Web Translation Tools

Have you ever been in a situation in which your search engine returns results in language that you do not understand? If your answer is 'Yes', web translation tools might be a good solution. Translation tool is not a new service in search engine industry. It has been existed for quite a few years. More and more search engines have integrated web translation tool in their services. Goggle - Translate, Yahoo - Babel Fish, and Windows Live -Translator are best examples. From the comparisons I have made between these three translation tools, Google provides the most complete translation services. Thus, through out the post I will use Google Translate as the example to discuss.

Google provides a link (as indicated by the red arrow in the image shown above) to translate the search results when the search results are not in the default language. When users click the translate link, the page is redirected to a translated page. The translated page looks pretty much the same with the original page; except, it is now in the language that you can understand. Google translation tool is not only integrated on the search result. More complete translation services can be access from Google Translate homepage. In the homepage, Google - Translate provides four services, which are Text and Web, Translated Search, Dictionary, and Tools.

• Text and Web - Translate foreign language text typed in the text box, or a web page by providing the link to the page.
• Translated Search - Using your own language you can search web pages which is written in foreign languages.
  
• Dictionary - Translate word.
  
• Tools - Provide JavaScript code that you can add to your own web page(s), so that your visitors can translate you web page(s) to foreign languages.

In addition those mention above, Google has also added translations tools in Google Talk and Gmail. The following pictures shows a chat bot which you can add to your contact list. It works just like a chat partner that replies what you have typed in foreign language.

Google translate currently support 15 language pairs which includes these languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

In term of quality, all of the web translation tools mentioned above are still unable to deliver accurate translations. It often translates words out of context and does not apply any grammatical rules. However, it is still sufficient to help users to understand the general content of a foreign language text. According to Google, "Automatic translation is very difficult, as the meaning of words depends on the context in which they're used. While Google is working on the problem, it may need some time before anyone can offer a quick and seamless translation experience. However, in the interim, Google hopes users find the service useful for most purposes."

In my view, when translation tools has reached certain quality, in which they can delivers a good quality of translation, Internet will be a universal medium of communication. You can communicate and distribute information to anyone on the Internet. Language will no longer be a barrier for information sharing. For business, this can be an enormous target market.

References:

• http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Translate
• http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html
• http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-translate-switches-to-googles.html
• http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/search-without-boundaries.html
• http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-12-19-n41.html
• http://www.androidtech.com/html/google_translate.php
  

Online Casino - Casino in Your Own Home

The first online gambling website was introduced in mid 1990s. Online gambling had gained more popularity year by year right after it was introduced. The industry made nearly $12 billion in 2005, a high jump from $1 billion in 1997. Online Casinos managed to attract gamblers as they facilitate easy way for everyone to bet or gamble. As according to BBC news, one of the reason why many gambler likes Online Gambling is "You don't have to physically walk anywhere. You don't have to take your purse out of your handbag or your wallet out of your back pocket"

Online casinos usually offer dozens of different games such as poker, black jack, roulette, sports games bets and etc. All the games are operated by computer programs which usually run within a Web browser. Players can also download the casino's software and play the games in desktop-based application. To assure gamblers that the casinos are not cheating in the games, games are usually developed by third party company. Casinos purchase the game from the developer and they rely their credibilities on the company that develop the game.

To start gambling, casinos require gamblers to register and deposit some money. The deposit payment can be done through credit cards, debit cards, electronic money services, check or wired transfer. However, nowadays most banks prohibit the use of their cards for the purpose of Internet gambling, and attempts to use credit cards on Internet gambling are usually rejected.

According to a study conducted in 2001, online gambling promotes addiction. For some players, the addiction starts with playing with fake money and win. When they started playing with real money, they tend to lose because they were nervous. When more and more players get addicted and lost in the games, it started to raised a lot of social issues (e.g. increased in number of unemployed and crime rate). Moreover, due to its accessibility, it increases the participations of underage players. It can be concluded that online gambling offers no potential economic benefits.

Realising the impact of online gambling, many country have started to banned online gambling by setting new rules and regulations. However, these rules and regulations are not quite successful because of the architecture of the Internet that makes prohibition of online gambling easy to evade and impossible to enforce. For example: online gambling websites may still freely operating by hosting their website in countries in which online gambling is legal.

Based on my personal view, solution to this problem may be by forcing the online gambling websites to register under a dedicated domain name. For example: ".bet or .casino" Thus countries that banned online gambling can filter and dismiss connection requests to websites which have those dedicated domain names.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gambling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_casino
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3929455.stm
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/jaialai/excerpts/node19.html
http://www.nhttp://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=53477bc4.com/news/9877949/detail.html
http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=53477
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/conditions/03/17/internet.gambling/index.html
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=12210
http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=9979
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/online-gambling3.htm

Sun Microsystems Acquired MySQL

Almost a month ago, Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced that they had acquired MySQL AB (the company behind the world's most popular open source database) for the vaue of approximately $ 1 Billion. This acquisition leaded Sun to enter the $15 Billion worth database market and at the same time it strengthen Sun's position as the leader in open source software.

What does this acquisition means to Sun?

As reported by ZDNET, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz called this acquisition as the “most important acquisition in history of company” and added that the database firm will have “a central role” as Sun rolls out its open source strategy. Schwartz also added that the acquisition puts Sun at “the centre of the global Web economy” since a lot of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL. Examples include industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent, Facebook, Google, Nokia, YouTube, Baidu, China Mobile and Booking.com.

What does this acquisition means to MySQL?

According to Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, the acquisition carries a big opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice. As quoted from his interview, he said that "Sun's culture and business model complements MySQL's own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation -- software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy."

How do users react towards this acquisition?

This acquisition resulted in users' enthusiasm. Even before the acquisition is completed, the number of MySQL's daily downloads have also increased from approximately 50,000 to more than 60,000 per day. At the same time, Sun also received an overwhelming response and embrace from customers and community members, who are excited to see MySQL's tremendous innovation with the support of Sun.

Joshua Rand, CEO of Sapotek, Inc. (a Web 2.0 company that uses MySQL), said "As a developer of open source web applications and services that relies heavily on both Sun and MySQL, we believe that the combined companies will better address our IT needs today, tomorrow and beyond. We're confident that the MySQL acquisition will reinforce Sun's commitment to providing hardware, software and services that will save us money in having one integrated, end-to-end platform. The combination of MySQL and Sun provides the community with unlimited possibilities, ensuring the highest level of quality assurance and advanced feature contributions to the world's leading open source initiatives."

Personally, I think this acquisition might bring great benefits to us, as users. With the support of Sun, I believe MySQL will be able to provide better products and services. Although at first, I doubted it (because Sun might limit language support of MySQL to Java only), this doubt is cleared after I read the Marten Mickos (the CEO of MySQL) interview, in which he said that there will not be any language restrictions. In facts, he said "Our mandate within Sun is to grow our database business - on all operating systems and with all development and scripting languages and on all hardware platforms".


References:

• http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-02/sunflash.20080226.1.xml
• http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-01/sunflash.20080116.1.xml
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7611
  
• http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/marten-mickos-sun-qa.html
  

Internet of Things

Have you ever imagined that one day you can locate your room key by searching through Google? If you have not? Be prepared, a technological revolution, so called, Internet of Things is coming. The idea behind Internet of Things is to connect objects and devices to a large database and network. The objects are not only referring to electronic devices and gadgets, but also daily objects such as key, toothbrush, shoes and etc. The illustration bellow shows what Internet of Things can do from the view of business.

source: http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0318/092chart.html

As defined by International Telecommunication Union (ITU), "The Internet of Things is a technological revolution that represents the future of computing and communications, and its development depends on dynamic technical innovation in a number of important fields, from wireless sensors to nanotechnology".

Internet of Things is possible by the support of technology that facilitate machine to machine communication. According to (ITU), there are three types of technologies needed to create internet of things:

• Identification Technology:Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is one of a good example in which identification can be done in fast an convenient manner.
  
• Embedded intelligence: This embed processing capabilities to objects. Hence, It is believe that it can enhance the power of network.
  
• Miniaturization and nanotechnology: devices are getting smaller and smaller, this is enabled small objects to interact and connect .

There are two potential problem than comes across my mind if this technology is successfully implemented. First, security problem. What is the security mechanism used by this technology to make sure than an identification cannot be duplicated and manipulated. The second problem is privacy problem. It is possible if someone put an identification object on my shoes and track me wherever I am. Is there any protection to individual's privacy rights?

Despite of the problems it may bring, Internet of things offers a lot of benefits. Imagine that this technology is implemented on all the cars on the road. Isn't this means that we don't have to drive any more? This technology enable machine to communicate with machine, car may be able to communicate with another car or traffic lights to ensure no accident happen. More over, cars may communicate with web services such as Google map, you just need to name your destination your car will bring you there.

I think this is more than just my imagination. These things are absolutely possible with the support of internet of things.

References

• http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Ecommerce/rfid/
• http://www.rfidconsultation.eu/docs/ficheiros/InternetofThings_summary.pdf
• http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2002/0318/155.html
• http://www.cio.com/article/14652
  

Microsoft Surface

Has anyone ever heard of Microsoft Surface? If you have not, this post might be an interesting post for you to read.

Microsoft surface was introduced by Microsoft in 2007 under new product category, called 'Surface Computing'. It is a combination of hardware and software that allows users to interactively interact with digital content. Interactions are achieved through touches, instead of using keyboard and mouse. Microsoft claimed that, with Microsoft Surface we can actually grab data with our hand and move information between objects with natural gestures and touches.

From the picture, we can see that Surface Computer looks just like an ordinary table that is usually placed on your living room. In fact, it is more than just an ordinary table. As reported in Wikipedia, it is a Windows PC placed inside a table, topped with a 30-inch reflective surface in a clear acrylic frame. It has a projector inside, that project images for the reflective surface to display. Five cameras are installed inside the machine to record reflections of infrared light from human fingertips and recognise objects (which have been applied with special tagged) placed on the surface. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving tagged objects. For example: a tagged camera is put on Surface, Surface automatically transfer all pictures from the camera to the screen. Users can move, rotate, resize and interact with pictures by touching and dragging the pictures.

This product is marketed with the price around $5,000 to $10,000 per unit. However, Microsoft expected the price to drop, so that it will be affordable for home consumers. At present time, Microsoft Surface is used in hotels, restaurants, bar, and retail stores. It allows users to choose meals, and place order at restaurants. It also allows users to pay, as it can recognise credit card that is dropped on it. In retail stores, users can compare and look for the product details by just placing the product on the top of the table.

In future, Microsoft Surface may bring a great influence on the way people do business and the way people live their life. Microsoft believes that: "As form factors continue to evolve, surface computing will be in any number of environments - schools, business, homes and any numbers of form factors - part of the counter-top, the wall or refrigerator." But ofcourse for this to happen, Microsoft has to make this system affordable for home customers.

References:

• http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
• http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
• http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/317737_msftdevice30.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY