Dude, Dude, what if …

I was listening to NPR and they played an interview with a futballer who answered a question misunderstanding vampire for umpire. After he realized the mistake he laughed and said please delete that.   And it struck me, 10 years ago, we would said erase.  I’m pretty sure whatever device they were using for the interview was a digital recording device and thus, yes you would say delete instead of erase.  However, back in the day, when we used tape, we would say erase.  This was pretty common expression really.  Erase a tape, erase a mark on paper, erase ones memory, erase from history, etc…    However, I’m hearing delete more and more often. Delete from the record, deleted from the scene, etc..  I do not expect it to take too long for delete to be the common expression to remove evidence of something just as erase has been for so long.  Lets remember the work ‘erase’ has been around since the 1600’s, according to dictionary.com at least, so I do not expect we will replace ‘erase’ with ‘delete’ all that quickly, but its already happening, and I expect the adoption of ‘delete’ over ‘erase’ to accelerate and more generations grow up in the digital age.

That’s my random thought of the day.

You can now edit the default language of your app’s metadata on iTunes Connect at the app level and it can be changed at any time. Customers are more likely to read about your app if they can do it in their native language, and we encourage you to translate your metadata for each of the countries in which you offer apps.

To edit the default language for an app, go to the Manage Your Applications module, then click Edit for your App Information. Any previously added localizations will be available for selection in the Default Language dropdown. If you wish to add a new localization to your app, you can do so from the App Localization section of your app’s version details page. Adding a new localization will require a binary update so that Apple can review it.

If you need assistance translating your metadata into additional languages, there are third party vendors who can provide internationalization and localization services for your app.

BTW, you have to look on the second page of apps listings if you are searching the app store on your iphone. I’m sure it will make the first page soon.

Back in August 2008, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official Google Translate for iPhone app is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.

Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate as seen in these screen shots.

Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month.

The app requires 4.0 and I only have my 3G with me at the moment, so I could not test myself, but found a number of videos posted with people using it.  Must of the time, it works well. I have not seen anyone really test it on complex backgrounds, but that is not the point of the app anyway.  The real win here is the Augmented Reality part of it.  The fact that it replaces text with the detected background then overlays new text AND background colour is nothing short of amazing. There are limits. If the text is too small the app cannot read it in real time well enough. Right now it only iphone ipod, but it will be on the next version of the iPad which will have cameras.  I would also expect to see this on the Android platform by the end of Jan 2011.  Now, could you get the value by just taking a picture and translating that?  Sure, but what fun is that?

Well lets have a look.  First the ‘demo’ video.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs

Now lets see it in real life..

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2sjrAOtieg

Nice eh?  Right now it only supports Spanish at a cost of 5$.  Cheap!  I’m sure other Latin translations are coming.  The next big challenge will be translating Asian languages.  Japanese anyone?

BTW, check out this stress test video.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7PIr4uy_28