Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

If you’ve been monitoring news in another language like I’ve been doing this morning, you might have also noticed that the homepage of Google’s Translation service has undergone a bit of a makeover. And if you mess around with it a little you’ll find a few new features that haven’t even been announced by Google yet.

In addition to the thirteen languages that Google Translate already supports, it now offers translations for eleven new languages, which are Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Swedish. So now you can translate text and web pages in 25 languages, plus there’s a cool new feature that lets you translate something even if you don’t know the language of origin. It’s called Detect Language, and lets you translate text and web pages without asking you for the original language you are trying to translate from. It’s a godsend for people like me who don’t know their Simplified Chinese from the Traditional, and I’m sure a lot of other people are going to like this new feature as well.

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I just hate goodbyes. And I especially hate it when I have to say goodbye to something that has been dear to me even for just a while. But sadly, Google doesn’t seem to be planning on taking back its announcement regarding the shutdown of Picasa’s photo sharing service, Hello. On Hello’s home page, all you will be able to find now is this: “Hello will be shut down on May 15th.” Followed by a short and optimistic message from the Hello Team. In case you’re not familiar with Hello, you can find a copy of their old home page here, and a copy of their “how it works” page here. Well, there goes another startup, I guess.

Read [Hello] Via [Google Blogoscoped]

LG has officially announced its Secret—a new 5-megapixel camera phone that is able to capture video in DivX quality at 120 fps. Set for a European release sometime in 2008, the LG’s Secret, aka KF-750, actually belongs to LG’s Black Label series.

The Secret boasts of being the slimmest 5-megapixel camera phone at just 11.8mm (0.46-inches) thick. But don’t let its thickness persuade you into believing that the LG Secret will offer you features as thin as its body. On the contrary, the LG Secret wallops some heavies aside from its camera. Other features include a carbon fiber casing, tempered glass LCD and neon touch features. If those materials sound familiar, that’s because those are the materials commonly used in aircrafts and high-performance cars. 

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While we’re sure that Google’s Android platform will be loaded on a bunch of new devices some time in the near future, we still haven’t heard of any manufacturer or handset maker announce when they will release something officially. Except today. VP and General Manager of T-Mobile’s Broadband and New Business Division Joe Sims has just confirmed that T-Mobile USA will be offering at least one mobile device running Google’s soon-to-be released in full Android platform, and that there will be more than one Android powered device, probably for the sake of variety, of course. Joe also confessed that he was impressed after seeing what Android is capable of doing, and mentions that “(The move to an open platform) will be innovation across the board, not just one device.”

Does this mean that Android is going to eventually take over WinMo in powering T-Mobile’s devices? We’ll never know for sure; at least not for now. All I know is if they can try and release early, they should. By the time they come out with their Android-powered gizmo on the year’s end, Apple’s 3G iPhone (if it already exists by then) would have already killed the competition—as if they aren’t already doing it now.

Read [CNN Money] Via [IntoMobile]

Panasonic has launched the Lumix TZ50 digital camera in the US market, and as speculated when it was released in Japan last month, the camera will support direct photo uploads to Google’s Picasa web albums. Unfortunately, there is no support for direct upload to Yahoo’s Flickr site. But the the US release of the camera still sports the same features we mentioned in our coverage for its Japanese release. This include a 9.1-megapixel CCD, 28mm wide-angle lens, 10x optical zoom, HD video support, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g connectivity.

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As the ads for the drug Cymbalta say, “Depression hurts.” A new study out of the University of Bristol suggests that doing a web search for information about a certain permanent solution is not a good idea.  The search engines that were used were Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.  For each search engine, 12 searches using simple terms were performed, and the top 10 results of each search were taken for a total of 480 search results in the study.  Sadly, only 13% of the results were about suicide prevention, and the top 3 hits for each search engine were pro-suicide (the fourth was Wikipedia).  According to the researchers, it appears that safety controls by ISP’s aren’t as effective as they should be and that rather, search engine optimization is the way to go.

The 12 search terms were not given in the Reuters article, and obviously search terms make all the difference as to what results turn up.  However, since the researchers were trying to put themselves in the shoes of someone contemplating suicide, the last thing they would think about is how advanced the query is.  I could also see why they used only the four search engines and didn’t include some of the original search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite to get some more results, because the four search engines are what people most likely use.  But of the four search engines, MSN ranked highest for suicide prevention and support sites, so to me this is saying that going with an underdog yields more responsible results.  Of course though I think everyone would agree that if you rely on the Internet for information, it’s best to go directly to a trusted health website and bypass the search engines altogether, or if you don’t know of any dedicated health websites, to get help offline the old-fashioned way.

Read [Revolution Health]

Love your Nokia N810 tablet but just wish it would run something more… well, Google-like? Possibly the Android OS? Well, you’re in luck! The folks over at eLinux.org have a Wiki-page on using the Android OS on the Nokia N810. Reports say that it is fully working including the keyboard, Wi-Fi and GPS as well. It is a bit technical, so those who are already familiar with the project should be fine, but those without much knowledge may want to hit up a few forums for more help or possibly search for a step-by-step guide. For those who aren’t brave enough to install it, you still have some pretty Android pics to look at and a nice internet tablet to boot.

Read [eLinux.org] Via [Engadget]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo is in talks to bring Google ads in on a trial basis.  The trial will allow Google ads to be served on up to 3% of Yahoo’s search queries.  Interesting.

Both Yahoo and Google released statements saying they are not married and they are not sure this is love.  They are just going on a date and that is it.  Stop reading into this.  That is the conversation I am sure my daughter will have with me one day.  Funny, it works here too.

Yahoo is clearly signaling investors that they are up for pissing off Microsoft.  Microsofts response has been ours seems to be the only game in town for Yahoo, though investor Legg Mason (no relation) has shored up support for Yahoo should things get ugly.

More as it happens or doesn’t happen.

Read [Wall Street Journal]

Windows Mobile 6 touchscreen device owners have a new reason to get excited. Google has announced that Picasa Web Albums just got a major update that offers a specially-optimized mobile interface for WinMo touchscreen devices. Now you can view slideshows, community photos, and all of the other nice mobile features of Picasa, all on a mobile interface that’s designed to take advantage of the browser in Windows Mobile 6, according to Google. And what’s more, you can now view your photos offline, courtesy of course of the ubiquitous Google Gears for mobile, which allows your photo collection to be copied on your local device so you can view them any time, anywhere. Another nifty new feature is the ability to add a Picasa icon to your Program Files folder, which will grant you instant access to your favorite photos offline or online. Ready to take a tour of the new Picasa Web Albums? Simply log on to http://picasaweb.google.com to get started.

Read [Google Photos Blog]

With any product or service, there’s always going to be room for growth (and complaints).  Below are a few Gmail features I think would make my life, and possibly some others lives easier.

• Ability to Mark ONE Email in a Conversation as Unread
• Colored Stars
• Set Email Importance
• Ability to Add Items to a To-Do List

Read more…

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