From Jeff Barr’s blog, I found the “AJAX Translator“, a proof of concept using Ajax techniques to provide live translation from one text box to another. This translation-as-you-type looks like a neat alternative to the form-based translators like Babel Fish. I think this type of translation would be handy for instant messaging; the translations aren’t perfect, but it might be a nice aide for users who don’t speak the same first language.
Tonight we launched Yahoo! Messenger 7.5 Beta, delivering phone-in and phone-out support to PSTN (public switched telephone network, or “regular phones”). For rates that are quite low (inside the US, 1ยข per minute), you can call from Yahoo! Messenger to any phone in the world (“phone out”). You can also buy a live phone number (from anywhere in the world) that will ring on your Messenger client (“phone in”). There is also free voice mail. In an unusual twist, we are actually only launching the international clients today. For now, users inside the United States will not be able to…
Today Yahoo! and SixApart announced that Yahoo! small business web hosting customers can now run Movable Type: Now you can get the power of Movable Type for blogging from a web host you trust: Yahoo! Small Business web hosting. All the features you need, with no installation required. It looks like you can get web hosting for as little as $9/month, so this might be a good solution for those who don’t want to fiddle with the details of installing Movable Type. Users in that group should probably also check out TypePad which at the cheapest level is about $5/month.…
At work I’ve gotten quite adept at creating different user accounts for testing and reproducing bugs, especially for international. Not being able to read any language other than English, I usually use navigation tricks such as: Copy and paste chunks of text into Babelfish Follow along with the US/English flow in a separate browser For cases where those tricks aren’t sufficient (for example, English vs Intl flows are different or have different fields), I’ve found a third option: Use the Firefox Web Developer Extension! The web developer extension is considered a “must have” for anyone doing web development. In this…
The Saturdays before and after Thanksgiving, we saw the last two football games at the “old” Stanford Stadium. Sadly, Stanford lost to both Cal and Notre Dame, but at least we had some excellent tailgating beforehand. The ND game was the last before the big stadium renovation. At the game’s end, there was a brief ceremonial groundbreaking, then they let fans on the field for one last time. I didn’t come home with a clump of the field or anything, but today I was excited to see an online photo gallery capturing the construction progress, including live webcams. The renovation…