Google Translate: the remix

5/17/2011 12:28:00 PM
When we built Google Translate we thought it was a cool tool, but we have to admit we had fairly straightforward ideas about what it would be useful for (lowering language barriers and making more web content available to people around the world). As with many inventions, though, it turns out people have found uses for the tool that we never imagined. Recently, two clever Translate trends caught our eye—perhaps one of them will inspire you to come up with a fun Translate trick of your own.

First, some creative folks translated strings of consonants into German to create a new beatboxing tool. The phrase “pv zk bschk” didn’t initially make much sense to us, but a quick listen got us nodding our heads along to the beat.

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Holy Moly: how a £4 website became an internet phenomenon

Holy Moly's straight-talking founder, Jamie East, has sold half of the celebrity gossip website to Big Brother producer Endemol. Now he wants to use the partnership to conquer TV. Andrew McCormick reports.



Jamie East is enjoying the high life. The 37-year-old Holy Moly founder is just back from an all-expenses-paid trip to the US courtesy of Harley Davidson. He is not quite sure why they took him, but not for the first time in his life, an opportunity came up and East took advantage.

It was a similar situation with Endemol in March, when the Big Brother producer made East a considerably rich man by buying a 50 per cent stake in the celebrity gossip website.



"Holymoly.co.uk cost me £4 in 2002; Holymoly.com, in 2008, cost £37,000. I could have bought the dotcom one in 2002 for £30, but I didn't have £30," East reveals. "I had about a tenner and the wife would have asked why I was spending nappy money on a website. I reminded her of that when I had to shell out thirty-seven grand for it. It was a while before I thought I had to make money, though. Sending the newsletter to 50,000 people, rather than 500, is actually quite expensive."




Popbitch had blazed a trail with its gossipy email newsletters and forum, but East, at the time working for BSkyB, thought he could do better. "I thought Popbitch was missing a trick in what a digital brand can become," he says. "Everyone had heard of Popbitch and it frustrated me that the owners weren't doing great things with it."


When Holy Moly launched, the public's obsession with celebrities, spurred on by reality TV shows, was at its peak. It was a captive audience, but East certainly knew how to make his website stand out - he credits 'C**t's Corner' with transforming Holy Moly from a niche site to an internet phenomenon. Times have changed, though, and East recognises that scandalous tittle-tattle is now much harder to come by. "There are fewer gobshites who aren't media-trained and surrounded by PRs, so it's more difficult to find things to write about. And the 'pap' agencies aren't getting the pictures they used to."



East is therefore planning to make Holy Moly less reliant on celebrity gossip by turning to film reviews and more sober entertainment news. This will be reflected in the site's redesign, which is currently being tested. What will the redesign involve? "It's about creating more places on the site to put more stuff," he says matter-of-factly.

East's straight-talking tone is reflected in his website - and it is arguably this, rather than the subject matter, that attracts around one million unique users to Holy Moly every month. "We don't search out scoops, we don't doorstep, we don't go for them because it's expensive and risky. The amount the tabloids must have spent investigating in the last month alone, while not being able to publish a lot of it, is mental. We write about what's popular and topical in a tone that isn't patronising and reads as people really talk," he says.

Lovable rogue

The irreverence is palpable on meeting East, a big Midlands lad with rock hair and tattoos to match. He gets a buzz out of the attention and one feels that the Endemol deal was very much driven by his desire for Holy Moly to eventually reach the TV screens. "There isn't a decent celebrity show on telly any more. It hasn't been done properly since Liquid News," he asserts.

So, what of the entrepreneur's new mothership? East and his head of PR are desperate to get across the message that Holy Moly won't lose its independence following the Endemol deal. Surely, though, this is a given - for the production company has a history of courting controversy, and anyone can see that Holy Moly would be nothing without its rogue element.

Whether or not it will work on TV is a tricky question. Several TV executives have turned it down in the past, but East is still determined to convince them. When I last interviewed him several years ago, when he was the anonymous 'Mr Holy Moly', he said the same of video. But he has since changed his mind. "Video's an interesting one because you can spend a hell of a lot of time, money, effort and thought in creating video and it just doesn't work sometimes. Marketers and agencies scream at me that they want video - 'It's £28 CPA,' they say. But the problem with video is that you need volume. We don't treat YouTube the way we should treat YouTube because it's a job in itself," he argues.

Having worked at Sky and helped Channel 4 and Chelsea FC, among others, with their websites, East is well aware of how essential marketing and the media are to the realisation of his ambitions. International expansion is also on the cards, but East is not looking at the usual path. Germany and India would not be many people's first ports of call, but the obvious candidate market, the US, is saturated with purveyors of celebrity gossip.

East will certainly be relying on advertising to put his plans into action, but he has always had a beneficial relationship with sponsors. Carling, for instance, jumped on board in the early days of the site: "Carling gave me two grand to get pissed with my mates. So of course I spent £500 and pocketed the rest. That was the first time I thought, 'Ah, people are going to pay me money to do stuff and I can get pissed as well'."

Yet this was not always the case, at least with some of the websites and media owners East courted. "Lots of brands didn't want to be associated with Holy Moly, but they were trying to rip us off. So we said to them, 'We'll create content for you if you pay us'," he explains.

Having been anonymous for the best part of a decade, East is enjoying his newfound limelight. His next challenge is to turn Holy Moly into a mainstream media operator, and one that will attract more than just online advertisers. If past performance is anything to go by, this should not present too much of a challenge. "Holy Moly's always gone to plan. Through luck or graft every stepping stone has worked out," East says.

Holy Moly TV is next up. It could be the most treacherous stepping stone yet.

VIRTUAL REALITY
Lives: West London
Family: Wife and four kids
Favourite websites: PopJustice and UltraCulture
Rides: A Ducatti motorbike

REALITY
2011: Sells 50 per cent share of Holy Moly to Endemol UK
2008: Sells stake in Holy Moly to digital media company Perform - later
buys it back
2002: Launches Holy Moly
1999: Joins Sky
1993: Lead singer with the Beekeepers, signed to Beggars Banquet Records
1990: DJ at various venues in Derby

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk

Three Reasons Why A Good Looking Website Will Increase Traffic

If you really want to increase traffic on your website, you may want to step back and take a look at the site from a visitors point of view. A good looking website increases its traffic naturally because those who visit it will likely come back and tell their friends about it as well. The presentation of your website says a lot about your business.

If you want to have a highly successful web business then it is necessary to have a nice website. With more than half of the world logging in web time each week, it is important for todays businesses to maintain interesting and effective websites that pertain to their businesses. If you are interested in learning why a good looking website is important when trying to increase traffic, take a look at these three reasons.

Professionalism

The first view of your website by a visitor says a lot about your business as a whole. If your website looks cheap and self-made, then it is likely the visitor will not think your business operates in a professional manner. When it comes to dealing with customers on the web, you certainly want to look professional on all levels. If you are an online retailer, you want customers to feel comfortable ordering from you. If they do not think your website looks professional, they may not feel comfortable doing so. It is not necessary to have your website professionally created in order to appear professional.


All you need to do is play around with different approaches to see which templates work best for your business. The more you read and learn about website creation, the better your site will look. Educating yourself on the issue of website development is important when you are trying to do it on your own. If you find yourself overwhelmed, then you can always turn to a professional for the creation of your site. Therefore, to maintain a high level of professionalism, you need to have a good looking website. In turn, but creating the professional atmosphere, the consumers will likely return and bring their friends as well.

Entertaining

Not only should your website look professional, but it should also have an entertaining value. Entertainment is something that will draw visitors into your site in a deeper way. If they see an interesting link, they will likely examine your site in more detail. By offering things like contests and free giveaways, you can easily draw in more traffic. If your site is boring however, it is unlikely you will be able to keep anyone there for more than two seconds.

Offering games to play on your site that may pertain to your business, you can keep the traffic flowing. You can even offer links to other exciting and informative websites, in order to act as an in-between for the fun. Anyone would rather visit a fun and entertaining site than a boring and plain website. If you offer enough excitement it is likely the regular visitors will advertise your site to everyone they know!

Easy On the Eyes

A good looking website will also increase traffic if it is easy on the eyes. In addition to being professional and fun, your website should be easy on the eyes. This essentially means that it should be attractive as well as easy to function within. Choose colors and an arrangement that will appeal to a wide variety of people. Using really bold colors will possibly hurt the eyes of viewers if they look at them for extended periods of time. You can always add splashes of colors in graphics and borders, but it is best to keep text in dark colors. Create an interesting layout, but not one that is so unique that it is difficult to use. If your website is easy to look at and visitors can navigate easily around it, they will want to come back.

If you focus on these three reasons to create a good looking website, your traffic will surely increase. Having a website that looks professional, entertaining, and is easy on the eyes is the key to inviting and maintaining web traffic for your website. So, if you are creating your site now, or if you want to overhaul your existing site, keep these three tips in mind to get the most traffic to your site as possible.

Jason Cox - About the Author:

For several years now, Jason has been reviewing hundreds of online products and services. Many consider his reviews to be very insightful and reliable. Visit his website creativedigitalmedia.com

Olympic partners face online guerilla marketing blitz

Olympic sponsors have been warned to brace themselves for a barrage of online guerrilla marketing ahead of the London 2012 Olympics.



LOCOG has grappled with restrictions to protect sponsors, such as limits on outdoor and TV advertising, but experts say the opportunity for brands to hijack the Olympics online remains 'huge'.

With LOCOG facing a challenge to impose restrictions on digital marketing, official sponsors are being warned they can expect 'open season' when it comes to making the most of the Olympics online.

'It is a grey area. The restrictions based on TV and outdoor advertising don't matter any more, especially in the UK with the BBC,' said Steve Martin, chief executive of M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment.



'The smart marketers are one step ahead when it comes to social media. It's not as if official sponsors will be taking out superinjunctions to stop brands advertising online,' he added.



While LOCOG argues it will be able to police breaches (see box), Nathan McDonald, managing partner of We Are Social, said the guerrilla social marketing activity will be highly evolved.
'The opportunities are huge. For example, you could check-in near Olympics venues and get targeted local offers,' added McDonald.

Meanwhile, brands such as British Airways are failing to maximise the potential brand-boost of the Olympics by neglecting search strategies, according to new research.



Hannes Ortner, head of linguistics services and analysis at Locaria, which has been auditing the search capabilities of Olympic partners, said BA is letting itself down.


'These brands need to ensure they personalise their strategies for local markets. BA's Chinese websites jump into English and destroy the user journey,' he said.


Statement: LOCOG response

'There are challenges with international enforcement of legal rights where social networking is involved.

'However the principle remains - if a business uses social networking for the clear purposes of ambush marketing in the UK, we can take action for infringement of our legal rights.

'If the ambush activity is outside of the UK, we will work with the IOC and the relevant National Olympic Committee to address the issue - in many countries there are similar laws to those which apply in the UK which prevent ambush marketing of the Olympic Games and these can be used where relevant.'

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk
Check out www.jackthewebber.com 

Let's Get Physical

First, allow me to state the obvious.

The digital world is here, and it is here to stay. It will continue to grow and permeate every nook and cranny of our millennia-long analog life. It will force us to reframe our comfort zones, and challenge us with new ways of viewing our world. With that said, I must admit that I am one of those people who is totally fine with technology’s role in this new life. I love the inherent “magic” technology delivers as it instantly converts the invisible ones and zeros into photographs of our loved ones half a world away, or into songs that bring back nostalgic memories. I also love the near obsessive-compulsive organizational abilities technology provides, as it attempts to help us manage our insanely empirical schedules and enable us to poetically update our Facebook status, at any time from almost anywhere.

However. Dramatic pause.

Despite popular belief, we are still, thankfully, human beings—and the delectably beautiful part of being is experiencing life multi-dimensionally. It is this very multidimensionality that gives us the proverbial feeling of being connected with the universe as a whole, the feeling of being a part of a larger system—the feeling of purpose and meaning. As an example, as satisfying it is to listen to our favorite band over and over on our iPods, nothing can replace the experience of seeing a band play live. The live performance allows us to witness, in subconscious awe, several individuals performing seemingly different things while literally creating harmony out of chaos. The experience is near spiritual: the contortions the drummer has to make to hit the right beat, the rapid otherworldly-speed of the guitar player’s fingers plucking the strings, the effortless voice of the lead singer as he or she celestially replicates the song we have heard on repeat so many times before.
The performance is multidimensional because we are there with others, sharing the same experience, breathing the same air, bobbing our heads to the beat of the music, and in some cases singing along in unison. As the music transports us through our individual and personal memories and daydreams, turning eons into nanoseconds, we absorb the energy of the sound and of the environment that encapsulates everything into one multifaceted, multidimensional experience.







So what does any of this have to do with design?

If design wants to change the world as much as it struts around claiming it will, design will have to start becoming more multidimensional and more immersive in the palpable life. As technology enables us to do things better and faster, it is also unintentionally divorcing the designer further and further from the multidimensional world he or she is designing for. What used to be a trip to New York or to a local manufacturer is now only a Google Image Search away. As invaluable, liberating and efficient that can be for inspiration and reference--the systematic problems that face our societies, inside and outside the typical design realms, cannot and will not be solved by designers sitting in cushy offices, clicking away in front of the sterile glow of their computers. Nor will these problems be solved by cookie-cutter research assignments that deliver pretty charts and synthesized analysis.

Designers, as naturally empathic creatures, can only solve these problems by experiencing things firsthand and becoming totally immersed in our physical world. From a gallery opening to a visit to a local shelter, and everything in between, any designer worth his or her salt should continuously and ravenously scavenge the planet, collecting, learning and sharing from their experiences. Seeing images of the polluted basin of the Los Angeles river is one thing, actually helping clean it up, while enduring the putrid smells of the rotting wood, used clothing, rancid decomposing food and human excrement is quite another. Only through such immersive, multidimensional moments can epiphany strike and a realization of “a better way” be revealed. This is the power of design and what a skilled and passionate designer can deliver. By leveraging our intuition, empathy and ability to turn our own ones and zeroes into real-world meaningful solutions we deliver our own magic that, too, can and will change the world in which we live—for the better.

This is quite a cool website made very nice.


http://www.gavincastleton.com/