees product design for Google’s social and communications efforts including Gmail, Blogger, Picasa, and the recently launched Google+ Project. Before joining Google, Horowitz led Yahoo’s advanced development division, which developed new products such as Yahoo! Pipes, and drove the acquisition of products such as Flickr and MyBlogLog. Previously, he was Co-Founder and CTO of Virage, where he oversaw the technical direction of the company from its founding through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Autonomy.

“I’ve devoted my career to finding and working on innovative technologies,” said Horowitz. “In accepting my first Board appointment, I now have the opportunity to help guide Wordnik, a company that started with an incredibly innovative word navigation system, as it continues to offer deeper access to discovery and meaning across digital text. I know it will be a very rewarding experience.”

“Wordnik has changed the way consumers discover and interact with words by providing the most relevant context and meaning available anywhere,” said Joe Hyrkin, CEO of Wordnik. “With this investment from our longtime VC partners and strengthened by the addition of Bradley Horowitz to our board, we enter an exciting new phase for the company, building out our core technology and creating new leveraged offerings for a wide variety of content and commerce partners. Bradley brings us both great product insight and industry expertise, and will work with our founders, Erin McKean and Tony Tam, on future innovation.”

Wordnik was launched in 2008 with the mission to help people unlock the value of words and phrases and to discover what information is most personally meaningful. Wordnik’s technology provides additional access to content and context from a wide range of sources including the world’s most respected dictionaries, Wordnik users, and from unexpected places like Twitter and Flickr.

“Wordnik.com has offered consumers an easy way to gain more meaning and deeper context around words – kind of like a ‘GPS for words,’” said Jon Feiber of Mohr Davidow Ventures. “The next frontier for Wordnik is to bring the power of Wordnik to a wide range of publishers and other content providers by providing the most relevant discovery experience for their users. We think Wordnik will quickly establish itself as a valuable asset to its business partners, in addition to its continuing as an exceptional consumer site.”

Liveblogging Demand Media's Q1 Earnings: Perky Perfecting!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 05 May 2011 21:13:31 +0000

Today, after Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations, its execs got on the horn with investors to explain how it plans to beat the Panda.

That would be the beastly name for Google’s rejiggering of its search algorithm, in order to rid search results of poor quality content.

Along with many other sites, Demand has gotten smacked by its raging paw.

Still, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company reported revenue of $79.5 million and six cents a share in adjusted net income.

Wall Street was expecting the company to report about $69.6 million in revenue for the three months, with four cents a share in adjusted profits.

On a GAAP basis, net loss per share was 13 cents compared to 94 cents a year ago.

Here’s the liveblog of the conference call:

2 pm PT: Demand’s investor relations dude came on and I immediately tuned out until CEO Richard Rosenblatt got on the line to talk about the results.

He was as perky as ever, launching right into the meat of the situation–how Demand was going to pretty up its offerings, such as a redesign of its flagship eHow site and its new editorial arrangement with another perky person, food lady Rachael Ray and the also perky fashionista/talk show lady Tyra Banks.

Gone will be user-generated content that Demand used to let people post at will on its eHow site that was, well, less than good.

As in, bad.

Instead, it’s “curation,” “editorial innovation” and feedback cycles.

We old-timers like to call that journalism and copyediting, complete with mean old editors who spiked said copy when it was crappy.

“Let me be clear,” said Rosenblatt, the Google changes did negatively impact Demand’s traffic. But Rosenblatt said the company dug into its content and has been improving it since.

2:17 pm: Now it was CFO Charles Hillard reading the results themselves. I am sorry, Mr. Finance Guy, but I can read it myself, so this is always the time in earnings calls when I check out and spend my time improving my content.

So when I heard words such as “stock-based comp,” I moved on to fixing all the typos that a very nice reader alerted me to, since I was writing too quickly.

Then, I briefly considered writing a high-quality post for eHow on how to write earnings and fix typos at the same time. I am that good.

2:30 pm: The CFO dude finished up and the Q&A with analysts started.

All Panda questions, natch!

Rosenblatt seemed calm, cool and collected.

“We think on this one, they did a very good job,” he said of Google’s search-fixing efforts, trying to soothe the savage beast. “We all continue to evolve.”

Which translated to: Google says jump and we say: “How high?”

Which is then followed by: “Please sir, can I have some more (traffic)?”

Humanity's Last Hope at "Jeopardy" Is Named Rush Holt

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:45:56 +0000

Apparently humans can still beat computers at the game show “Jeopardy” after all. It took a congressman to do what Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two of the game’s best human players, could not: Beat IBM’s Watson supercomputer.

At an event in Washington organized by IBM, The Hill reports, Rep. Rush Holt, who represents New Jersey’s 12th District and was himself a “Jeopardy” champion some 30 years ago, beat the machine in a special congressional round of the game. The score: Holt $8,600, Watson $6,200, after a full round. Also playing was Rep. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, who scored $1,000.

Holt, it turns out, is a pretty smart guy to start with. Before running for Congress–he’s now in his seventh term–he was a nuclear physicist. Wikipedia says Holt is one of only two members of Congress to have appeared on “Jeopardy,” the other being John McCain. Where “Jeopardy” is concerned, may we call Holt humanity’s last hope?

PREVIOUSLY:

Done With Silly Game Shows, IBM's Watson Finds a Job

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:45:57 +0000

Hot on the heels of last night’s big victory on the TV game show “Jeopardy” over two human champions, the most famous computer in the world today, or at least one just like it, appears to have found a respectable job.

Nuance Communications, a software company best known for its Dragon Naturally Speaking line of speech-recognition software, today announced a research agreement with IBM to explore ways to use the Watson system and its deep analytics technology in the health care industry.

The agreement calls for the companies to combine IBM’s Deep Question Answering, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning capabilities with Nuance’s speech recognition and Clinical Language Understanding, which is basically speech recognition tuned to the unique needs of doctors and other health care pros. They expect products resulting from the research to hit the market within two years. Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine are also getting involved.

The hope is that Watson’s ability to analyze the meaning and context of spoken language and quickly sort through the information in it to find precise answers can help humans arrive at decisions faster, and arrive at answers they might not have otherwise thought of. A doctor mulling a patient’s diagnosis could use Watson to quickly check medical literature and help evaluate a decision.

Nuance has a huge health care segment, accounting for a little less than half its sales. The division includes Dragon Medical–desktop software for doctors–and eScription, which docs use to phone in comments that are converted to text that’s entered into medical records. It’s also been building voice-recognition apps for Apple’s iPhone, both for consumers and for doctors. IBM and Nuance will jointly invest in the research project, and IBM has licensed access to the Watson technology to Nuance.

Nuance itself is an interesting company. Spun out of Xerox in 1999, it started out in the scanning and text-recognition software business, and then in 2001 scooped up the assets of the bankrupt Belgian outfit Lernout and Hauspie using a combination of debt and cash raised in a private placement from the state of Wisconsin’s investment board. It turned out that speech recognition’s time had come, and as sales of Dragon improved, it proceeded to roll up scores of other companies in the speech- and text-recognition game, including one founded by Alexander Graham Bell himself. Sales were north of a $1 billion for the first time in the year ended September 2010, and its shares have improved considerably over the last year, though given its size, the stock often moves on takeover rumors.

PREVIOUSLY:

All Humans Bow Before the Mighty Watson, Master of “Jeopardy”

IBM “Jeopardy” Challenge Day 2: Very Different From Day One

IBM “Jeopardy” Challenge Day One Ends in a Tie

That Human Vs. Machine Practice Round of “Jeopardy” Didn’t End the Way You Heard It Did

“Final Jeopardy” Question: Would You Buy an E-Book Without an Ending?

This Supercomputer Defeated Human Champions of a TV Game Show in 2011

I’ll Take Computer Company PR Stunts for $1,000,000

This Supercomputer Defeated Human Champions of a TV Game Show in 2011

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:19:35 +0000

It was another one of those big-thinking days at IBM today, as the supercomputer Watson–which has been prepping for a televised matchup against two human champions from the TV game show “Jeopardy”–won a practice round before a room full of reporters today.

As ZDNet reports, Watson won the round with $4,400, while Ken Jennings had $3,400 and Brad Rutter brought in $1,200.

The game has been in the planning stages for years, and has been written about several times. The New York Times covered IBM’s work in a big story in 2009.

The whole point of teaching a computer to play “Jeopardy” lies in the complex computing work that’s required to make a machine understand natural human language and detect the same subtle cues of human speech that humans learn to understand over the years. “Jeopardy” questions can involve clever turns of phrases, riddles and other tricks of speech that can confuse a computer in ways that a game of chess won’t. Computers have already defeated humans at chess, you’ll recall, and it was an IBM computer that did it.

After the “Jeopardy” match, the human players said Watson had one distinct advantage: It doesn’t get psyched out. If another player wins a string of questions, it doesn’t suffer from the emotional response of losing confidence.

I don’t usually watch “Jeopardy,” or any game show for that matter. But I’m looking forward to seeing how the real game turns out.

Below is a rough video by ZDNet’s Larry Dignan, who attended the round.

Help! I'm Addicted to CityVille

Liz Gannes — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:00:48 +0000

Earlier this month, I had a lot of nervous energy and a bunch of spare time on my hands, since my husband was in the hospital for an unusually complicated appendectomy. He’s much better now, but I haven’t fully recovered, because I picked up a bad case of addiction to CityVille, the newly released social game from Zynga.

CityVille is the perfect hospital waiting-room activity. You click to create buildings and plant crops, click to harvest them and collect money from your shops, click to visit your friends’ cities and help them do the same things.

Unlike in a real city, everything you can possibly accomplish in the game is good. You receive money, goods, reputation points, energy and random bonus prizes constantly.

Most of these are useful, but some of them are not. For instance, I currently have a stock of 22 virtual danishes received as bonuses from my in-game coffee shop, and no way to spend them.

Among the early adopter types I know in the tech industry, there’s a sense that casual gaming on Facebook serves an entirely different demographic from their own. The thinking is that games from Zynga and the like replace relatively mindless activities like watching soap operas.

But as someone who has just reorganized her virtual retail shops to be surrounded by virtual trees, so as to accumulate more virtual bonus points, I can see how social gaming–especially as it gets more social–might appeal to the desire for mindless diversions in all of us.

And, I began to get an answer to a question I am asked a lot: Why are so many people playing these seemingly meaningless games?

CityVille is Zynga’s latest attempt to extend the dominance of its breakout social game FarmVille, which has long been the most popular such diversion on Facebook.

Of all of Zynga’s games, CityVille has been heralded as the most social to date, with new features such as a franchise system that allows users to actually participate in the building of their friends’ cities. Personally, I’ve never gotten into FarmVille, although it’s obviously quite addictive as well and hugely popular.

Chalk it up to the new social features, the slightly less awkward and cutesy 3-D graphics, or a momentary openness to mindless diversion on my part, but CityVille is the only Facebook game that’s truly sucked me in so far.

Zynga says CityVille is its fastest-growing game ever. According to AppData, CityVille has 54 million monthly active users, for second place overall (and only two million behind FarmVille).

There are no consequences in CityVille and there is no strategy. There’s also no winning (rather, as in FarmVille, an endlessly extending horizon of tasks to complete).

The worst thing that can happen is a crop can wither or you can allocate your “energy” to collecting rent and not have enough to empty the cash registers at your stores.

But, not to worry–come back in five minutes and there’s another unit of energy waiting for you.

CityVille is satisfying on a superficial level that I hadn’t thought possible. It’s not even like Angry Birds, my former casual game of choice, which breaks all sorts of age and language barriers in its simplicity, but still requires you to position the slingshot correctly and think through the physics of the various projectiles.

In CityVille, all you do is click, click, click.

Zynga seems to want three things from users: Their time, their money and their recruitment of their friends. As for time, I’ve given plenty of it, although you usually run out of stuff to do about 15 minutes into any one session (Zynga wouldn’t want game play to be a burden or feel too complicated).

But I’m not sure my obsession is paying off for Zynga. I’ve spent a grand total of 50 cents on the game. That’s because I wanted to spend the 15 Facebook credits I’d gotten as part of a launch promotion, but Zynga had a minimum purchase of 20 credits. Coughing up two quarters got me the difference–and it also hooked up my Facebook account to my PayPal account for the first time.

I currently have 20 CityVille “neighbors.” They are Facebook connections from all different parts of my life, including high school friends, tech industry people and fellow reporters. We get credits for heading over to each other’s cities and helping out, accepting roles at each other’s city halls and other municipal buildings and setting up franchises in each other’s cities and resupplying them.

And Zynga constantly harasses us to post on our own or other people’s Facebook walls to ask them for in-game gifts and brag about in-game achievements.

Conscious of polluting other people’s walls and admitting to people how much CityVille I play, I usually decline all the offers to broadcast my CityVille needs and accomplishments. But it’s clear Zynga could stand to add even more communication channels if it wanted to; a friend recently emailed me off-game to ask if I could hurry up and send him a CityVille zoning permit.

I get the sense most of my particular set of neighbors haven’t given Zynga a lot of cash for virtual goods, considering our cities are growing at about the same rate and I see them on there at least once a day helping tend to my crops and resupplying their franchises. There are no in-game advertisements.

A few of my neighbors, however, have accumulated premium goodies galore. A certain Facebook exec’s city is decorated with paid-for doodads like a basketball court, tennis court and bronze statue–but I imagine it’s not too hard for him, of all people, to stock up on Facebook credits.

A particular start-up CEO who’s my virtual neighbor seems to play on an hourly basis. He has already hit level 35. You know that somewhere a Zynga engineer is scurrying to create more tasks and content to add more levels to keep up with him and other addicts.

And only one of my neighbors appears to have never returned to the game after setting up her initial city.

Meanwhile, my own city keeps on growing. I’m currently at level 26. I’m now the mayor of my city and considering a run for governor.

But, now that I’m back from the hospital, I’d honestly really like to stop playing this game and let the healing begin.

Update: Since I first wrote a draft of this post on Sunday CityVille added 10 million users. I’ve updated the stats as of Wednesday morning.

Man, I Got So WikiLeaked Last Night

Beth Callaghan — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:23:29 +0000

“WikiLeaks” has entered the canon of the English language, but not according to the OED. Research done by a group known as Global Language Monitor shows that “WikiLeaks” has appeared in global media more than 300 million times since 2006. The Texas-based group cites a minimum of 25,000 mentions in English-speaking media as a requirement for the name to become its own lowercase, generic word. Unfortunately, GLM doesn’t specify its definition or whether the word would be used as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb.

Liveblogging Google's SF Mobile Event: Voices Actions, Chrome to Phone, No Video-Calling, But Will There Be Donuts?

Kara Swisher — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:05:46 +0000

BoomTown was sitting front row center–better to scare Google Mobile Product Manager Hugo Barra–at the Silicon Valley search giant’s press event in San Francisco this morning.

Google (GOOG) called together a group of reporters to discuss some “cool new features” for its Android operating system.

While many have been expectantly waiting for Google to announce a video-calling offering, to match the Apple (AAPL) FaceTime service, that was not to be here.

Instead, it was a low-key rollout of a few whiz-bang features to ooh and ahh at.

Happily, Google provided unusually delicious donuts, which was my entire reason for coming, because donuts are the pastry to the gods.

Let’s get to it:

10:05 am PT: PR dude Mike Nelson introed Barra, who said there will be two new features announced.

Ooh and Ahh.

First though, we were forced to endure yet another lecture on how important mobile is and where the future is headed that comes from every single company that throws a mobile event.

Mobile is the big show now?

Really? We had no idea this cell phone thing was going to take off! Thanks, Professor Barra!

Barra pressed on with lots of talk about MIPS (millions of instructions per second, which you should care less about, but is important).

Barra said that innovative smartphones were becoming “super-computers in your pocket.”

Again, master of the obvious!

I obviously needed to have a bite of my lovely sprinkle-laden donut to gain some balance.

10:12 am: Barra moved onto voice recognition. He asked the phone movie times in Palo Alto, Calif. and how high the Empire State Building, results which were promptly delivered.

(When my kid asked me on a trip to New York, I just said it was a badillion feet high, which also worked as an answer.)

But such technology is cool, for sure.

But Barra upped the ante by speaking four languages–Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese–to get results. It worked! Get this guy on “The Amazing Race” pronto!

Now, tricks over, it was onto the first product announcement!

And, drum roll…it was a new feature that Google is a calling “Voice Actions” in Voice Search, available today for Android 2.2 Froyo devices.

This sounded like a band name from the 1980s.

Instead, it is the ability to speak into the phone and have it instantly do things, such as sending text messages, automatic dialing and mapping and more, all via speech commands in English.

Speech recognition, natural language processing and semantic Web search–you could kind of do this before on Android, but it was neither seamless nor automatic, said Barra.

He did not say, but Voice Actions is an awful lot like Siri, the mobile app assistant start-up that Apple bought recently.

But there were more on Voice Actions, according to the adorkable demo dude Mike LeBeau, a baker’s dozen (13!) of actions, and there will be more.

He spoke into the phone a request to “Listen to the Decembrists.” Presto (and also props for the hip musical choice)!

Then, LeBeau spoke an email about some scuba diving trip. Presto!

But then he added a smiley face! Unfortunate and decidedly unhip, but presto!

After that, LeBeau kept showing off, setting the alarm clock, going to Wikipedia, doing a search for art galleries in Amsterdam.

10:28 am: Now for product announcement #2.

Barra brought up engineering manager Dave Burke, who built it in his 20 percent time.

It’s a synching feature called “Chrome to Phone.”

This sounded like a 1990s band name.

“It is a low latency way to push information to the phone,” said Burke, using Google’s browser and an app for the mobile device.

There is a little icon on the Chrome browser you click that sends a variety of stuff to the app on an Android phone.

It’s certainly helpful.

10:35 am: Onto Q&A about the two perfectly fine, though hardly earth-shaking, announcements.

Questions about the languages, bookmarking Chrome to Phone (not yet) and what’s coming next.

More!

It was all about solving “pain points” said the Voice Actions dude LeBeau.

All I know is donuts are the only thing that solves my pain points. Presto!

(And here is a post of some videos and screenshots of both Voice Actions and Chrome to Phone to enjoy.)

Full D8 Demo Video: Wordnik

Kara Swisher — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:33:00 +0000

As promised, All Things Digital is posting the full videos from our eighth D: All Things Digital conference, held in early June.

Today, it’s time for Wordnik, the innovative start-up aimed at, well, words.

Founded by Erin McKean, the former editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik claims to have the word’s most complete map of the language you are currently reading.

In this video, she demos Smartwords, an open standard for sharing information about words.

But why use words when you can watch? Here’s the video of Wordnik’s demo at D8:

[ See post to watch video ]

Want to see it bigger? Click here.

Note: We’ll be posting full D8 videos on Mondays and Thursdays. Next up: The demo for Microsoft’s Project Natal, now called Kinect.

D8 Tech Demo: Wordnik

Drake Martinet — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:45:43 +0000

What does it all mean? For nine million words of the English language, Wordnik delivers more than a definition. Founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik claims to have the word’s most complete map of the language you are currently reading.

McKean will demo Smartwords, an open standard for sharing information about words. She has partnered with several major media organizations in hopes that Smartwords can expand and enhance users’ experiences with e?books, digital content and e?readers.

Below, video of the demo, followed by the liveblog.

[ See post to watch video ]

Liveblog

Wordnik is up to tell us a little more about Smartwords.

11:45 am: Walt takes the stage and introduces Erin McKean of Wordnik.

11:47 am: McKean wanted to be a lexicographer, thanks to an article in The Wall Street Journal, she says.

She says that words need to be converted from “dumb strings” to “smart things.”

She brings out an iPad and opens an app that automatically generates a glossary for Scientific American.

11:49 am: She says journalists make very user-friendly definitions of words–much better than dictionaries. She opens an e-reader app and shows a pop-up that gives an explanation of the word as a concept, in context. She says it is based in HTML5.

11:51 am: Inside the pop-up, there are options to buy things that are related to words that are explained.

Options are there to purchase books on searched concepts or subscribe to newspapers that are partners to supply definitions.

Walt asks if she will take a cut of the book sales or subscription fees. McKean says she’s not the monetization person.

11:54 am: McKean now shows a study tool that forces kids to learn new words in books they want to read. The page won’t turn until you answer a question about an SAT-level word on the page.

11:55 am: McKean thanks Walt and Kara and bounds off stage. Demo over.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

It's a Botnet Party Vietnam

John Paczkowski — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:20:07 +0000

East Asia obviously isn’t taking Google’s principled stand in China very seriously–not that you’d expect it to. Politically motivated cyberattacks in the region continue. The latest to be identified: A botnet intended to silence widespread opposition to a bauxite mining operation in Vietnam run by China’s state-owned mining group, Chinalco.

Though similar to the late-2009 attacks against Google (GOOG), this effort was a bit less sophisticated. Still, it appears to have been politically motivated and perpetrated by folks with some sort of allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

“The malware infected the computers of potentially tens of thousands of users who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software and possibly other legitimate software that was altered to infect users,” Neel Mehta of Google’s security team wrote in a blog post describing the attack.

“While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated,” Mehta added, “it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes. These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent.”

Which is frightening, because a number of Vietnamese Internet activists have already been imprisoned for attacking Chinese involvement in the bauxite mining project.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Yahoo's Bradford Bails

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:00:20 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Beijing to Google's China Partners: Nice Site You Got There. Shame if Something Happened to It.

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:45:14 +0000

If Google makes good on its threat to end censorship on its Chinese site, Google.cn, its search partnerships in the country will likely be forfeited–the Chinese government is making certain of that. An unnamed “industry expert” tells the New York Times that Beijing has been warning Chinese Web portals that rely on Google’s Custom Search service they had better reconsider their affiliation with the search giant.

Among the sites allegedly approached: Infotainment portal Sina.com and lifestyle site Ganji.com, which feature Google’s search box on their homepages. Both are now presumably mulling alternatives like Baidu, China’s largest search engine and one that happily censors its results according to Chinese government regulations.

News of Beijing’s latest moves comes amid reports that Google (GOOG) is on the brink of shuttering Google.cn. On Friday, the Financial Times reported that Google is “99.9 percent” certain it will close its Chinese-language search service.

PREVIOUSLY:

YouTube to Offer Captions on Videos

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:30:29 +0000

Google Inc.’s YouTube said it will offer automatically generated captions for its entire video catalog, a boon for deaf users and those who want to watch videos in other languages.

At a press conference at YouTube’s San Bruno, Calif., headquarters, Google (GOOG) software engineer Ken Harrenstein demonstrated the feature and went through the reasons Google invested in the product–from expanding accessibility to crossing language barriers to improving search.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

How to Report Snow

Peter Kafka — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:55:39 +0000

As you may heard, it snowed last week in Washington, D.C., and today it is snowing in New York City. It also snowed in other parts of the country, but that’s not relevant here because snow in other parts of the country doesn’t inspire massive media overcoverage.

In any case, I’m assuming that the good people at “The Daily Show” will be dissecting said overcoverage very soon. But for now, we’ll have to make do with a British takedown of that country’s snow overcoverage last month, via Charlie Brooker.

I don’t like it quite as much as his more sweeping takedown of TV news in general. But aside from a few problems with the British/American language barrier, it does the job. Thanks to Mike Dunn, via Jeff Jarvis, via Bernie Gershon, for spotting.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a respite from snow non-news, Twitter isn’t the worst place to go right now.

“Blizzard” is indeed a trending topic, but Twitterers have other things on their mind as well, like Google Buzz, of course. And, obviously, John Mayer.

But Twitterers have more esoteric interests, too: They’re busy compiling reasons you should “shooturself,” and offering tributes to Captain Phil, whom you may know from “Deadliest Catch.”

Liveblogging the Google Search Event: Gutenberg, Goggles and Scrolling Real-Time Search!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:08:53 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Right now, BoomTown is sitting right behind the very affable Jason Hirschhorn, chief product officer of MySpace, who is here to make one of the many partner announcements with Google at its “search event” in Silicon Valley today.

I also ran right into Twitter’s Biz Stone at the coffee stand. He is also here to talk about the new features Google (GOOG) is adding to its search repertoire, although he is remaining mum until the program starts in five minutes.

It’s about real-time search, of course, given that the partners visiting today are all real-time search folks.

The confab–being held at the Computer History Museum near the Googleplex HQ–is essentially Google’s rejoinder to last week’s event by Microsoft (MSFT), which announced a bunch of new features for its Bing search service, including mapping updates.

Of course, because it is Google, the sound system rocks, the food is better and it is more overproduced than “Dancing With the Stars.”

10:13 am PT: The event is opened by Marissa Mayer, who runs search products and user experience for Google.

And it takes exactly 13 seconds for there to be a classic Silicon Valley buzzword. Modes! Translation: It is how we use the Web.

Mayer is outlining Google’s key components in the future of search. Along with modes, they are media, language and personalization.

“We are a company that likes to launch early and often,” she said, adding that Google has launched 33 search innovations in 67 days.

In other words, take that, Bing. Oh, dear, giant Google just boasted about its innovation cred and is apparently a little worried about weensie Bing.

10:18 am: Mayer welcomes Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering, who will talk about mobile search.

He begins by noting that no one knows where all the new innovations in computing will lead, much as no one got the Gutenberg press way back in the olden days.

Professor Gundotra then launches into a computing history lesson, with stops at Moore’s Law (better, faster, cheaper) and how one understood all the zillions of computing connections that would occur.

The “missing ingredient,” noted Gundotra, is the cloud.

Next, he moves to a demo to show where Google is headed. Gundotra nails a voice query on an Android phone about President Obama at the G8 Summit with the French president. Everyone cheers.

Gundotra now tries to top himself with a Mandarin query for McDonald’s in Beijing. He sticks it.

He then announces support for the voice search on mobile devices for Japan, bringing up a Japanese speaker.

One voice query is a very long one for a favorite restaurant in Tokyo near the Google office there. Does Google find it? Of course Google does.

“Our dreams at Google go way beyond what you just saw,” says Gundotra, who opines on a real-time interpreter on the phone. Of course, he demos the interpreter, which he said will show up sometime in 2010.

It works, again. Natch! These are big-brained dudes here at Google, so don’t mess with them.

10:30 am: Gundotra moves to locations, which he says will be a key element of future versions of Google search. You know, Red Sox comes up in Boston, data appear for nearby stores for digital cameras.

He shows off the “Near Me Now” feature, which is kind of like those many Apple (AAPL) iPhone apps, like Yelp. It explores stuff nearby. It will be available on Google mobile maps for Android right away.

Next, he announces a Google Labs project called Google Goggles, which takes pictures of something and then identifies it. I have seen this kind of thing in a lot of labs at various tech companies.

Gundotra, who is a slick dude at presentations, uses the example of being a wine expert without being one. He scans a wine bottle and then Google quickly shows info on it.

Oooooh, aaaaaah.

Gundotra uses the service to identify a Japanese landmark successfully.

Someday, he predicts, your phone will be a “mouse pointer” to the world.

10:42 am: Back to Mayer, who talks about media relevancy in search. Google Fellow Amit Singhal is the man on deck.

“What we’re going to announce today is one of the most exciting things in my career,” said Singhal, who first launches into a short history of information flow.

Campfires, more Gutenberg! Also some pictures of old Google servers. I feel so educated; plus, Singhal is pretty funny for a supergeek.

Now, he gets to the news: “We are here today to announce Google real-time search.”

The demo is launched and it shows news scrolling as it is produced. “This is the first time ever,” enthuses Singhal.

It looks cool, but reminds me a lot of old tickers that used to be in the newsroom at the Washington Post. You know, the kind of newspaper that Google is often accused of killing off.

Irony alert! I wonder if that will scroll up soon.

The scrolling also includes Twitter updates. One tweet by Googler Matt Cutts about the Google real-time search launch showed up immediately.

The latest results will be available on the search options and in preferences and will also be hyperlocal and mobile on the iPhone and Android.

“Real-time search becomes incredibly powerful, since it shows you exactly what you need in your geography,” said Singhal.

Singhal is a font of news. He also announces that Google Trends is moving out of the labs and will also show real-time results.

He launches into the “how” of how Google did all this. Well, it was really, really hard, said Singhal, because there are a badillion real-time pieces of data out there to analyze and render.

And which company, with its massive computing power, can make this relevant and hand over the info quickly? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

Recap: Real-time search, latest search option, update option, mobile real-time search and Google Trends in the real-time world.

“At Google we will not be satisfied,” said Singhal, until Google can get you info at the speed of light.

11:07 am: Just to stick a true fork into anything Microsoft could come up with, Mayer comes back up and announces Google’s Facebook, MySpace and Twitter partnerships as part of the launch of real-time search.

Facebook will be sending in public feeds and MySpace is providing all of them, as is Twitter.

Google now has eyes and ears, says Mayer. When it gets a whole body, get ready to run for your life.

Q&A time!

The first question is about whether Goggles could have facial recognition. Gundotra says Google could do that, but will not until the privacy issues are worked out. Operative thought here: Google is capable of doing this. Eek!

The next question is about advertising opportunities in these new features. Singhal does not really answer, but says businesses will develop.

The next question is about how much content Google is crawling. Answer: About a billion pages a day.

Gundotra adds that the first launch is only available on English-speaking locales. But it will move into other languages next year.

What about spammers taking advantage of real-time search? Oh, says Singhal, they will get a beat-down from Matt Cutts, who is in charge of spam-killing at Google.

Wouldn’t that make a good reality show? “The Spam Hunters!”

About questions on real-time partnerships, Mayer said Google wanted to be comprehensive.

Mayer will not disclose the details of any financial payments for these real-time feeds. Of course, Google is paying up.

And now a question about whether Google will limit development on non-Android phones. “Absolutely not,” says Gundrotra.

At last, a zinger question: Do you feel that Google will be responsible for the death of journalism and doesn’t that make Google a scary black hole of, presumably, evil?

Awkward!

Singhal casts about for an answer, which is mostly about bringing info to users, which is not an answer.

“It’s really about user empowerment,” he says. Uh-oh, we’re doomed!

Mayer jumps in nervously to shoot this meme down and says Google is about facilitation and not decimation.

The PR dude onstage also throws in the boilerplate about Google sending gazillions of clicks all over.

But the point is made: Today Google–which owns universal search–just made its big move in real-time search.

The next question is about the difference between Google’s practice of wanting people off the page and onto the Web and Microsoft Bing’s focus on topic pages of rich information.

Mayer is sticking with quick on and off for Google.

And what about junk information on the silly side that comes with more real-time search, like dead celebs who are not dead, or really untrue information on important issues?

It’s a hard problem, says Singhal, who says Google is working on it.

What about disabling the real-time updates rather than just being able to turn them on and off. Nope, says Singhal. Mayer notes that this may change.

But the truth is: With the big search giant jumping in, real-time search is most definitely here to stay.

Intel Makes Leap in Device to Aid Impaired Readers

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:03:59 +0000

Despite all of the advances in digital technology, too few high-tech products have emerged to help the blind read books or other paper documents, or to make reading such texts easier for people with impaired vision or language-related learning disabilities.

A few years back, a breakthrough was made with text-to-speech software that could be installed on a specific mobile phone, but with limitations due to the phone’s small screen and buttons, and restricted processor power.

[ See post to watch video ]

Now, Intel (INTC), the giant chip maker, is attacking this problem with a new product: the Intel Reader. It’s a chunky, book-size device with a computer-grade processor and a large, forward-facing screen that can be viewed easily while its downward-facing camera is shooting text for translation into audio and giant text. It also has raised buttons that are easy to find via touch.

I’ve been testing the Intel Reader with books, newspapers, magazines, bank statements, menus and even cereal boxes. My results were decidedly mixed. In some cases, especially with books and certain magazine articles, it worked pretty well, often almost perfectly. In others, it did a poor job. I also found that it takes a lot of practice to learn how to aim the Reader’s camera properly.

However, an important caveat is in order. I have full, normal vision and no learning disabilities, so I can’t put myself in the place of someone who is unable to read paper documents, or who struggles to do so. For them, the limitations I found in this product might easily pale when compared with its liberating benefits. More information is at reader.intel.com.

When it worked as promised, the Intel Reader was a delight. It would start reading the text to me in under a minute, while displaying the words on the 4.3-inch screen in an easily adjusted font size that could allow as little as one word to fill the display. I also could switch to a view of the photo of the whole page, and zoom in to focus on a portion of the text. It holds multiple texts and has an easy interface with large menus that the machine can read to you.

But the Reader is relatively big and expensive. It costs a whopping $1,500 and is available from only a limited number of retailers who specialize in products for special-needs consumers. By contrast, the competing cellphone product, called the KNFB mobile reader, is much smaller because it uses a standard Nokia (NOK) mobile phone. It can be purchased through Amazon.com (AMZN), also for $1,500.

The Intel Reader

The Intel Reader is a special-purpose computer that weighs 1.4 pounds and is dominated by the roomy horizontal screen, with control buttons to the right and below. Along the bottom edge is a five-megapixel camera with flash.

The Reader’s second-most-prominent feature is a large, bright-blue “shoot” button, which occupies all of the diagonally cut upper right hand corner. You press this easy-to-find button twice to take a picture of the text that the Reader will then convert.

Both the text on the screen and the speed of the audio reading can be adjusted with prominent, raised buttons. Other buttons begin and end playback, and navigate through the menus.

The Reader uses the same Intel Atom processor found on netbook computers, and can hold 600 processed pages that you can transfer to and from a PC or Mac. It also can convert your processed pages into audio files for playback on a portable audio player.

The Reader can capture two book pages at a time. Intel also sells a $400 stand to make book conversion faster and easier.

In my tests, my biggest problem was aiming correctly. The Reader automatically corrects the curvature and orientation of pages. But in many of the items I captured, the first and last few words were either garbled or skipped. The company admits there is a learning curve to the Reader, and I did get better with time.

The Reader did a great job with pages from the new Ken Auletta book, “Googled,” and a fair job with pages from the first Harry Potter book. To my surprise, it didn’t stumble so much with the made-up words in the latter book, but with common ones like “magic.” In the book about Google (GOOG), the reader’s robotic voice kept pronouncing MySpace as “mizzpizz.” And it often pronounced the word “I” as “one.”

The device was excellent at reading a menu from a local bakery, even down to the tiny type, but it utterly failed to make sense of a simple summary statement from my bank, or the front of a box of Cheerios.

Newspapers were a particular challenge. The Reader frequently picked up fragments of adjoining articles or picture captions, or got completely flummoxed. In one case, it got permanently stuck trying to process an article. Intel says that was a rare bug it will fix.

On balance, I’d recommend the Reader, provider the user understands its limitations and is willing to tackle the learning curve.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at
mossberg@wsj.com.

The New York Times Gets Out of the Radio Business, Collects $45 Million

Peter Kafka — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:34:52 +0000

The New York Times (NYT) is getting out of the radio business. Did you know the New York Times was in the radio business? Exactly.

Anyway, now it’s not. The cash-strapped publisher has sold WQXR-FM for $45 million, carving up the asset into two packages for different buyers–local NPR affiliate WNYC and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Radio, a unit of Univision Communications.

The money will be used to chip away at the paper’s $1 billion debt (the terms of the $250 million loan it took out from billionaire Carlos Slim pretty much require that the paper do that whenever it sells off anything significant). It’s not much, but it may end being more than the paper gets for the Boston Globe, which it bought for $1.1 billion in 1993.

The Times has owned the station since 1944; it sold off its AM sibling to Disney (DIS) in 2006.

The deal involves a swap of licenses and equipment between multiple stations, but that won’t be of interest to you unless you listen to classical music or Spanish-language programming on New York City radio stations. If you do, the details are in the release.

TEDTalks Go Global Online in 40 Languages (Including Urdu!)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:55:14 +0000

Some of the best delivery of video on the Web right now is via the TED Web site–the Internet part of the well-known conferences where big thinkers express bigger thoughts, mostly focusing on technology, entertainment and design.

The organizers have long put those analog talks, called TEDTalks, online, but are now trying to make them even more accessible globally, starting today.

According to TED Media Executive Producer June Cohen, “every TED talk will have subtitles, an interactive, time-coded transcript, and the capacity to be translated by volunteers worldwide. We’ll launch with 300 translations in 40 languages (including lesser-knowns like Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, etc).”

Yipes! We were planning to translate All Things Digital in Pig Latin–for example: Ittertway isway away ecretsay otplay otay estroyday ethay umanhay aceray iavay Ashtonway Utcherkay–but nixed the effort due to cost.

In all seriousness, this “Open Translation” project by TED is of the kind that has become common across the Web as volunteers help sites go global, an important thing given that too many are still English-only.

Facebook, for example, has used this method to get its sites up quickly internationally.

Thus, a Wade Davis TEDTalk on endangered cultures is now in 22 languages, for example, while Barry Schwartz’s speech on the loss of wisdom is in seven, including Hungarian.

According to Cohen, every talk now has English subtitles, that time-coded transcript, translated headlines, the ability to browse for talks by language and language-specific URLs.

Here is an example of a page (click on it to make it larger):

Here’s the interesting explanation of the project, financially backed by Nokia (NOK), from the TED Web site:

A year in the making, the TED Open Translation Project brings TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. The project launched with 300 translations in 40 languages, and 200 volunteer translators.

Generously supported by a visionary sponsorship from Nokia, the TED Open Translation Project is one of the most comprehensive attempts by a major media platform to subtitle and index online video content. It’s also a groundbreaking effort in the public, professional use of volunteer translation.

Subtitles and transcripts

Every talk on TED.com will now have English subtitles, which can be toggled on or off by the user. The number of additional languages varies from talk to talk, based on the number of volunteers who elected to translate it.

Along with subtitles, every talk on TED.com now features a time-coded, interactive transcript, which allows users to select any phrase and have the video play from that point. The transcripts are fully indexable by search engines, exposing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately help you find the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter’s talk when she speaks of her green roof project in the South Bronx. Transcripts will index in all available languages.

The interplay between the video, subtitles and transcript create what we call a Rosetta Stone effect. You can watch, for example, an English talk, with Korean subtitles and an Urdu transcript. Click on an Urdu phrase in the transcript, and the speaker will say it to you in English, with Korean subtitles running right-to-left below. It’s captivating.

The translations

Rather than simply translate a few talks into a handful of major languages, TED and technology partner, dotSUB developed a set of tools that allow participants around the world to translate their favorite talks into their own language. This approach is scalable, and–importantly–allows speakers of less-dominant languages an equal opportunity to spread ideas within their communities.

To seed the site, a handful of talks were professionally translated into 20 languages. But all translations going forward will be provided by volunteers. At launch, volunteer translators had already contributed more than 200 published translations (with 450 more in development). These volunteers range from well-organized groups working together in their own language, to lone translators working individually and matched by TED with others.

At launch, the Open Translation Project included 300 translations, in 40 languages, including Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kirghiz, Korean, Macedonian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. Our translators hail from cities from Beijing to Buenos Aires; Tehran to Tel Aviv; Espoo, Finland, to Barranquilla, Colombia.

To help ensure quality, we generate an approved, professional English transcript for each talk. (This is the transcript upon which all translations are based.) Once the talk is translated, we then require every translation to be reviewed by a second fluent speaker before publishing it on TED. TED controls the final “publish” button. All translators and reviewers are credited by name for their work. After publication, we provide feedback mechanisms for ongoing discussion or improvement around the translation.

LIVE: Google Searchology

John Paczkowski — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:13:04 +0000

The architects of Google search are holding court at company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., this morning offering what promises to be a sort of state of the union on the subject of search. Overseeing the event, dubbed “Google Searchology”: Udi Manber, VP of Search Engineering, and Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience.

Gabriel Stricker, Google’s Director of Search Communications kicks things off by noting that the company will be sharing a number of new developments that cater to the growing demands of its users. With that, Udi Manber takes the stage to offer a big-picture overview of search.

Manber says what Google does is the new “rocket science.” Search has to be fast, relevant, and fresh, he explains. But even that’s not enough. The real goal is to solve users’ problems. If users can’t spell, it’s our problem. If the content is there but in a language the user doesn’t speak, that’s our problem. If the Web is too slow, it’s our problem. Manber offers a few examples of how Google works to address these challenges: real-time data, translation, etc. With these services nailed down, he says, Google can move on to the more important task of working on “understanding.”

Manber invites Pat Riley, senior search quality engineer, to the stage to talk a bit about Google’s “did you mean” link. Lots of people use the link, Riley says, and Google has been working to improve it. Called “spellmillion,” the project provides not only related results for a misspelled query but for alternate ones as well (think labor as in “work” and labor as in “pregnancy”). But it requires Google to process multiple searches for a single query and demands a lot of processing power.

Riley notes that the project has been somewhat contentious because it also potentially questions user intent. He offers the example of “Macy Ray.” Some users might be searching for “Macy Gray,” the singer, others for a person actually named “Macy Ray.” How do you address those two potential queries on a single search results page?

Riley is followed by Engineering Director Scott Huffman, whose subject is mobile search. Huffman starts things off with a few truisms. Mobile search is often local. It should be easy to use. Effortless. And it should provide all that Google has to offer. Huffman notes that this is quite a task since Google must optimize its search for different mobile experiences and different user interfaces: Google’s own Android, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, etc. Some of these platforms require gestures–touch, swipe–others use a keypad. All must provide access to the Web and the mobile Web–sites that have been optimized for mobile devices. On the screen behind him, Huffman displays an example of Google search that displays desktop Web results and mobile Web results, the latter denoted by a red square.

Mobile search must also be easy. Huffman demos a shared desktop-mobile search for a flight number. Since he’s logged into his Google account, his search for “ba 284? SF-London on the desktop is immediately shared with the Google app on his mobile device. An unreleased feature, but it’s on its way. A quick look at local listings automatically delivered to devices on the basis on GPS/cell tower location, and then Huffman brings Mayer on stage.

Mayer talks a bit about universal search before moving on to Google’s “bento box” of search results. She talks about Google’s focus on the importance of presentation and its efforts to make search results more usable for the user. An example of this SearchWiki, a tool that allows users to annotate their searches, to “keep their train of thought,” says Mayer. We need to help our users find more and do more with it, she says, noting that the company is still working to address some longstanding user problems:

Finding recent information
Expressing that you want just one type of result
Assessing which results are best
Knowing what you’re looking for
Expressing your searches in keywords

Mayer introduces Google Search Options, a feature that appends a search option panel to results, allowing users to “slice and dice” the results as they choose. A demo of the feature, in a search for “Hubble Telescope,” allows for search calibration by time, pages that include images, etc. Another search for “solar oven” is filtered down to specific genres–videos, discussion forums, reviews. Click on those links and that new search context is immediately displayed on the page.

Interestingly, the reviews feature uses something called “sentiment analysis” to extract sentiments from a review and present them in displayed snippets.

Search Options also includes a timeline feature that allows users to visualize results over time. And there’s something called “Wonder Wheel,” which presents a visual representation of a query surrounded by potential refinements (hence “Wonder Wheel”). Click on a refinement and results update automatically. Search Options should be going live now, says Mayer.

A bit of geometry monomania here today at Google Searchology. First the Wonder Wheel and now “Google Squared,” a sort of spreadsheet visualization of search being cooked up in Google Labs. Unstructured data pulled directly from search and organized according to the whim of the user. A search for “small dogs” pulls up a lists of–wonder of wonders–small dogs organized by size, weight, breed, etc. Click on an individual cell and you can change its source. Pretty slick. Still a work in progress, though. It should be available later this month, Mayer says during the Q&A.

Another new feature: Rich Snippets. A search for “drooling dog BBQ” returns your standard Google results along with a list of metadata–average user reviews, for example. A search for a GPS system includes an additional pointer to a recent CNET review of the unit in question. Rich Snippets is open API, incidentally.

Last up, an Android star map app that uses GPS to create a star map “local to your place on earth” and to your position. Move the phone and the map adjusts to your view–essentially the app transforms the device into map overlay for the sky. And how does this tie into search? Search for “Gemini” and a sort of pointer appears onscreen directing you to its location in the sky. And with that, Mayer wraps things up.

Displaying Song Lyrics on an iPod

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

I listen to opera and other music in languages other than English. Much of this music comes with lyrics and English translations. I like listening on my MP3 player, but I don’t like having to carry around the CD notes to read while I listen. Is there a portable player that would allow me to read the lyrics while I listen?

Yes. The Apple iPods are capable of displaying lyrics while you listen. This capability has been on the standard iPods and on iPod Nanos for a while, and has just been added to the new iPod Touch and to the iPhone. It requires the lyrics to be entered into the song file, either manually or by cutting and pasting.

You enter lyrics using Apple’s companion iTunes software, on either a Windows or a Macintosh computer. To do so, you select the song, then, from the File menu, click on “Get Info.” You then select the tab called “Lyrics,” which brings up an empty window. You can type in the lyrics or first copy them from a Web site (or other source) and then paste them into this window. You then click OK, and, when you synchronize the song with your iPod, the lyrics come with it.

On the standard iPod itself, to view the lyrics while listening, you press the large center button multiple times until the lyrics appear. On the iPod Touch and iPhone, you tap on the image of the album cover while a song is playing. If the song file contains lyrics, they appear.

Does Kodak’s photo software allow one to add titles to the photo — for instance, names of people in group shots?

Yes, as with most photo software, you can add captions or titles to pictures organized inside the Kodak EasyShare software that runs on your computer. You can also add captions to pictures you upload to Kodak’s online photo organizer, which is called Kodak Gallery.

I want to give our five-year-old Dell with Windows XP to a charitable organization. How do I assure myself that all my personal files are safely removed?

One option is to reformat the hard disk, which would leave the computer unusable unless you or the charity bought and installed a copy of Windows, or obtained and installed a free copy of the Linux operating system.

The other option is to leave the operating system and programs intact but “wipe,” or permanently delete, all the personal files that concern you, using a “file wiper” program that overwrites the contents of the file with nonsense data. There are a variety of such programs, including some that are free. To find these, go to download.com and search for “file wipe” or “file wiper.” If you’re willing to spend $30, you might want to use a program I have tested and can recommend called Window Washer, available at webroot.com. It has a “bleaching” function that wipes files, and also has the ability to erase any tracks left by your Web browser.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Some Handy Scanners Can Trim That Pile of Business Cards

Sarmad Ali — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:01:00 +0000

New business-card scanners are coming onto the market, making it easier than ever to organize those cards piled high on our desks or stuffed into our wallets.

The latest versions of the devices are getting smaller in size, compared with the old ones, and have more features. You can use them to scan photos, ID cards and checks, among other things — just so the item is no more than slightly bigger than card size.

I have been testing two products: the OptiCard 821 from Plustek Technology, of Cerritos, Calif., and the IRISCard Pro 4, from Belgium-based Image Recognition Integrated Systems, or I.R.I.S.

Plustek’s OptiCard 821

I found that both scanners have a quick and easy way to organize business-card information, but their software isn’t as easy to work with when manipulating the resulting digital images. Also, the machines work best at their originally intended task, and so are better at scanning business cards than at scanning photos, for example.

The software in both devices, overall, created clear images of the names and numbers from most of the typical cards; that is, those cards written with dark ink against a light background. The scanners did a poor job when they had to read cards that were printed on dark-colored stock.

Installing the software was easy enough, and took only a few minutes. After inserting the software CD into your computer, small pop-up windows open to guide you through the process. When the installation is finished, you connect the scanner to your computer’s USB port with the cord provided.

To begin scanning, you just feed the cards into a front slot on the devices and push the scan button. The scanners pull the cards across the scanning head and spit them out the back, saving the cards in the process.

The first time you use the scanners you will be asked to calibrate them to set the parameters for color, shadows and light. It’s an easy task: You just insert a special card that comes with the packages.

The scanners’ software can recognize and categorize cards written in several languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Arabic and Chinese. Scanning a business card using either machine didn’t take more than five seconds; photo-scanning took much longer.

Both machines have two buttons on the top for scanning and for further customizing the scan. The scan buttom has a few standard configurations for capturing the image from the card and transforming it into a PDF file.

The custom button begins with the same process, but then allows you to manipulate the results. When I inserted a card into one of the scanners and pressed the custom button, a window pop-up opened for me to choose details such as language, color, dimensions, the specific file to which I wanted to send the image and the storage format.

You can edit the cards as you store them and make any fixes you might have from botched scans. The images are saved in the folder you chose when you configured your scanning options. You can opt to arrange them just alphabetically, too.

The scanners come with software that can help make the scanning and organizing process more efficient, but could also be a bit confusing for some users because of all the choices.

To test the new OptiCard, which costs $150, I processed 20 random business cards with white backgrounds. I found that scanning was swift; 13 white-background cards came out perfectly or with such minor glitches that they didn’t require any editing. An additional four needed some editing but fixing them didn’t take more than a few minutes. Three cards needed major retyping, replacing missing numbers and redoing a name that got scrambled into a phone number.

I also tried scanning two dark-background cards but to no avail. One didn’t come out at all and the other had black splotches.

I found the $200 IRISCard Pro 4 slightly more accurate in scanning textual information from the same 20 cards. Only two needed minor editing — replacing a hyphen with a comma, for example — and just one card required major retyping, replacing skipped information. The scanner, however, was no better at the dark cards.

I also scanned a couple photos in both devices, but the copies were too blurry to save.

Both scanners are smaller than many TV remote controls. The OptiCard is 1.5 inches high, 6.9 inches wide and 2.4 inches deep. The IRISCard Pro 4 is 1.3 by 6.2 inches and is two inches deep. I was able to take them to work in one of my jacket pockets. I could imagine bringing the device along for a days-long seminar to keep up with card-collecting. Both are compatible with Windows PCs and Macs.

While the interface between the scanners and the user’s contact data program could offer more features to make organizing easier, these tools are worth a try. At least you can get those cards off your desk before the pile topples.

Email me at sarmad.ali@wsj.com. Walt Mossberg is on vacation.