Technology

Google Translate tip for Google Chrome

Here is something that I thought of today, played with, and found quite useful – integration of Google Translate with Google Chrome via the search engine configuration. Of course, I know that there are addons for Google Chrome to integrate Google Translate. Of course, I know that Google Chrome comes with certain integration out of the box. But what I need is something else. Once in a while, when I write an email or a blog post or something like that I’d forget a word in English that I know in Russian, or the other way around. I usually open a new tab, go to Google Translate, and type the word in faster than I think of a better way to solve the problem. It’s a completely automated process for me. My fingers know how to do it. Plus it’s all so fast because I do it from the keyboard with shortcuts, so even if I’d have some addon installed with a button in the toolbar, I’d need to reach for the mouse, which would slow me down.

So, here is what I did. I went to Options->Basics->Default Search->Manage. Of course, I didn’t want to change my default search engine from Google to anything. Instead I wanted to add a new search engine. See the above screenshot. I named the search engine “Google Translate (English->Russian)” to avoid ambiguity when I add more search engines for translations between other languages. I assigned the keyword “en,ru”, which is what I’ll have to type in the address bar for this search engine to kick in. And I configured the search URL. Nothing fancy.

Now, whenever I type “en,ru” in the browser address bar, Google Chrome switches from generic completion to a search engine, where I just have to type the word that I want translated and hit Enter. Again, see the screenshot above for how the address bar looks.

In exactly the same way I can add more search engines to translate between different languages. It’s even possible to use “auto” as the source language for Google Translate to figure out in which language the original word or phrase is. And, of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to Google Translate search engines only. I have search engines defined for PHP functions lookup, Wikipedia and IMDb searches, and more. The trick is to find the search URL by performing the actual search on the site that you want to add, and then replace the search query with “%s”. That’s all. Enjoy!

Free Software Conference 2010 in Limassol, Cyprus

Here is an announcement from my friends at UbuntuCy.org forum, who are organizing yet another event to promote Free and Open Source Software.

The Ubuntu Linux Cyprus Local Community in cooperation with the Information Systems and Technology Service of Cyprus University of Technology and the New Technologies Club of CUT, invite you to the Free Software Conference which will be held at the Andreas Themistokleous Building (Old Cadastre) of CUT on the 6th of October. The agenda follows:

Presentations (Pefkios Georgiades Amphitheater) :
6:00 – 6:30 pm: Introduction to Free Software (in Greek)
6:30 – 7:00 pm: Linux Clusters (in Greek)
7:00 – 7:30 pm: Free software: past, present, and the future (in English)
7:30 – 7:45 pm: Projection of the Creative Commons epic short film “Sintel”

Workshops (KXE1 Computer Lab):
8:00 – 8:30 pm: Presentation of the Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop
8:30 – 9:00 pm: Academic Applications for Math, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering.

An installation workshop will be running in parallel with the above, where can practice on how to install Ubuntu and its applications.

There will be free Ubuntu CDs with Free Software for everyone! You can also bring you laptop to test them.

Just so that you don’t get confused – this is tomorrow, October 6th, 2010. It’s going to be in Limassol, on campus of Cyprus University of Technology. And in case you’ll be running late, make sure you get there before 7 o’clock. Yes, I’m going to deliver a speech in English on the subject of past, present, and future of the Free and Open Source Software. Maybe we can talk more and catch a beer afterwards. Don’t miss it! Here is a leaflet for you if you need something printed.

Google TV is coming along

Google TV website is launched. As is the official Google TV blog. Not too much to see there yet, but it’s good to know things are moving along.

I am excited! An open source television platform based on Android, with its own application store – these are just great news. Not to mention partnerships with HBO, Universal, Amazon, and Netflix. It sounds like there is going to be a lot of content and plenty of new interesting ideas on what to do with it and how to process it.

The only thing that worries me is access to this content for us, outsiders. As in people who live outside of the United States of America. Until now we’ve been quite limited with the exception of Apple TV. I wonder what’s going to happen with Google. But given company’s global strategy, I have my hopes.

Via Download Squad.

What is Yahoo?

I came across a somewhat old question by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington: What is Yahoo?

For me personally, Yahoo is, first of all, the company that bought most of the web services that I was using – Flickr, Delicious, and Upcoming back in the days when I was using it. Secondly, Yahoo for me is a company no here, no there. I appreciate how old they are and all. But it never seemed to be serving any specific purpose. It used to be a bookmark website, which I used for a bit, until it got overly complicated with categories, and SPAM. Then it became a web mail and a search engine. Then it an instant messaging provider. Then a purchaser of some cool web applications. Then a web developer resource. And then I don’t know anymore.

It’s been a long while since I went to Yahoo.com and something tells me that I won’t be visiting it any time soon. What about you?

Shorter URL? Longer URL? Funny URL?

This Slashdot discussion got me started. The discussion is about URL shortening services and their impact on the Web. Needless to say, most people who care about the Web, hate all kinds of third-party URL manipulations with a passion. The reasons are numerous, and here are two that annoy me the most:

Obscurity. You have no idea where you are going anymore. It can be the newest scam website, an image, a huge video, or anything else for that matter. When you see full URL, even if you don’t always can understand the full path, at least the domain name is a hint.
Latency. Most (all?) URL shortening services work via a redirect. So whenever you click on the URL to visit a page, instead of going to the page directly you are going to the web service which expands that URL first, and then redirects you further. This takes time and gives you nothing in return.

A lot of Slashdot people feel similar. Yet it still makes for an interesting discussion. Here are the bits that I picked up:

HugeUrl.com – web service that does the opposite of what URL shortening services do. It takes any URL and makes it huge. Just for the fun of it.
ShadyUrl.com – web service that obscures given URLs, making them look very suspicious. Also, for the fun of it.
There are a number of browser plugins that automate the expansion of short URLs, either on-demand or as you go. Here is one for Firefox. Here is one for Google Chrome.
Last year’s Coding Horror blog post discussing the problems of URL shortening services.

Also after a brief discussion and fooling around with my colleagues, I learned about Abcd-Whatever, which is a web service that lives on an extremely long domain name and offers free email addresses. Such email addresses are hard for people to type correctly, impossible for some SPAM bots to grab, and excellent for testing web forms.