Google Seeks World Of Instant Translations
In Google’s vision of the future, people will be able to translate documents instantly into the world’s main languages, with machine logic, not expert linguists, leading the way.
Google’s approach, called statistical machine translation, differs from past efforts in that it forgoes language experts who program grammatical rules and dictionaries into computers.
Instead, they feed documents humans have already translated into two languages and then rely on computers to discern patterns for future translations.
While the quality is not perfect, it is an improvement on previous efforts at machine translation.
So far, Google is offering its own statistical machine translations of Arabic, Chinese and Russian to and from English.
Third-party software gives access on the site to German and other languages.
Google’s focus always seems to be “let’s make it really, really good” which is why things stay in Beta for so long.
After a long series of intense beating in the Google Labs, projects go out for public Beta testing.
As part of the general Google philosophy, once it’s really useful and it has impact, Google looks to find ways on how to make money out of it with advertising or offering stand alone versions for business.
Cisco Routers Get a 3G Boost
Cisco introduced a High-Speed WAN Interface Card this week that adds 3G capabilities to its integrated services routers to enable small enterprises to flip over to wireless backup when their wired network goes down.
With the WAN high-speed 3G wireless card, the Cisco integrated services routers will connect to the Internet via carrier EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) or HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks.
AT&T, Sprint, Telefonica Moviles Espana and Verizon Wireless have already tested the new HWIC card with their 3G networks.
Service providers will be able to leverage the 3G card to offer new managed services, including automatic WAN failover or alternate bandwidth in the event the primary WAN link becomes congested, the vendor says.
Service providers also can use the HWIC to deploy primary WAN access quickly to temporary sites or remote locations that don’t have a wired infrastructure.
Cisco is also offering cards that support GSM and CDMA. All the cards are priced at $850.00 USD.
Cingular Launches Mobile Banking
AT&T Inc. said this morning in a press release that it has taken a step toward the long-promised notion of phones replacing credit cards, checks and cash by signing agreements with Wachovia Corp. and several other banks.
The agreements will allow customers of its Cingular Wireless arm, which is being rebranded as AT&T, and participating banks to manage their accounts and pay bills electronically by using an application on their cell phones.
While the use of mobile phones for transactions is in its early stages here in the United States, such services are already available in parts of Europe and Asia.
In Japan, people commonly shop with their mobile phones by just waving their handset instead of swiping credit cards.
AT&T, having tested mobile banking last year, has said it will not charge extra for the service but expects it to attract more users to its wireless Internet service and potentially help it add new users and keep existing ones.
Along with Wachovia, U.S. banks such as BancorpSouth Inc. , Regions Financial Corp. and SunTrust Banks Inc. are offering mobile banking to AT&T customers.
The move is part of an effort by wireless companies around to world to boost their revenue and customer loyalty by convincing subscribers to use phones for everything from Web browsing and text messaging to playing music and video.
AT&T said customers can download software from privately held Firethorn Holdings LLC onto their phones. AT&T plans to include the software in new handsets in the second half of this year and is planning a multi million-dollar ad campaign.
Firethorn is also acting as an intermediary between AT&T and the banks.
WP-Cache Version 2.1.1
For WordPress users that have WP-Cache installed, Ricardo Galli recently released WP-Cache Version 2.1.1.
It contains a security fix from Alex Concha to avoid CSRF attacks directed to admin pages which can inject wrong values into the configuration form, which can allow XSS attacks if those fake values are saved into the configuration file.
To update just uncompress the zip file from plugins’ directory (and overwrite older files).
As a word of warning, this version uses control functions only available in Wordpress >= 2.0. It won’t work with previous WP versions.
This is a great WordPress plugin to have installed. It’s saved the day for a lot of bloggers who get slammed with spikes in traffic.
If you’re using WordPress and want to help your server loads and prevent your site from going down if your site receives the Digg effect or gets mentioned on Slashdot, this is a must have plugin.
As a side note, apparently Ricardo is really busy with other things and is looking for someone to take care of WP-Cache. If you’d like to help keep this great plugin moving forward, I’d suggest contacting him today.
Stuffed Baked Pork Chops
For all you meat lovers out there (like me), here is a little recipe I love to whip up… stuffed baked pork chops.
I actually made this for dinner last night… yum! However, I didn’t snap any pictures, so you’ll have to use your imagination.
Ok, here is what you you’ll need for the recipe. Feel free to make substitutions as needed:
Needed Ingredients:
- 4 to 6 lean pork chops
- 4 to 6 cups stuffing mix (Stove Top)
- 2 cans Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup
- 1 cup milk or water (milk makes it richer)
- Aluminum Foil
- 13 x 9 inch baking dish
Preheat over to 350 degrees.
Prepare stuffing mix according to directions on package. With Stove Top, this takes about 5 minutes max and tastes really good.
Take about 1 cup of prepared stuffing and put on top of each pork chop.
As an alternative you can cut a slit down the side or middle of the pork chops to make a small pocket so you can “stuff” the stuffing into the pork chop. This is how I like to do it.
Place the pork chops in a 13 x 9 inch baking dish.
Mix together cream of mushroom soup and milk. Pour carefully over pork chops and stuffing.
Cover the pan with aluminum foil. This helps brown and cook the pork chops.
Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes.
Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes.
Be careful when removing the foil as I nice heat cloud will come out and burn your face or hands if you’re not careful.
Place pork chops on plate and serve. Enjoy!
Worlds First Wheelchair Back Flip!
I’ve always been into extreme sports and today I went on the search for some different but extreme sports videos on Google Video.
I started my search by typing in random phrases like extreme jumps, hot fire and super flying.
I did find a few interesting videos but the video that takes the cake is the one below which I found by searching for extreme wheelchair. Enjoy:
If you don’t want to watch the entire 3 minute 41 second video of the other wheelchair exteme acts, the actual wheelchair back flip is located at approximately 2:25 into the 3:41 video.