Word Lens Promises in-Image Translation

here are plenty of applications and websites that can translate text to other languages, but if you're looking at a sign or something, you'll have to type it into a translation app. What if, instead, you could take a snapshot and have an app translate the text in the image? That's the idea behind Word Lens, and it seems to work.

The caveat is that for now, the app only works from Spanish-to-English and vice versa, and it is also an iOS only app.

It took 2 1/2 years for founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese to develop the app, which is free. However, each language pack is $4.99 (as an in-app buy), and that means to have it work both ways it would cost $9.98.

Using OCR, the app translates the text and draws them back, in the image, on the screen. Here's how Good described it:

“It tries to find out what the letters are and then looks in the dictionary. Then it draws the words back on the screen in translation. The translation isn’t perfect, but it gets the point across.”

For some translation, like "restrooms," that would be good enough.


Naturally, Good is looking toward other languages. Hopefully the algorithm can be translated to Android easily. In the 2 1/2 years that they have been working on this app, Android has overtaken the iPhone globally.

You can watch a demo video below.


source: hothardware.com

Facebook Overtook SouthWest Airlines as the Best Employer in US

Facebook employees think their company is a fantastic place to work. In fact, among users of the jobs site Glassdoor, Facebook was the top-ranked U.S. employer for 2010, scoring a rating of 4.6 out of 5.

Those smug smarties from Palo Alto (disclosure: my husband works there part-time, so I can say that with certainty) say they love the openness and cooperativeness of internal Facebook culture, according to Glassdoor (also the free food and commuter shuttles).

This is the first time Facebook has made the Glassdoor list. In second place is Southwest Airlines (which was last year’s winner), followed by Bain & Company, General Mills and Edelman, respectively.

As for other tech companies, SAS Institute placed No. 7, Overstock.com was No. 9, and CareerBuilder No. 11. Apple was No. 20 and Google No. 30.

Meanwhile, in more surprising news, Glassdoor reports that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is actually more popular now than founder Jerry Yang when he was in the top spot. Bartz has an employee approval rating of 56 percent, compared to 34 percent for Yang when he left.

Other comparisons: HP CEO Léo Apotheker has 62 percent approval, compared to Mark Hurd’s 34 percent when he left, and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has 71 percent approval, compared to Randy Falco’s 13 percent approval when he left.

The most popular tech CEO is Apple’s Steve Jobs, with a 97 percent approval rating. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Eric Schmidt are both at 96 percent.

The Top-50 List, here we go:

The Day Is 10/10/10: What It Really Means?

I stumbled across an article about the the mysterious day of 10/10/10 when I was just leaving my fingers across a bunch of website this morning. I think it would be nice for you guys to take a look for it :)

It is being called a multitude of things: the Powers of Ten Day, Eames Day, 42 Day, etc. Some are just calling it 10/10/10 day, or Ten Ten Ten day. It's one of those calendar oddities that no one really know how to explain, but for some reason, we're all fascinated by it. It's probably because 10/10/10 will never happen again during the lifetime of any human alive to witness it today, and it definitely shows just how fixated we all are on numbers and strange patterns. For as much as the human race pretends not to care about "meaningless details," it seems that people sure care about numbers.

Eames Day has a huge amount of backstory. For one, people are being encouraged to watch the Powers of Ten, which is the Eames Office film. A YouTube video embed is below if you aren't familiar. According to Fastcodesign:

"Powers of Ten is arguably more relevant now than it was the year it was released. The simple idea executed in the film has become a powerful construct for thinking through design problems today. In it, Charles and Ray Eames guide us through a deceptively straightforward exercise -- zooming out to 10^24 and then back in to 10^-16 -- re-framing a simple scene by showing it within ever-larger and then smaller contexts.

If all the zooming in and out across the visual landscape seems vaguely familiar, think Google Earth. We've become very practiced with scaling in and out of satellite images of our earth, using those funny, awkward sliders on the edges of Web maps to peer in on our homes, our cities, and Area 51. But this mass application of Powers of Ten is not the reason we should celebrate the film today. Instead, we need to approach it conceptually, at the level of scale."

Of course, there's another reason for geeks to celebrate 10/10/10 day. In binary, 101010 converts to 42. If you've watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll know that it took a supercomputer millions of years to find the answer to life, which ends up being "42." In many ways, today is the perfect geek day. Reports have stated that thousands upon thousands of weddings were planned for today in hopes of this day bringing long-lasting luck to the couples involved. One particular wedding chapel in Las Vegas had to hire six extra Elvis impersonators to help with ceremonies.


But 10/10/10 day is going even beyond the geek crowd. The U.S. Green Building Council, San Diego Chapter (USGBC-SD) is partnering with 350.org, a non-profit environmental organization, to encourage San Diegans to take part in a global day of action to celebrate climate solutions and cut their carbon emissions this year by 10 percent on October 10, 2010 -- "10.10.10."

And that's not all. A sort of meaningful and interesting events or activites are helding on this day, Google it! By the way, so what are you doing to celebrate today? You've got 10 seconds to answer :)

Source: HotHardware.com

Fake iTunes Receipt

Are you guys holding an iTunes Account? Did you come across a 'weird' iTunes Receipt hit to your email box while you don't even purchase anything in iTunes Store? Whatever, here is a story about my dad who received a fake iTunes Receipt few days before.

My dad do have a iTunes Account. He didn't make any order in iTunes Store (He didn't even input his credit card number when he registered for the account). Strangely, he received a 'look-alike' official iTunes Order Receipt from 'do_not_reply@itunes.com' stated that he had successfully ordered 'Whatever You Like' (Sweat..==) which cost a total 834.99SGD.

Here is the screen shot:

Without any hesitation, my dad lodged an report about that issue to Apple SG and of course the Apple SG Customer Support simply brought us out from the puzzle afterwards.

Here is the reply from Apple SG:


The spam is getting to flood everywhere in the internet world. The mentioned story tells us that don't be anxious at first when come to this kind of matter. Validate it and ensure what was really going on, everything should be work out OK.

What will you do when in the Apple Store?

Apple Store - where the first-hand of the Apple for selling their product.What will you do when you are standing or walking around in the Apple Store?Searching for new item or making some deals in Apple products?Oops~there are too out-dated~Let's check out what American boy making an "outstanding performance" during his shopping at the Apple Store^^



Wow~that's so funny~How he do that?Haha,he is really make people burst into laughter^^In addition,he must be stood in front of a Macbook and using that iSlight to record this video,if not,how can it be so clear and high quality?

Fake money revealing!

Just yesterday,my grandmother asked me to help her did some calculation for her money.But I suddenly found out one of One Hundred Ringgit seem like got a quite difference when compare with others.Wow,after some common money identify checking,I can sure it's a fake one!and it's also a low standard fake money production enough!Haha

As you can see,they size are not just little bit different.


Obviously,that fake one didn't got the RM100 visible mark.


Another evident difference,the most special mark that One Hundred Ringgit have - A colourful line with some regular "RM100" mark on it,but that fake one just simply mark as look alike one.

Accroding to my grandmother,the fake money which was given by a stall seller who doing business in Kluang(It's mabye not a suitable way to claim more clearly on here).I told her to exchange it with him quickly,if not so,just report to the police.It's not the money value problem,it's a virtue problem.It will made a great trouble to whole society and come out more and more victims.To everyone,"Please carefully check the money when you get a money which got a particular sence on it".

Learn computer must start from child ^^

Put your hair down~Let's check out some funny pictures^^

A Clock For Math's Geek?

Here got a special clock selling at Etsy same with the picture above.I believe everyone already found out why I call it "A Clock For Math's Geek".On this clock,we can't find any ordinary number on it and there are replace by a lot of symbol which usually using in Add.Math or computer programing.

Here is the explanation of clock numerals:

1 Legendre's constant
2 "An infinite number of mathematicians..."
3 A Unicode character as a HTML entity
4 Modular arithmetic
5 The Golden Mean reworked a little
6 Three Factorial (3*2*1)
7 6.99999.. Though a different number than 7, still equals 7
8 Graphical representation of Binary code
9 An example of a base-4 number
10 A Binomial Coefficient
11 An example of Hexadecimal encoding
12 The cube root is the inverse of 12^3

Interesting on it?Just grab it by paid 20USD on Etsy^^