Foreign travel this year? You need Google Translate

If you are planning on traveling outside the US this year then Google Translate is just the thing to slip into your pocket before you head for the airport.

Offering translations in over 50 languages there’s a good chance that it’s got your back wherever  you land.

Translation is performed by selecting the languages to translate between, entering the text and pressing the Go button.  The text in your target language will then appear below in large text and can even be expanded to full screen.  Touch the small speaker icon and it will speak the phrase with an accent that, while I’m sure funny to natives, is far better than I could muster.

If you’re using an iPhone or Android phone then speech entry is also possible, which might help you with the response you receive from the locals.

The one downside is that for this to work it needs an internet connection.  That’s fine if you can find a wi-fi hotspot, but if you turn on your internet connection while overseas you’re likely to run up a huge data charge by the time you get home.  Then again, if you’re trying to explain to the police why you couldn’t possibly be “The butcher of Paris” it might be worth the cost.

As a travel companion this is one app that you definitely not be without.  It’s free, easy to use, and could avoid this sort of unpleasant interaction with the natives.  

Download the app from here.

Handwrite, a new way to search

As someone who tends to be an early adopter I often find myself wondering whether something that I think is ultra cool is actually useful.  Sometimes I can see it clearly such as in 1995 when I predicted that the GPS was going to be awesome – to a lot of eye-rolling I might add.

Today I came across Handwrite – Google’s latest tool that let’s you just write your search queries on the screen instead of typing them.

The Patent Wars

Patents were originally created to spur innovation by ensuring that people could create without fear of losing control of their inventions.

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However patentsare being increasingly used by big companies to put a stranglehold on innovation instead.

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Corporations are falling over themselves to acquire patents for the sole purpose of keeping the status quo.

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A great example of this is the $4.5 billion recently bid by a consortium including Apple and Microsoft for a “war chest” of patents owned by Nortel to keep them out of the hands of Google.

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And, once again, Microsoft is leading the fight against innovation by using the patents it has acquired to restrict the use of Android – exactly the sort of behaviours that have landed them in such hot water in the past.

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 Using  acquired patents Microsoft have forced companies that produce Android devices to pay ‘license fees’ for each device sold –  increasing the cost to the company and the consumer.Until recently those deals were kept private as part of the agreements made (coerced?) with device makers, creating exactly the sort of fear, uncertainty and doubt that I’m sure Microsoft wanted.

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And the types of innovations that Microsoft are using to extort these fees?  How about the ability to display a graphic while a downloading is occurring.

Fortunately Barnes & Nobel have refused to sign and, in the process, are bringing the details into the light.  In its response to Microsoft’s complaint, B&N says that Microsoft is trying to dominate Android with “exorbitant license fees and absurd licensing restrictions,” that is more than Microsoft charges for the entirety of Windows Phone 7.

B&N has asked the U.S. Justice Department to review Microsoft’s patent-licensing agreements with makers of Android devices, saying “Microsoft is embarking on a campaign of asserting trivial and outmoded patents against manufacturers of Android devices.” Its attorney Peter Barbur said in an Oct. 17 letter to a DOJ official: “Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices. … Microsoft’s conduct poses serious antitrust concerns.”

Microsoft wants to stifle innovation in the Open Source space because it knows it can’t compete.  Their intention is clear – if they can’t beat them with innovation, then they will do it with litigation.

Patent law has been corrupted – turning it from a defensive tool into a weapon.  Without a major overhaul of the existing system we are heading into a modern dark age.

Related articles

• Barnes & Noble files long list of prior art in Microsoft patent case (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Barnes & Noble decides to fight Microsoft Android patents (geek.com)
• Google and Barnes & Noble get serious about Android patent lawsuits (zdnet.com)

The Technology Jihad

There is a religious war being raged at this very moment in our homes, and in our pockets. It is a little quieter than your average war – for the most part, no-one is losing limbs to IEDs – but it is a war none-the-less.

These crusades are being fought between two main factions:

• Those that wish to control the technology in your lives – “The Empire”, and the 800lb Gorilla in that camp is Apple.
• Those that want technology to be free to create in new and innovative ways, without a single overlord ruling everything – “The Rebel Alliance”. The Rebels are supported by companies like Google, and by a group of loosely organized technical wizards (Jedi).

The Empire has jammed people into the box-car of conformity using slick user interfaces and the promise that you will be safer if you use their products.  As part of this they make sure that you can’t “harm yourself” by taking away features that they deem unsuitable for you (e.g. Flash video), and giving you just enough functionality that you won’t feel overwhelmed.  In a nutshell, they offer a sanitized computing experience for the masses.

This sanitation of experience is something that we seem to have adopted universally as a society.  Blogs such as Free Range Kids, show us just how much we dumb down things for our children’s protection, so perhaps we have no-one to blame but ourselves if we end up being controlled and manipulated.

But it was not always so.  Once upon a time people thought for themselves, and Apple fought on the side of good.  But Apple became corrupted by the money that is made by locking people in, and have since been consumed by the dark side.  Now they attempt to drive conformity to the Apple way wherever possible – Very interesting considering that Apple once used the slogan “Think different” and had a famous ad campaign using Orwell’s 1984 to represent the need to break the mold.  This was back in the days when the Apple still had color in its logo.

The safe, and easy-to-use, Apple products become the “Golden Handcuff” that locks you in. Once they have you, their marketing machine uses the power of the Dark Side to make sure you spend the maximum amount of money on your initial purchase, and yet still feel compelled to upgrade when the next version hits the shelves.  For example, where is the USB port on the iPad (still not there in version 2)?  And why can I tether my iPhone to my Netbook, but not to an iPad?  Obviously they want you to buy the more expensive 3G model and sign up for another monthly data plan – because recurring revenue is really where it’s at. The Force can have a powerful effect on the weak minded.

The Rebels, in contrast, are trying to create a world where you are free to use technology as you see fit. These Jedi use their amazing ability to manipulate technology (The Force) to create incredible software and then they give it away for free! But, along with great power, comes great responsibility.  Creating such an open system allows a vast array of software to be produced, but without a standard look and feel.  As a result these products often provide state-of-the-art capabilities, but are too confusing for novices to use.

The Rebel Alliance has pushed Linux as an alternative to Windows, and Android (based on Linux) as an alternative to the iPhone.  These are technically sound solutions, and the open nature of these ensures that there are plenty of apps available, many of which are free.  Unfortunately they can’t seem to get their act together and work as a team. The most successful Linux desktop (Ubuntu) is gaining ground with end-users by providing an easy to use, user interface.  But the hard-core Linux folks claim it is only for beginners (it is not) and seem to want to stick with ‘the old ways’ of using Linux just for servers.

This fragmentation of the user interface is making it difficult for Linux to gain widespread adoption. It also makes support difficult because the only way to make sure that a solution works in all instances is to go beneath the GUI – and that can mean support answers sometimes involve manually typing in commands like “sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/libopenal1.* /tmp”– seriously, can you imagine your mother doing that?

At the moment Linux is viable as a home computer platform only as long as you have someone slightly geeky who will take your calls. I have been slowly converting people in my neighborhood to Linux – not because I wanted to, but because they have problems with their computers and never seem to have their original OS disks.  Buying Windows is expensive so I usually leave them with a machine happily running Ubuntu, Firefox and Open Office.  So far I have converted about half a dozen people, all without complaint – but there is only so much I can do in my role as part of The Resistance!

The Rebel Alliance have had better luck penetrating the mobile phone market, and Android phones now outsell the iPhone. This makes sense in a market that has not yet created a standard look and feel.  And perhaps, The Rebels can use this platform to open a chink in the armor of the desktop space, and make some real inroads in the future.

I believe in the open source movement – I really do.  I feel as though they have justice on their side, and I use so much open source software now that the thought of actually buying software sends a shiver down my spine.

But the Rebel Alliance are vastly outnumbered by the hoards of Luddites who just want their devices to work and, in the process, are happy to fork over money for software that they could easily have gotten for free if they had known better.

The war is on, and the future is uncertain.  But, to paraphrase Ben Franklin “Those who give up Freedom for Security, deserve neither.”

Choose wisely, and may The Force be with you.

iPad Misses the Mark for Business

Let me start by saying that I think Apple makes some very cool products.  I’ve owned various iPods and graduated to an iPhone earlier this year – I needed a new phone and, since I already had an iTouch, upgrading was a snap:   Buy the phone, plug it in and, voila!  Instantly I had all of my contacts and music on the phone, and my email worked immediately.

But lately I have found myself getting just a little bit irritated with Mr. Jobs.  His steadfast refusal to allow Flash on his products cannot, in my mind, be seen as anything other than vindictive.  I read his tediously long open letter to the world on the subject and, for those that can’t be bothered to read it, here is my summary (heavily paraphrased, of course):  “Don’t use Flash because it is a closed system, use my closed system instead.”

He also claims Flash drains battery life – which is probably true.  But the simple answer to that would be to have it disabled by default and give the users a button to turn it on – along with a suitable warning such as “Warning: Enabling Flash will cause your battery die in milliseconds.” just so that people know what they are getting in to.  It’s unfortunate for Jobs really – perhaps if he had enabled Flash he could have blamed the recent iPhone4 problems on Adobe!

I could put up with the lack of Flash when it was just a phone because, well, I was never really going to do any serious browsing on it anyway.  But when the iPad came out, I found myself thinking that Jobs had made a serious error.

As usual, Apple has done a fantastic job of producing a product that you just want to touch and hold – it is  pure sex with a glass front.  But it lures you in with seductive promises, and then rolls over and gives you the cold shoulder as soon as you want to slip in your favorite application.

This is because Apple forces all apps to be delivered via the iTunes app store – a veritable fortress for anything that Jobs doesn’t like.  There is so much fantastic free software around these days that, as a self confessed geek, I am like a kid in a candy store (you can see a short list of my favorite free software here). But most of this lovely software will never feel the brush of a finger on any iApple devices.  I have already seen from the iPhone that any free software that competes with Apple’s money making apps (e.g. ringtone generators) will never make it into the iTunes store and is therefore Software-non-grata to the iPad.

By locking the doors on the iTunes store, Apple is not paying attention to corporate customers.

Apple has an opportunity to tie in companies for a long time, if they would just give corporations the ability to create and install applications directly, or at least through a less closed system.

Imagine this scenario.  Company A builds an iPad app for a specific need in their organization (not cheap) and submits it to Apple, who then have the right to say “Nah…I’m just not feeling it.”  That corporation is then out of luck!  And what about bug fixing? Are you seriously saying that a company has to wait until Apple feels like pushing a new version if its latest release has a major flaw?  That just doesn’t make sense!

In the mean time Google is making application development for Android so easy it can be done by cat lovers that have never seen a line of code.  And…oh…did I mention that their OS is actually open?

No, the iPad could have been something awesome and game changing in the business world, but Apple now runs a serious risk of letting the tablet PC makers catch up and, just possibly, take control in a segment with a lot of buying power.

Cool consumer device – absolutely!  But it could have been so much more…