I promised my friend Stan, at Semapedia.org to do an English - Bahasa Indonesia translation of the site a couple of weeks ago (we utilize this software called poEdit). I finally got it done today. Why it took me a while is partly because I was really hectic. However, I think the biggest reason is that doing translation is not as easy as I initially imagined. There are words that you can’t just do a direct translation because it does not make sense, legal terms that sounds like German to me, and stuff like that. Well, I am glad I finally got it done, because I would feel really bad otherwise.
Check out the Bahasa Indonesia version of Semapedia.org. Yes if there happens to be people who understand Bahasa Indonesia and found a mistake in my translation, do let me know.
Oh yes, if you are left wondering what Semapedia is, it is a pretty cool tool utilizing the ‘QR Codes’ technology, and Wikipedia to tag the real physical world. Then if you happen to see any of this tags, you can use your cellphone to read it. (obviously you need the reader software installed to your cellphone first)
In this age of information, people are constantly finding new ways to find the information they need as fast and as specific as possible.
There was a time where Yahoo! search engine rulez, until Google came along with a supposedly better algorithm and most importantly a more specialized service, that is, search engine. Who cares about all the news in entertainment, sports, etc that you see when you open up Yahoo! when you already know in mind that you are searching for a way to set up your home networking for example. This is where Google has the advantage, service specialization. Those are also the reasons why Google is now the new “king of search engine”.
Current Yahoo! and Google interface comparison
Just when you think the search engine war is over, well it is not. Web 2.0 startup companies focusing on the way we do searches are mushrooming. KartOO for example is showing your search result as a cluster of icons. Ujiko is giving you the ability to customize your search by marking the sites you like or dislike. For those that thinks Google is not accurate enough, Rollyo allows you to customize your search on the fly. What more can there be? Well today I just found out Yahoo! is doing a good move to regain the “king of search engine” status by releasing the “Alpha beta Search” (not sure what it is called), where images from Flickr photos, Youtube videos, Wikipedia, etc along with the usual search results all show on the same page. Pretty cool stuff.
KartOO, Ujiko, and Rollyo interfaces respectively.
Yahoo! Alpha Interface
Well the moral of the story is that live is full of ups and downs. You can’t always be on top. Whether or not any of this new search theory will overtake Google has yet to be seen. But unless Google keeps on improving their main traffic driver (maybe along with AdSense), one of these days, somebody will dethrone them.
Today, I had the privilege of speaking as a guest speaker for an Actionscript course at the University of Miami - School of Communications.
The session was not so much into technical stuff. It was more about an overview of the capabilities of Flash/Flash Lite/Flex, what it takes to get into the industry, what life is like working in the industry, and how the process work from concepting/ideas to production and launching.
Initially I was kind of concerned that I won’t have enough materials to talk about for 1.5 hours, but I felt that it ended up great. I also pulled up some of the projects that we have done just to show them the kind of work we are doing, and I think that everyone was really liking it, asking lots of questions like how we built it and stuff.
I also got a tour of the whole facility and learning new stuff along the way. They showed me how they do radio broadcasting, tv broadcasting and some other stuff, which I have never done before.
Like most people do, I ended up the session by giving out business cards, hoping to get some qualified people on board.
Overall, I had a great time and the trip was a blast. I am so glad that they invited me over. I would think that it won’t be the last time, but a beginning of more.
Last night I finally got the time to play around with speech recognition, and would like to share my experience here.
Speech recognition, as you know, is not something new. While it is used a lot to build phone based application - the sometimes annoying robotic phone operator -, there are not so much web based or desktop based applications.
From my personal point of view, there are two major issues that might play a big part in why speech recognition is not so popular for web based, or desktop application.
Reason 1: Reliability
Speech recognition engine only understand words if you say it in a certain way or in a certain pace. You say it too fast, it might not understand you. You talk with an accent, it might not understand you. Note: I was actually almost screaming last night trying to get the program I wrote, before it finally understand me. (You can actually teach the machine to recognize more voices)
Reason 2: Customer base
Most computers these days have a mouse and keyboard. Microphone, however, might not be as common.
In spite of the shortcomings, however, I still find it very cool and has lots of potential to do great stuff. I am sure future advancement in the field will only help it further. One of the advancement that I noticed the most is in the way the engine sounds now. In the past, they sound totally like a robot, and now it actually sound more like a person.
www.monk-e-mail.com is an example of a site that utilizes speech recognition technology.
Windows Vista will actually implement speech recognition to allow user to do certain task by saying it, which I am sure will help boost the field.
