Tag: General

Google Translate

I happened to use Google Translate recently and realized they have changed its face since my last visit. If you don’t know about this service visit the link. When you visit a website in a language you can’t read just visit this site and put the link in the form.

If you have Google Toolbar installed it can have a button or right click link to automatically open the translated page.

I don’t use it often, but each time I am reminded how limited I am knowing only one language well. I am grateful for my family’s effort to have tried to teach me French as a child and for my father’s teaching me to understand etimology listings in Webster’s Dictionary for each definition. We red necks don’t consider how much of our American ‘English’ is based on other languages.

This is the most common view here in Oregon and I like it. But it’s causing some friction with my sun loving wife and friends who are ready for the California style spring. So we wait and watch things turn green and grow long and hope sometime we’ll be dry enough to go mow the lawn.

Street View Gallery > Top
If you haven’t looked at Google Streetview yet you likely at least have heard of it. Google is now using web cameras to display 360 degree views of streets and has them displayed for a number of major cities already. Yes it is likely coming to your home too soon.

But what happens when you cruise around with a camera capable of viewing all around as you go? You find nude sunbathers, accidents, folks entering porn shops who may not really want a picture on the web. But here it is, 500 curiosities from Streetview…

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CellSwapper Solves A Very Annoying Problem

What an idea!

I *HATE* cell phone companies. The whole Reagan revolution meant the downfall of customer service and cell phones debut in the same period led the way in customer NO-service.

A major part of the NO-service was the inclusion of terrible contracts for long time periods with exorbitantly high cancellation fees. So along comes this site, CellSwapper, which tries to mate folks trying to leave a contract with others looking to get into one.

There are many reasons to change services, poor coverage, poor sound, etc. can mean you want to change but if you are stuck, this just may be the way to go.

Have a look. Here’s hoping you don’t find it necessary, but most likely… well, good luck.

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Vyew.com – FREE Anytime Collaboration and Live Conferencingâ„¢

From my PC Users Group to the church meetings I attend I am always looking for good “cheap” meeting software so that folks can attend online as well as in person.

The best I have found is GoToMeeting.com but it’s not cheap and for non-profit groups it’s over the top.

Newer on the scene is Vyew.com 2.0 which, at least while it’s still beta is free.

To make use of all of its features requires a simple registration the visitors to your meetings are not required to join the site.

Unlike the GoToMeeting.com service Vyew is less involved with computer sharing, although it is now able to do so in a limited way, but it is great for collaborating on documents, file sharing, presentation design and the like.

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Blue Oyster Spiral Fractal Zoom – Google Video

This is an interesting demo of two nice items.

First this is from Google’s new “Captioned” videos they have available. I am listing this one because it is a relatively short show, but you can also see full programs and movies more than an hour long now at Google and hitting the “CC” button now lets you have closed captioning with it.

This show is a dive into a Fractal. If you aren’t a mathematician it may not sound like anything interesting but if you read up on what fractals are and how they were “discovered” this show is like a jump into infinity. Well worth the experience.

From the author:

No matter how deep you go, there’s always more. This movie took quite a few days to calculate.In 1993, when i first made a poster of the
image i call “blue oyster spiral,” which is a zoom at about the 100
Billion X magnification level inside the Mandelbrot Fractal, it took 34
computers 3 days to render it. today, the same poster can be rendered
on one typical PC in just a few hours.