Monday 8 February 2010, 1:11 PM
Google considering speech-to-speech translation
Automated speech-to-speech language translation should be possible in a few years' time, according to Google translation chief Franz Och.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Och said the company was examining the possible fusion of two types of technology it already has, namely Google Translate's text-to-text translation and the voice recognition system it has built into Android 2.1.
"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time," Och is quoted as saying. "Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on.
"If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently."
Google Translate is able to translate text between 52 languages, with Haitian Creole being the latest addition.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Och said the company was examining the possible fusion of two types of technology it already has, namely Google Translate's text-to-text translation and the voice recognition system it has built into Android 2.1.
"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time," Och is quoted as saying. "Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on.
"If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently."
Google Translate is able to translate text between 52 languages, with Haitian Creole being the latest addition.
Friday 5 February 2010, 6:24 PM
Bletchley Park calls for operators for Bombe rebuild
The home of World War II codebreaking has called for engineers to operate an electro-mechanical machine developed by mathematician Alan Turing.
The Turing Bombe was a brute-force code-breaker which built on previous work conducted by Polish crypto-analysts. Bletchley Park has rebuilt one Turing Bombe, and now the museum is to launch a recruitment campaign for volunteers to operate it.
The volunteer recruitment open days at the museum, which will be on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 March, are designed to recruit operators for the project, as well as museum guides.
"We've got a number of opportunities for people interested in the history of technology," director of museum operations Kelsey Griffin told ZDNet UK on Friday. "We're looking for electrical and mechanical engineers to help operate the Turing Bombe rebuild."
Griffin said that the museum is understaffed for volunteers, a situation which has been exacerbated by growing visitor numbers.
"Visitor numbers in 2009 exceeded 100,000 visitors for the first time – while we had budgeted for the [economic] downturn," said Griffin. "It's fantastic, but it puts a strain on an already understaffed volunteer team."
The Turing Bombe was an electro-mechanical device that mechanised the process of breaking into crypto streams which had been formed by German Enigma machines, used for military communications. The Bombe was designed by Alan Turing and another mathematician, Gordon Welchman.
The machine was wired to conform to a 'menu' devised by mathematicians, based on 'cribs' or guesses of short parts of Enigma messages which could have contained commonly used words. The Turing Bombe found potential Enigma settings not by proving them, but by disproving every incorrect setting in turn.
The Bombes were built by the British Tabulating Machine company, based in Letchworth. By the end of the war, Bletchley Park and its outstations boasted 210 machines, which were subsequently broken up and destroyed to maintain secrecy at the start of the Cold War.
"[Winston] Churchill was adamant that he didn't want anyone to know how successful our codebreaking had been," said Griffin.
The museum's existing Bombe was rebuilt from a series of black and white photos and the original blueprints. The machine took fourteen years to rebuild by a dedicated team of engineers.
The Turing Bombe was a brute-force code-breaker which built on previous work conducted by Polish crypto-analysts. Bletchley Park has rebuilt one Turing Bombe, and now the museum is to launch a recruitment campaign for volunteers to operate it.
The volunteer recruitment open days at the museum, which will be on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 March, are designed to recruit operators for the project, as well as museum guides.
"We've got a number of opportunities for people interested in the history of technology," director of museum operations Kelsey Griffin told ZDNet UK on Friday. "We're looking for electrical and mechanical engineers to help operate the Turing Bombe rebuild."
Griffin said that the museum is understaffed for volunteers, a situation which has been exacerbated by growing visitor numbers.
"Visitor numbers in 2009 exceeded 100,000 visitors for the first time – while we had budgeted for the [economic] downturn," said Griffin. "It's fantastic, but it puts a strain on an already understaffed volunteer team."
The Turing Bombe was an electro-mechanical device that mechanised the process of breaking into crypto streams which had been formed by German Enigma machines, used for military communications. The Bombe was designed by Alan Turing and another mathematician, Gordon Welchman.
The machine was wired to conform to a 'menu' devised by mathematicians, based on 'cribs' or guesses of short parts of Enigma messages which could have contained commonly used words. The Turing Bombe found potential Enigma settings not by proving them, but by disproving every incorrect setting in turn.
The Bombes were built by the British Tabulating Machine company, based in Letchworth. By the end of the war, Bletchley Park and its outstations boasted 210 machines, which were subsequently broken up and destroyed to maintain secrecy at the start of the Cold War.
"[Winston] Churchill was adamant that he didn't want anyone to know how successful our codebreaking had been," said Griffin.
The museum's existing Bombe was rebuilt from a series of black and white photos and the original blueprints. The machine took fourteen years to rebuild by a dedicated team of engineers.
Thursday 4 February 2010, 2:50 PM
O2 publishes 4G demo video
O2 and the network kit supplier Huawei have uploaded a video to YouTube showing their test 4G network in action.
In the video, uploaded on Tuesday, O2 "radio evolution" man Rob Joyce explains the concept of the long-term evolution (LTE) of 3G, generally referred to more simply as '4G'.
Although Joyce points out that LTE can theoretically hit downlink speeds of up to 150Mbps, the demo itself shows speeds of just under 8Mbps — comparable to many fixed broadband connections in the UK right now.
High-definition video streaming is shown in the video, as is real-time gaming, an application made possible by LTE's low latency.
Huawei is also the vendor behind one of TeliaSonera's Scandinavian LTE deployments, which involve real commercial roll-outs rather than tests, such as Huawei's UK tests with O2.
That said, it's still early days for the technology. TeliaSonera's deployment has seen mixed reports, ranging from disappointment (12Mbps) to delight (47Mbps), so a wait-and-see approach has its advantages. In any case, a variety of factors in the UK is making it unlikely that we will see LTE rolled out here until 2012 at the very earliest.
In the video, uploaded on Tuesday, O2 "radio evolution" man Rob Joyce explains the concept of the long-term evolution (LTE) of 3G, generally referred to more simply as '4G'.
Although Joyce points out that LTE can theoretically hit downlink speeds of up to 150Mbps, the demo itself shows speeds of just under 8Mbps — comparable to many fixed broadband connections in the UK right now.
High-definition video streaming is shown in the video, as is real-time gaming, an application made possible by LTE's low latency.
Huawei is also the vendor behind one of TeliaSonera's Scandinavian LTE deployments, which involve real commercial roll-outs rather than tests, such as Huawei's UK tests with O2.
That said, it's still early days for the technology. TeliaSonera's deployment has seen mixed reports, ranging from disappointment (12Mbps) to delight (47Mbps), so a wait-and-see approach has its advantages. In any case, a variety of factors in the UK is making it unlikely that we will see LTE rolled out here until 2012 at the very earliest.
Wednesday 3 February 2010, 4:56 PM
Linux dev explains Android kernel code removal
Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Linux kernel developer, has posted a blog explaining the decision to excise Google's Android code from the kernel.
Kroah-Hartman removed the code in December, noting that Android drivers "are no longer being developed and the original authors seem to have abandoned them".
In a blog post on Tuesday, Kroah-Hartman explained his motivation, saying: "No one cared about the code, so it was removed". He said Google's decision to effectively create a new kernel branch meant any drivers written for Android hardware platforms cannot be merged into the main kernel tree.
"Because Google doesn't have their code merged into the mainline, these companies creating drivers and platform code are locked out from ever contributing it back to the kernel community," he wrote. "Companies with Android-specific platform and drivers can not contribute upstream, which causes these companies a much larger maintenance and development cycle."
Kroah-Hartman noted that some companies were already trying to strip the Android-specific interfaces from their code and push that upstream to the Linux kernel, "but that causes a much larger engineering effort, and is a pain that just should not be necessary".
ZDNet UK has contacted Google to ask for comment on the story, but had received no response at the time of writing.
Kroah-Hartman removed the code in December, noting that Android drivers "are no longer being developed and the original authors seem to have abandoned them".
In a blog post on Tuesday, Kroah-Hartman explained his motivation, saying: "No one cared about the code, so it was removed". He said Google's decision to effectively create a new kernel branch meant any drivers written for Android hardware platforms cannot be merged into the main kernel tree.
"Because Google doesn't have their code merged into the mainline, these companies creating drivers and platform code are locked out from ever contributing it back to the kernel community," he wrote. "Companies with Android-specific platform and drivers can not contribute upstream, which causes these companies a much larger maintenance and development cycle."
Kroah-Hartman noted that some companies were already trying to strip the Android-specific interfaces from their code and push that upstream to the Linux kernel, "but that causes a much larger engineering effort, and is a pain that just should not be necessary".
ZDNet UK has contacted Google to ask for comment on the story, but had received no response at the time of writing.
Tuesday 2 February 2010, 5:33 PM
WiMax lost against LTE, says Alcatel Lucent
The mobile industry has clearly chosen LTE over WiMax for the next generation of mobile broadband connectivity, a senior Alcatel Lucent executive has said.
Patrick Plas, Alcatel Lucent's chief operating officer for wireless, said on Monday that the company is "not putting a lot of effort into this technology [WiMax] any longer", adding that upcoming LTE launches by companies such as Verizon showed "a clear direction taken by the industry towards LTE".
Plas is not the first to point out that LTE (the long-term evolution of 3G) is now firmly in the roadmap of most operators — even WiMax backers have acknowledged that their chosen technology is more likely to serve niche markets. It is, however, interesting to hear a telecoms hardware vendor, which still makes and markets WiMax equipment, say it.
According to Plas, LTE handsets are likely to start appearing at the start of 2011, but operators such as Verizon are more interested in data connectivity in the early stages of the technology.
Patrick Plas, Alcatel Lucent's chief operating officer for wireless, said on Monday that the company is "not putting a lot of effort into this technology [WiMax] any longer", adding that upcoming LTE launches by companies such as Verizon showed "a clear direction taken by the industry towards LTE".
Plas is not the first to point out that LTE (the long-term evolution of 3G) is now firmly in the roadmap of most operators — even WiMax backers have acknowledged that their chosen technology is more likely to serve niche markets. It is, however, interesting to hear a telecoms hardware vendor, which still makes and markets WiMax equipment, say it.
According to Plas, LTE handsets are likely to start appearing at the start of 2011, but operators such as Verizon are more interested in data connectivity in the early stages of the technology.
Friday 29 January 2010, 5:32 PM
Motorola to sell phone through Google store
Motorola is to market an Android phone directly to consumers through Google's new online store, in much the same way as the Nexus One smartphone is sold.
Sanjay Jha, the company's chief, revealed the as-yet-unnamed device in an analyst call on Thursday, following Motorola's results announcement.
"In smartphone, we plan to launch at least 20 devices, including at least one direct-to-consumer device with Google," Jha said.
The company has launched several Android phone models in recent months, including the Droid (the Milestone in Europe), which has proved popular in the US.
Motorola's results for the fourth quarter of 2009 showed the company rebounding from the haemorrhaging of cash that characterised most of its previous results over the last year and a half.
"We are pleased with the meaningful progress we made in 2009 in further improving our cost structure and strengthening the operations of the Mobile Devices business," Jha said in a statement. "Our first Android smartphone devices have been very well received. We look forward to broadening our handset portfolio in 2010."
Sanjay Jha, the company's chief, revealed the as-yet-unnamed device in an analyst call on Thursday, following Motorola's results announcement.
"In smartphone, we plan to launch at least 20 devices, including at least one direct-to-consumer device with Google," Jha said.
The company has launched several Android phone models in recent months, including the Droid (the Milestone in Europe), which has proved popular in the US.
Motorola's results for the fourth quarter of 2009 showed the company rebounding from the haemorrhaging of cash that characterised most of its previous results over the last year and a half.
"We are pleased with the meaningful progress we made in 2009 in further improving our cost structure and strengthening the operations of the Mobile Devices business," Jha said in a statement. "Our first Android smartphone devices have been very well received. We look forward to broadening our handset portfolio in 2010."
Friday 29 January 2010, 5:29 PM
Metropolitan Police reveal anti-counterfeiting project
A project designed to limit equipment that organised criminals use in counterfeiting scams has been revealed by the Metropolitan Police.
Project Genesius, which has been running for two years, seeks to encourage the printing industry to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct, to prevent printing equipment and technologies falling into the wrong hands.
Detective chief inspector Nick Downing said at a press conference in New Scotland Yard on Tuesday that the Met would like anyone selling or reselling specialist printing equipment to profile customers.
"Customer profiling is vitally important," said Downing.
Indicators which should raise suspicions if taken together include: if it is a cash only purchase; if there is no delivery address; no invoice required; if purchasers don't quibble about the price; no company name; if it is delivered to a residential address.
In response to a question from ZDNet UK, Downing conceded that a manufacturer or reseller's primary concern was to sell the equipment, but added that the Met would be grateful to the printing industry if it kept its eyes open.
"Yes, their number one priority is business," said Downing. "But we all have a responsibility to make sure [the industry] is selling products in a responsible, safe way."
Project Genesius has resulted in the seizure of hundreds of printers and specialist equipment, the Met said in a press statement on Tuesday.
Project Genesius, which has been running for two years, seeks to encourage the printing industry to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct, to prevent printing equipment and technologies falling into the wrong hands.
Detective chief inspector Nick Downing said at a press conference in New Scotland Yard on Tuesday that the Met would like anyone selling or reselling specialist printing equipment to profile customers.
"Customer profiling is vitally important," said Downing.
Indicators which should raise suspicions if taken together include: if it is a cash only purchase; if there is no delivery address; no invoice required; if purchasers don't quibble about the price; no company name; if it is delivered to a residential address.
In response to a question from ZDNet UK, Downing conceded that a manufacturer or reseller's primary concern was to sell the equipment, but added that the Met would be grateful to the printing industry if it kept its eyes open.
"Yes, their number one priority is business," said Downing. "But we all have a responsibility to make sure [the industry] is selling products in a responsible, safe way."
Project Genesius has resulted in the seizure of hundreds of printers and specialist equipment, the Met said in a press statement on Tuesday.
Wednesday 27 January 2010, 6:31 PM
Apple launches iPad
Apple has launched iPad. Details still coming in, but Steve Jobs has demonstrated it doing things on the Web, playing music, displaying pictures, displaying pictures while playing music, and doing other cool things on the web.
Weighing 1.5 pounds and half an inch thick, the iPad is based on Apple's own custom A4 processor running at 1GHz. There are options for 16, 32, or 64GB of flash storage, and it has 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Battery life is quoted at 10 hours, and like the iPhone it has accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, and a dock connector.
Fully compatible with iPhone applications, which it runs either in native resolution or with each pixel doubled in size, the launch of the iPad also sees a new SDK with support for the full resolution of the device.
Full story here.
Weighing 1.5 pounds and half an inch thick, the iPad is based on Apple's own custom A4 processor running at 1GHz. There are options for 16, 32, or 64GB of flash storage, and it has 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Battery life is quoted at 10 hours, and like the iPhone it has accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, and a dock connector.
Fully compatible with iPhone applications, which it runs either in native resolution or with each pixel doubled in size, the launch of the iPad also sees a new SDK with support for the full resolution of the device.
Full story here.
Monday 25 January 2010, 6:03 PM
Steorn - 120 percent on Saturday?
There has been little official contact between us and Steorn, those plucky proponents of perpetual motion currently being coy with the conservation of energy in a Dublin den of demonstration. In fact, the last volley consisted of me being a bit world-weary in the official forum and CEO Sean saying that the ball was indeed in their court.
However, we do have certain other sources of information close to the Liffey. From these, we now hear that Steorn is gathering up its skirts to make an announcement tomorrow, a promise of a demo on Saturday that will demonstrate your actual over-unity: the Orbo device producing more energy than it consumes.
In the past, Sean has said that the Orbo will manage this to the tune of 3:1 - in other words, churning out three watts for every watt of input. The Saturday demo, our sources confide, will be less dramatic - if they can hit 120 percent, or 1.2 watts out for 1 watt in, it'll be a success.
As indeed it would. The experiment will start at 4pm, run for around thirty minutes, use the 10,000 milliamp-hour D cell (because using electronics to store and feed back the energy would make Joe Public - ie, us - more suspicious than using an enormous battery, apparently), and more than that, we'll have to wait and see. There'll be engineers on hand to answer questions, and more material released in February. But the experiment will "tell alL", and hinge on there being no back EMF on the motor (a technical point you can find discussed at length, though to no particular end, on that Steorn forum).
If I can keep an eye on them from afar, I will - although I have filial responsibilities on Saturday, so I hope that the Steorn lot, being good Irish family types, will forgive me for sins of omission.
However, we do have certain other sources of information close to the Liffey. From these, we now hear that Steorn is gathering up its skirts to make an announcement tomorrow, a promise of a demo on Saturday that will demonstrate your actual over-unity: the Orbo device producing more energy than it consumes.
In the past, Sean has said that the Orbo will manage this to the tune of 3:1 - in other words, churning out three watts for every watt of input. The Saturday demo, our sources confide, will be less dramatic - if they can hit 120 percent, or 1.2 watts out for 1 watt in, it'll be a success.
As indeed it would. The experiment will start at 4pm, run for around thirty minutes, use the 10,000 milliamp-hour D cell (because using electronics to store and feed back the energy would make Joe Public - ie, us - more suspicious than using an enormous battery, apparently), and more than that, we'll have to wait and see. There'll be engineers on hand to answer questions, and more material released in February. But the experiment will "tell alL", and hinge on there being no back EMF on the motor (a technical point you can find discussed at length, though to no particular end, on that Steorn forum).
If I can keep an eye on them from afar, I will - although I have filial responsibilities on Saturday, so I hope that the Steorn lot, being good Irish family types, will forgive me for sins of omission.
Friday 22 January 2010, 5:03 PM
UK local services mobile site gets makeover
The government has rolled out a new version of its mobile Directgov website for local services.
The new-look Directgov mobile site, unveiled on Thursday, pulls together information such as travel alerts, train arrival and departure times, job listings, petrol station and public toilet locations, and local NHS services.
Those wishing to access the service can text MOBILE to the number 83377 in order to receive a link, or type m.direct.gov.uk into their mobile browser.
An iPhone app for travel news is also available for users of Apple's smartphone.
The new-look Directgov mobile site, unveiled on Thursday, pulls together information such as travel alerts, train arrival and departure times, job listings, petrol station and public toilet locations, and local NHS services.
Those wishing to access the service can text MOBILE to the number 83377 in order to receive a link, or type m.direct.gov.uk into their mobile browser.
An iPhone app for travel news is also available for users of Apple's smartphone.
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