Short Takes: March 1, 2010



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March 1, 2010 —  (Page 1 of 2)
Real-time comprensión
Imagine speaking Spanish to someone on your mobile phone, with the other side hearing in real time a translation to their language. Google has already imagined this with their latest endeavor: real-time spoken-language translation. The software being developed would translate what you are saying into the language of the speaker on the other end of the line and vice versa, reported the Times UK.

The new service should be up and running in the next few years, Franz Och, head of Google’s translation services, said in the article. "Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch," he said. "But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you."

What Och meant was the software would actually be able to learn your accent, dialect and tone, and become more accurate over time, essentially learning from its mistakes.    — Katie Serignese

Can Google Buzz Facebook's towers?
Google is once again trying to take on Facebook in the social-networking sphere with Google Buzz. Buzz is designed to allow Gmail users to track each other via status updates, and to share websites, audio and video.

All nice features, but they don't bring anything new to the table, nor do they provide anything inherently valuable. But what just might make Buzz competitive is its ability to link users' search results, aggregating data and making it easier to index and organize that information.

Facebook's ability to ease online social interactions makes it popular, but its database of user content and information makes it valuable to business interests. If Google can successfully gather the spending habits, interests and tastes of its users, and then organize it in a way useful to retailers and marketers, then Facebook will finally have a worthy competitor. But will it be worth it for us?    — Adam LoBelia

Missing Apple at Macworld
I have a confession to make: when I was a teenager, I was a Mac fanboy. I put passwords on PCs in CompUSA, tried to sell people Macs whenever I would wander into a computer store, and even shaved an Apple into the back of my head.



Related Search Term(s): Apple, Facebook, Google, open source

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