Google Translate Android App Translates Real-Time Speech

By Gizmodo  

January 13, 2011  |  

8:38 am  |  

Categories: Cool Apps, Future Shock

A new feature built into Google Translate for Android, Conversation Mode is a little rough around the edges, but it’s basically your own personal Babel Fish. It does what Wordlens does but in real-time speech, translating English and Spanish.

It’s as easy as pressing a key when the language is being spoken—let’s say you’re trying to order some food in Spanish. It translates what you say into the phone on the fly, and then reads the Spanish version out loud, so the waiter can understand. They can then respond in Spanish, and the phone will convert it to English, speaking it out loud.

You can imagine how crucial this would be to travellers—and while it can only compute English and Spanish for now, I’m betting Google’s working on all manner of other languages. Check out a preview video of the app above, from a few months ago, or a user video below.

Android users with 2.1 or higher can download the new Google Translate now, which has a few other improvements built-in as well. [Google Blog]

Samsung's crazy CES 2011 keynote -- the highlight reel

By Nilay Patel  posted Jan 12th 2011 11:37AM

Feature

It's been nearly a week and we're still trying to figure out exactly what was going on during Samsung'swild CES 2011 keynote - even though we liveblogged it, talked about it on the showcast, and named itbest presser of CES, we're not sure you can fully understand the insanity of the dancers, the random moments, and a futureboy named Zoll unless you've seen it yourself. Samsung's put the whole thing up on YouTube in six segments (you can find the first below) but we cut together a little highlight reel you can watch above. Trust us -- it's worth it.

NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2011) — NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

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Being Poor Can Suppress Children's Genetic Potentials, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2011) — Growing up poor can suppress a child's genetic potential to excel cognitively even before the age of 2, according to research from psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin.

Read More

Google Goggles Solves Sudoku

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 11, @11:02AM
from the better-it-than-me dept.

google

news

mikejuk writes"Ever been frustrated when you can't solve a Sudoku? Well, now there's an app for that. It is just one more capability in the latest version of Google Goggles. All you have to do is point your phone's camera at a Sudoku puzzle, take a snapshot, and pattern recognition and a bit of game logic sorts out the answer. Have you ever had the feeling that AI is getting to be just a little too commonplace?"