In addition to using the Google Translate widget on your web pages to translate web content with Google Translate you can now use gTranslate, a Firefox extension that lets you select some text from a web page and translate to any of the languages that Google Translate supports.
It even can replace the original text with the translation in text boxes. You can reply to a post from Google Groups or compose a Blogger post in English and then using gTranslate on the Firefox pulldown, instantly translate it to another language.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Firefox's gTranslate extension uses Google Translate on the fly!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Google's Blogger Makes Blogrolling easier with its Blog List
As you can tell by my blogs I'm a proponent of blogrolls, and Blogger has just made blogrolling much easier with their new blogrolling page element. Detailing this new feature we have a new post from Blogger in Draft called New Feature: Blog List.
It states:
Bloggers often feature a list of their favorite blogs, called a “blogroll,” in the sidebar of their own blog. Our latest page element, Blog List, helps you do just that, but we’ve mixed it in with Google Reader to make it even more powerful and useful.Sphere: Related Content
At its most basic, Blog List displays a list of links to your favorite blogs, with an optional icon. If you link to a blog with an Atom or RSS feed, however, the Blog List can show the date of the blog’s last update or even the title and snippet of its most recent post.
You can set the number of blogs to show in the list and whether they should be sorted by update time or alphabetically by blog title.
You add blogs to your Blog List by entering blog or feed URLs directly, or by importing subscriptions from Google Reader. When you add by URL, Blogger will attempt to detect an Atom or RSS feed for it in order to show post and update information. If none is found, the blog will still be added to the Blog List, just as a simple link.
Please try this out! Add a Blog List (Or two! Or more!) to your blog and let us know what you think in the comments. We value your feedback, and will try to incorporate as much as we can before the Blog List goes big-time on www.blogger.com.
Remember: Like all features mentioned on this blog, you must log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ to add a Blog List.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
How to Embed MP3 Files With Google Readers MP3 Player
The Digital Inspiration blog is a great resource for finding out how to accomplish tasks to make your blog or web page stand out from the crowd. On of their latest posts goes into detail on how to embed MP3 files into your web page.
They go into four different players, Google Reader MP3 Player, Yahoo MP3 Player, Yahoo Media Player and the Odeo MP3 Player.
Check out Digital Inspiration - How to Embed MP3 Audio Files In Web Pages With Google or Yahoo! Flash
Directory of100 Google Maps Mashups Available
One of the few things I can see that Google has missed is a directory of Google Maps Mashups, luckily the Google Bloggers are there to fill the gaps. Check out Geek News Central - 100 Google maps mashups:
Google maps is one of the more interesting technologies released in recent times and some of the applications that have been built on the API are delivering some cool services.
The Google Maps Mania Blog has put together a list of 100 mashups using Google maps. These range from finding a public toilet or wifi hotspot to measuring the area of a mapped location.
This is a great example of the power of an open platform. If people had to develop these applications from scratch, or license the API to use Google Maps, they would never exist. Conversely, by building a platform that other people can develop on, Google increases the value of their product.
....Definitely check out the list though as there are some interesting ones there.
Here are the first 20 or so...
1. Find a world brewerySphere: Related Content
2. Track world terrorism
3. Find a WiFi Hotspot in the US
4. Align your satellite dish properly
5. Catch live music in your area
6. Track a US package
7. See the world at night
8. Walk in a straight line around the world
9. Explore the new 7 wonders of the world (More)
10. Map 2008 presidential campaign contributions
11. Find a public toilet
12. Track a US or Canadian flight number
13. Lookup real-time US airport status
14. Map US FAA delayed flight information
15. Find a world airport, airline or connection
16. Find out "walkscore" for house or apartment
17. Calculate US or Canadian Taxi Fare
18. Look at the clouds!
19. Explore any location on earth
20. Map US telephone area codes
Google Spreadsheets Now Have Forms
Thats is right Google Spreadsheets now have emailable forms, which means say you want to create of list of people interested in a particular meeting, product and service you can make a Google spreadsheet containing headings for all the contact information you need and then enable forms. Once you've created your form you can send it via email to anyone you think might be interested.
All they have to do is fill in the form a mail it back, and their answers will populate your spreadsheet. You can create signup sheets, polls, advertisements to name just a few possibilities.
For more on Google Forms check out the Official Google Docs Blog- Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting information:
Today we're asking you to do something new: stop sharing spreadsheets.Sphere: Related Content
Well... only sometimes, and only in certain situations. See, we've noticed that, in some cases, you want to collect just a tiny bit of information from dozens, scores, or even hundreds of users or more. Some of them are Google Docs users. Some of them are not. Either way, you don't always want them all mucking around with the whole spreadsheet and you're tired of telling those new to Google Docs that they don't need to switch to Gmail just to use Docs (huh? you didn't know that either?).
We're really excited to bring you forms! Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won't need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you'll get the spreadsheet automatically.
Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet. You can even keep a closer eye on them by adding the Google Docs forms gadget to your iGoogle homepage, created by software engineers Valerie Blechar and Sarah Beth Eisinger (in her first month at Google!). It lists your recent active forms, with new responses highlighted. Add this gadget to your iGoogle page:
At Google, we've already been using it for signups, surveys, and miscellaneous mischief. And we can't wait to see what you do with forms in Google Docs.
P.S. Navigate all the extra data you're collecting with the new freeze columns feature. It's been our most requested feature for twelve months, but we hope you'll cut software engineer Eric Bogs a break since he's only been here for a few!
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
How To Measure Distance Between Two Locations Using Google Maps
Digital Inspiration has a nice post on what you can do with Google Maps besides just finding how to get where your going. If you've ever wanted to know the distance between two buildings, you can find it, if you want to know the difference in the distance between to routes you can find out.
Check out Digital Inspiration: Measure Distance Between Two Locations Using Google Maps:
Sphere: Related ContentGoogle Maps has a neat feature that lets you calculate distance between two points anywhere on the Earth - you could use this to measure the approximate distance between two cities or to calculate the size of a local football field or to know how far is your new office from home.
In the above example, Google Maps helps us measure the length of Manhattan Bridge between Brooklyn and New York that lies over the river.
To measure distances using Google Maps, click the “My Maps” tab on Google Maps website and select the “Distance Measurement Tool” - now select any two points on the map with your mouse and the distance will appear in miles (or kilometers).
Google Maps uses straight lines to calculate the shortest distance but if you are looking for more accurate numbers, trace the complete route by clicking at all the curves and deviations as below:
In this example we measured the distance between the car parking of Taj Mahal and the actual monument - one has to cover 1.4 km on foot before he gets in.
Use Issuu To Embed PDFs in Web Pages
With Issuu (pronounced “issue”) you can now embed PDF files in web pages and view them in a very nice viewer, if you have a need for displaying reports or other static documents in your website or blog it might be worth taking a good hard look at what Issuu has to offer.
For a more on Issuu check out Digital Inspiration - Convert PDF Files Into 3D Magazines, Embed in Web Pages - Issuu:
Issuu (prononced “issue”) is an impressive service where you upload PDF documents and they are instantly converted into 3D flip magazines which you can embed in blogs or websites.Sphere: Related Content
Your visitors can turn the pages of the PDF with their mouse or jump to any specific page by clicking the thumbnail image of the page. In other words, Issuu makes your PDF files look almost the same as a physical publication but in a browser.
While Scribd and Slideshare also support PDF files (See “How to Embed PDF Documents in Web Pages“), Issuu offers two main advantages - they allow you to upload large PDF files (upto 100 MB) and their inline PDF player looks absolutely amazing. You even get to decide the colors and the PDF player dimensions.
Issuu is free and a perfect place for sharing PDF files especially the ones that contain photos, illustrations, PowerPoint slides or your design portfolio. Spend five minutes and you’ll love this PDF service for sure.
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