With a community as vast as the Internet, it is common to encounter someone who does not speak your language. Thankfully, in the modern world you can still communicate with them, by having the assistance of an online translation tool. Also, they can come in handy for linguists to help make sure they make sense.

There are many online translators, the biggest being Babel Fish and Google Language Tools. Out of these two, I find Babel Fish the best.

There are other translators. Some are specialised, and some offer more languages than the two I’ve just mentioned.

I have decided to compile a list of translation tools:

Non-Specialised:

• Babel Fish is a common translation site powered by Systran. An identical application (different design) is available on both Yahoo! and Altavista. It has quite a lot of languages, allows web page translation and also has a handy World Keyboard which allows input of Cyrillic and accented letters. Naturally, no online translator is perfect – but this one does quite well.
• Google Language Tools is another common translator. It has a web page translator, like Babelfish, but doesn’t boast languages such as Russian nor does it have a World Keyboard. However, it handily integrates into Google search results!
• WorldLingo’s Translator shares the same languages as Google’s but it has a text, website, and email translator. The downside is it’s plastered with adverts.
• InterTran is a translator which provides many more languages that Babel Fish. Languages include Latin, Welsh, Turkish, Filipino, Icelandic, and even Serbian! Great you think? Nope. It can only handle a few requests every minute, which means often translations bring up an error. This can naturally be fixed by buying expensive software
• im Translator offers a few languages, but not as many as any other tool I’ve listed. The useful feature it gives you a back translation, so you can see if the translation is satisfactory.
• AjaxTrans, as you may have guessed, is an AJAX translator. it only translates into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese.

Specialised services:

• dict.cc is a German dictionary. Okay, not a translator. A dictionary. Still, it is by far the best resource for the German language.
• The Universal Translator Assistant Project translates from and into Klingon, Romulan and Vulcan. The Universal Translator itself can’t convert quite a lot of words, but if you use the provided Galatic Dictionary you can translate those missing words.

Personally, I find InterTran very useful, though not very reliable.

Qapla’

Tags: translation, translator, AJAX, online translation, star trek, klingon language

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to develop a WordPress theme.

I’ve learned all about The Loop, which is the key part of any theme, and I created a simple test theme.

Basically, I’ve decided to start work on my first theme which is called Sketch. The theme will be sketched by me and I will then scan in the images. I think the theme will start as a single column theme, but may evolve into a two column theme.

I’m planning to release a proof of concept in the next few weeks, but as this is my first proper theme it may take me some time!

Can I have your thoughts?

Tags: WordPress, WordPress themes, design, web design, web development

XIN is a service like YouOS, eyeOS or WadgetOS. It is, put simply, an AJAX-based web operating system.

Personally, I have never before used WadgetOS, YouOS or eyeOS – but when I saw a service with such a long title on del.icio.us, I couldn’t resist!

Remote-based computers are nothing new, Telnet and such are ancient, but AJAX-operating systems are fairly new.

In my opinion, AJAX operating systems will never become dominant as they require a newish browser which will probably only run on Linux/Windows/mac. Systems like Telnet can run on a console! Though, I see that someone on the go may find an AJAX desktop good as it’d run on most public computers. However, I’d much rather carry a PDA or notebook. If I see a bootable AJAX-OS I’d be amazed (it would be possible to have an operating system based around Linux simply comprised off a browser and network drivers.).

Moving away from AJAX operating systems in general to this specific one, I find it nowhere near as fast, efficient or feature-full as eyeOS or YouOS. However, in most ways it better than WadgetOS (not as developable, but it has a GUI!).

XIN has a really nice GUI, which reminds me of some Vista skins, for some reason. But, in my view it doesn’t work as well as other AJAX OSes. The prime reasons for this is that it is very buggy and lacks the ability to add or create other applications.

One bug, for example, is when you save settings, it doesn’t reflect. Another bug is that the fullscreen mode simply doesn’t work. The OS still has some good software; such as a word processor, email client, RSS reader, calculator, chess game, and a calender. I dislike the browser, as it is Bitty and many pages are rendered like they are on a phone. Apparently this can be changed, and Bitty has more features, such as RSS parsing.

The interface is really promising, and if more features are given to developers and the above bugs are fixed it promises to be promising.

Technical details are here.

Update: The above page has details on developing apps. However, there is no app directory with an installer.

Tags: AJAX, web 2.0, web-20, web2.0, web20, AJAX, webos, web os, os, operating systems, operating system

Some of you may have read my post about Background Advertising, and some of you may have clicked the link where I said someone had a similar idea in the past. I’m blogging about a site where people can share ideas and fictional inventions. This site is called halfbakery (for some reason ).

The site is clearly intended for humour, but seems to try to be intelligent about it. For example, in order to stop people running riot, you can’t sign up; you need to email the site’s owner. This, in my opinion, isn’t very Web 2.0 – yet in many ways the site is.

The site is based around user interaction. When a user posts an idea; other users comment on it, vote it up or down and, also, they have the ability to add relevant links. This sometimes may even lead to a user discovering their idea already exists!

A lot of the ideas are geeky. An example of this is a High-volume secure offsite backup via the sewage network, which basically involves flushing a hard-drive down the loo (attached with an RFID) which is seperated at the sewage works . The wonderful thing, though, is that when you glance over such a headline, you actually take is serious for a few seconds! Other ideas such as a Telephone Directory of Wrong Numbers are not quite as stupid (sarcasm).

All of these posts are written by users with the prime aim of amusing other users. This seems like a fantastic community model; and it is even better how it actually works. As you can imagine, due to the fact they don’t have open registrations, the community is (and always will be) small.

Tags: web 2.0, web2.0, web20, web-20, humour, humor

When I was browsing the Wikipedia today I came across two sites: WikiWax and Wikipedia Search with LuMriX.

Both of these sites are AJAX-powered Wikipedia search engines; but which one’s better? Well, I’m going to review both on various subjects below.

Design

WikiWax’s design is very simplistic. It is a simple 1-column layout, which probably at the most uses 3 colours! Though the site uses obvious tables, which is very anti-Web 2.0 considering it uses AJAX!

Wikipedia Search with LuMriX’s design is much more complex than WikiWax’s. This site employs a 3-column layout, which uses numerous colours, nothing too bright though. Overall, though the layout is not as simple as WikiWax’s it’s much more desirable. One complaint though, is the popular queries box in the top right, the colours do not look like the rest of the page. This makes it look cheap.

Effectiveness

Sadly, none of these sites use a Google Suggest style search which displays popular results first. All these sites display results in alphabetical order. This, at times, makes the point lost.

None of these sites search the inside of articles, just article names. On Wikipedia Search with LuMriX if you type in Web 2.0 you get 3 results compared to the one you get with WikiWax. My bet is that WikiWax uses an out of date database dump, while Wikipedia Search with LuMriX uses a more recent one (or a live feed).

Multi-Lingual Features

Wikipedia Search with LuMriX supports 17 different languages Wikipedias. WikiWax only supports the English Wikipedia.

One thing of note is that Wikipedia Search with LuMriX a Swiss company. The site’s integration page, for example, is written in German.

Engines

Both sites use engines which are available commercially. LuMriX seems complex, on their homepage it mentions a lot about XML – while LookAhead, the engine which powers WikiWax, seems a lot more simple.

Scores

WikiWax only scored 35%, compared to the 70% with Wikipedia Search with LuMriX. Though I credit WikiWax on their easy to remember URL (www.wikiwax.com – a lot easier than wiki.lumrix.net/en/!).

Tags: wikipedia, wiki, wikiwax, lumrix, web 2.0, web2, web2.0, AJAX, wikipedia search with lumrix