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Technology

Technology surrounds us

Technology

Google translate on the fly

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So most us have used Google Translate once or more and some of us have even incorporated this use into something we almost need in our everyday work. For the last group of the two new features with the service always makes quite a great impact on how work is performed.

Google Translate just got real time! For people which received an invite for Google Wave might have seen this feature already together with the translation-bot used there. The same functionality has now been moved into the regular translation-service as well.

The change from submitting a whole sentence to the service to what it is today when it use some nifty push-technology to translate more or less in segments instead (I guess it push queries on a timely basis AJAX-style) is perhaps not the greatest. But the change here is really more of an architectural change in how services evolve today. We move more and more from static services into dynamic real time solutions where as much as possible is to be executed when the user want it.

Now we all just wait to get this functionality to be incorporated into our social networks so that we finally got that Babelfish of which Douglas Adams once wrote about.

Google translate on the fly

Google translate on the fly

Technology

3d movies at home

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For quite a while now the cinemas have been pushing 3D-movies again. I remember when I was a child and 3D-glasses were shipped with comic books and I sat and watched images with these really bad glasses made of paper and plastic-film and I was amazed on how cool it was. So when I read about 3D-movie on the rise I was really on my feet and eagerly awaited to see my first movie in full 3D. The though actually did slip my mind; How can this fail?

So last weekend I were down at one of the local video-rentals and rented a movie to be seen at home – in 3D! The movie was “The journey to the center of the earth“, the re-make which included glasses for all who were to see it. I remembered these bad glasses in paper from my childhood and though that I would get something better. But when I opened up the case they met my eyes once again. Those lousy paper-goggles was there and mocked my enthusiasm as if they knew I had high hopes.

After my first disappointment I started to watch the movie. And *BAM* there was the second disappointment right in my face. The actual color of the glasses in the box was not balanced at all and the green one (for my left eye) was really do strong which made everything in the entire movie to come out in a green soft light. Everything. Green.

About two hours later the movie ended and my eyes was totally destroyed by the colors and I didn’t manage to see a complete color scale until the day after. So, there you have it – my first experience with movies in 3D. If if had not been for the really bad glasses I think it would be really neat. But as of now, they did ruin it all by shipping the movie with the worst kind of budget solution in a long time.

I think I have to see a movie at the cinema before I can really bury this entire idea because the effect of things flying against you is really interesting and if there exist glasses which makes the colors come out flawless I really do think it will be great. So to sum up I must say that movies in 3D will be awesome, if they do fix the really bad glasses once and for all.

Technology

Face-taging now also in Flickr

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I started using Flickr as the service where I show off my photos not too long ago. I liked the simplicity of it and the ability to integrate the photos into my site without any problems. Feature-wise Flickr is minimalistic at first but the more one work with the service, the more one find that can be done to organize and show off your work in a good way. And now it got just a bit better.

Face taged in photo and also a small list of persons above the tags in the lower right part.

Face taged in photo and also a small list of persons above the tags in the lower right part.

Face-taging in Flickr is just as simple as adding a regular tag, and to be completly honest they are almost the same thing. What do differ a face-tag from a regular tag is that faces are beeing organized and linked to profiles which makes it possible to also list pictures of specific people. You will also be notified when someone tag your face in a photo and you have the ability to remove all tags for yourself in all photos at Flickr if you identify that they are beeing missused. It is also configurable wheter it should be possible to tag your face in photos and who should be able to do so.

Add face-tag

Adding a face-tag is just as adding a regular tag.

All in all this was a nice new feature which is not very new or inovative but still good to have in a otherwise very good photo-sharing site. Keep the good things coming Flickr!

Resources:
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/21/people-in-photos/
http://www.flickr.com/help/people/

Technology

Would you give a stranger your birthdate?

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Last week there was something called the ‘National Identity Fraud Prevention Week’ in the UK. One of the biggest goals of this themed week was to make people aware on how easy it is to get your identity stolen if you spread your personal information around you to strangers. One of the writers over at Techradar went out on the street asking people for their information to see if people would give them right away or if they actually would hesitate due to the fact he was a complete stranger.

As you may already guessed people gave their information away without a thought on why. And the most disturbing part of it all was that two minutes later (after they just gave their information) whether they would give their information up to a complete stranger most of them said no. And I think that the real problem resides just there. People know that the problem exist but they refuse to see that it might happen to them.

To steal an identity today might cause even more pain and distress then to do an actual burglary. If someone was to hijack your electronic profile they can both get you into very hard financial problems as well as destroying your social life. By spreading propaganda or other abusive information they can hurt the image of you for a very long time ahead. This is a hard fact which we can not discard. But instead of just being scared and avoid or abandon you electronic identity you can always instead do your best to keep it safe.

Just some week ago there was 10’000 user passwords that leaked from Hotmail and it was first mentioned as a security breach but later revised. As it was explained later was that the passwords had been sent by the users themselves answering a phony mail asking them to send in their passwords. Once again, most people know that they should never ever send a password to anyone asking for it – but nothing will happen to me.

Out of the 10’000 passwords leaked from Hotmail-users the most used password was ‘123456’. Second most used was ‘123456789’. If you have anyone of these as a password to anything at all, you better go and change it right now. Choose passwords which you can remember and try to make them more complex then just numbers or just letters. Use the opportunity to be creative!

And while your at it, never use the same password for everything you can find. It is even better to keep different passwords and storing them in a log at home or somewhere you feel is ‘safe’ if you were to forget any passwords.

Resources:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/caught-on-video-brits-handing-their-identities-to-complete-strangers-643548?src=rss&attr=all
http://www.acunetix.com/blog/websecuritynews/statistics-from-10000-leaked-hotmail-passwords/
http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk/

Technology

Story update: HTC Hero vs. iPhone

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Some week ago I wrote an article on the battle between the Apple iPhone and the HTC Hero. Daily Mail has run their own battle now and gave the HTC a really good review. There were a number of different prices including ‘Gadget of the year’ and ‘Phone of the year’. The iPhone keep the royal crown for yet another year but the Hero did get a medal for the ‘Best Gadget 2009’ which is quite impressing!

The iPhone didn’t go away without a price though. ‘Phone of the year’ was awarded the now highly awarded smartphone together with the readers choice for ‘Gadget of the year’.

From my perspective I have  to say that I still like both phones but had some problems just the last days with the push-sync in my Hero. I did fiddle a bit with the network-settings last week to cut down on roaming though so it might be that I am all to blame myself.

Reference
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1217723/HTC-Hero-smartphone-judged-best-gadget-2009.html

Technology

Windows Phone

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There is an saying that being number two to launch a great product is the best place to be beacause you can take everything the first one had and make it even better. The problem is though that if you become number three, your not even in the game anymore. So by that queue; say hello to Windows Phone. The new mother of all smartphone-operatingsystems together with Apple Phone OS and Android.

So what can Windows Phone bring to the table which will make it return to the spotlight as an alternative that consumers actually can think about choosing? First of all there will be a new UI for the system, more built for touch-screens this time. The new UI was based on the ‘Zune experience’ which I guess is a market decission more of an actual usabillity-decission. Secondly backup-functionallity where one can store information from the phone into the cloud (Vole’s cloud has been mentioned but I have no clear reference for this information). And third the system should get integrated support against the ‘Microsoft Appstore’ or what they this far has called just ‘Market Place’.

Microsoft have been an actor at the market for mobile phones for quite some years now and to be completly honest, their system have been by the worst choice for a consumer ever since the smartphones made their debute. An user interface made for a keyboard but handled by a touchscreen has lingered in their products which has made a smartphone running Windows Mobile utterly annoying. So how to couter a really bad product so that customers return? Flop the Vista card!

So, what do Vista has to do with Windows Phone? The truth is that they use the same marketing action here as they did to make people forget how bad Vista was. They change the name-domain and try to launch it all as a brand new product. Windows Vista evolved into Windows 7 and Windows Mobile 6 evolve into Windows Phone.

What makes me confused regarding the launch videos I’ve seen is that even though they say over and over again that this is designed for touchscreens – still there is small buttons here and there to which one must go into sharpshooting-mode to actually hit. This must be fixed Microsoft, please don’t build yet another skin to just strap over Windows Mobile. Rebuild the foundation and make the inovative parts be the actual core!

Yes this might lead to yet another Windows Vista (Mobile) which everyone will hate but at the same time you have the chance of correcting errors your customers have had to live with for years and years. If you really would like to skip the Vista-failure on the Mobile edition I have a small secret for you. If you create a product and let actual testers use the phone and then correct misstakes these testers might find – you will get a good product. Many tech-product-launches today seem to never read this part of product development and release beta-versions just to get the product on the market.

Is it not time to start introducing some prime products soon? I don’t want yet another beta.

References:
 http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1495860/windows-phone-mobile-os-demonstrated


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