Google adds Latin to its online translation service

Google added Latin to the automatic translation service, language, number 58 on Google Translate and the first dead language in their repertoire, the company said Thursday.

"We are ecstatic to announce our first set of translation for a language without native speakers," said the internet search company said in a statement.Google said the service (www.translate.google.com) will be useful for more than 100,000 American students taking the National Latin Exam every year, in addition to many other language students worldwide and the translate google.

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"As with all languages, automatic translation to and from the Latin is a difficult problem and we know that our understanding of the ablative absolute or use of the subjunctive would occasionally not work," in the google translate he said.

"However, unlike any of the other languages offered by Google Translate, Latin provides a unique advantage: most texts are written in Latin have already been made, and much comparison of them has been translated into other languages, "he said.

Google widens its multilingual search maps

Google announced the launch in 11 countries in its "Navigation Maps," which includes the voice guidance and allows users to speak Spanish, French, German and Italian advantage of the help in the search for directions.
According to the announcement, users in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland can copy the version 4.2 of Google Maps Navigation, already available in the U.S. and the UK.

In so doing, provide instructions for guidance "to each change of direction" as long as they have a smart phone with Android 1.6 or higher.Google initially said guidance instructions to its operating system for smart mobile phone last October and the decision has had some lasting impact on the field of guided navigation.

For example, in January followed in the footsteps of Nokia and Google announced its own set of guidance instructions Ovi Maps.According to Google, voice communication has always been the natural way to interact with Google Search phone and voice users can say what they want, instead of typing a text.

This facility was initially developed for English and then to Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. The goal, Google said, is to bring "Search" (search) voice users in all languages.

In addition to work with Android phones, "Search" voice phones can run on iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia S60, the firm added.

Moreover, the firm announced a new indexing system, called "Caffeine", according to Google search substantially accelerates data over the network.

Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team explained that before the firm explored a fraction of the network every night, indexed and added content to its results, and now, thanks to "Caffeine", the search engine scans the network, find new information and the index immediately.

"We process the information immediately so that we can offer it seconds later," said Cutts.

When Google started its work updating its index once every four months. Around 2000 he began to index every month in a process that took a week to ten days.

Now is "Caffeine" is used in all schools and, according to Cutts, "greatly increased" the ability to "enhance the indexing of documents in the order of 100 petabytes."

Google buys site Aardvark

Google Inc. bought Aardvark, a free service to get answers on the Web.

Aardvark co-founder, Damon Horowitz, confirmed Thursday the acquisition, without disclosing financial details.
Aardvark was established in 2007 by Horowitz and three entrepreneurs, two of whom worked in Google. Allows users to ask questions that are sent to friends and acquaintances of those friends. The goal is to get relevant answers on any topic as soon as possible.

Users can ask questions via Aardvark Web site and through Twitter, the "chat" on Google or email. Until last October, Aardvark had more than 90,000 users.
Buying Aardvark represents the latest effort by Google to have more services and keep people longer on their sites, instead of just sending it to other destinations.

The transaction represents the return of Google to field sites and answer questions. In 2006 he left Google Answers, 4 years service in which users paid between 2 and $ 200 for answers to your questions from investigators.

Google and Government Partner to fight cyberattacks

Google is finalizing a deal that will allow the National Security Agency United States to help investigate the attack of corporate espionage that could have come from China, said Thursday the Washington Post.

The aim of the research is to better respond to Google, the largest Internet search firm in the world, and its users from future attacks, the Post said, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the agreement.
The sources said that Google's alliance with the NSA electronic surveillance organization more powerful in the world, would aim to allow both parties to share key information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of internet communications .

Under the agreement, the NSA will not see the user searches or e-mail accounts, sources said. Google does not share ownership data with the NSA, said.

Google took on January 12 the unusual step of announcing that he was the victim of sophisticated cyber attacks in mid-December and is reviewing its business operation in China.

The company based in Silicon Valley said the cyberattacks directed against activists Gmail accounts of human rights defenders Chinese and a research fund of at least 20 other large companies had been targeted.China responded several days later with a defense of state control over the Internet. A senior official said internet pornography, fraud, and rumors were a threat and the means of the internet should help "guide public opinion" in China.

The U.S. director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair said Tuesday that the cyberattacks against Google were a warning.The partnership between the giant Internet search and the NSA touches sensitive issues about how to balance individual privacy and national security online.

Google went to the NSA as a result of the attacks, but achieving agreement took weeks because of the sensitive nature of the exchange of information between both parties.
The focus of the cooperative society will not be in determining who was behind the attacks, the Post said citing sources. That would be almost impossible.

Instead, the goal is to build a better defense of the networks of Google, or what experts call "information security", according to the Post quoted its sources.

Disclaimer board member of Google for conflict

Google Inc. announced the resignation of a board member who also serves as a director at Apple Inc. in a move that eliminates a potential conflict of interest at a time when both companies are competing more directly.
Arthur Levinson, chairman of the biotechnology company Genentech Inc. and board member of Google since April 2004, resigned immediately. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Levinson has been a key part of Google's success in the past five years, "but gave no specific reasons for his resignation.
The announcement comes at a time when federal regulators carefully examine the ties between the two companies.
Schmidt resigned from his post on the board of Apple weeks ago, shortly after Google announced plans to give developing an operating system for computers that would compete with Apple's operating system, Mac OS. Google also produces software for mobile phones based in direct competition with the iPhone.

The increasing overlap of products of the two firms had made the Federal Trade Commission consider the dual role of Schmidt, concerned about the potential for cooperation that would reduce competition in the sector. After Schmidt resigned his seat on the board of Apple, the FTC said it would continue reviewing Levinson's ties with companies.
Google shares rose $ 8.03 to $ 524.28 by midday in the Stock Exchange in New York. Shares of Apple rose 29 cents to $ 190.76.

Google sits on the bench for pirating French books

The Internet search company Google on Thursday sat on the bench of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris for an alleged crime of "hacking" denounced by French publishers before scanning and made freely available on the network of many of his books.
The complaint was lodged by the publisher The Martinière in June 2006 to verify that Google had digitized and posted on the Internet several of his titles in a process conducted in U.S. libraries.
Subsequently, he joined the National Union of Publishers (SNE), which groups five hundred publishing houses, and the Society of People of Letters (SGDL).
In its digitization process works to create a World Digital Library, Google included some that are subject to payment of copyright and, in that, underlying the claim of the complainants.
The head of the Martinière Hervé de Martinière denounced "this sort of arrogance that makes your books and take without asking digitize.
According to publishers, Google has digitized more than 100,000 French securities, in an agreement it signed with the great French libraries to use their funds.
The lawyer claimed that publishers stop digitizing books French under a penalty of 100,000 euros per day (147,972 dollars) and sought damages worth 15 million euros (22 million).
He said Google is "parasitizing" the work of publishers with a practice "unlawful and dangerous and harmful to publishers."
The defense focused much of his speech to try to answer the French court's competence to judge events that are occurring in America.
Moreover, the software giant's lawyers noted that concerns the digitization of short excerpts of works to develop a search tool, which they claim is covered by the right to quote and not have to pay royalties.
The verdict will be delivered on Dec. 18, but in the meantime, the editors do not rule out opening talks with Google as they just did their U.S. counterparts.

Reprints Google had digitized texts

Google Inc. will give two million books in its digital library can reappear in the print world.

As part of an agreement announced Wednesday, Google opened part of its index to the inventor of a high speed printer that can produce a paperback book and 300 pages in less than five minutes. The new service is a recognition that not everyone wants to read his books on a computer or on a digital readout as those manufactured by Sony Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.

The fastest printer called "Espresso Book Machine" and has several years running, but may charge notoriety now has access to many books scanned from some of the largest libraries in the world. And On Demand Books, owner of Espresso, could get access to texts more difficult to achieve if Google gets court approval to the settlement of a class action that gives the right to sell print books.

"This is a key event for us," Dane said Nelle, executive director of On Demand Books, watching a demonstration of the espresso machine Wednesday at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Some of the books that Google has spent the last five years for scanning into digital format back to their origin on paper.

"It's like the circle was completed," said Google spokeswoman Jennie Johnson. "This will allow the public to get the physical copy of a book even if only one or two copies in a library in this country, or if not available here at all."

Google acquires system that prevents fraud and digitizes books

Google acquired a program developed at Carnegie Mellon that seeks to reduce spam and phishing, as it scans books.

With reCAPTCHA, the user must complete simple word games in order to register on a Web page or by completing an electronic purchase. As computers by themselves can not decipher distorted letters or numbers, the product ensures that customers really are and not automated programs that are running the board.

But reCAPTCHA offers something else: the puns come from real books, which makes the system you create digital versions of texts as users enter the words.

Google Inc. was developing a project of scanning books to place on the internet. In most cases, the "scan" and then used a program for optical character recognition engines that allow you to use in the text. However, this technique does not always work in books with impairments or with distorted letters. In such cases, the choice was typed by hand the work.

ReCAPTCHA offers another alternative to take the pieces that the computer does not recognize and separate them into individual words that are used in safety tests on the internet. Then again reCAPTCHA reconstruct the text of the book with the words entered by users.

Luis von Ahn, Carnegie Mellon professor who developed the tool and reCAPTCHA founded the company in 2008, said the program is great for Google.

Were not disclosed details of the acquisition, announced on Wednesday.

Google hopes that readers browse the new format

Google Inc. is testing a new format that will be assumed that reading stories online as easy as flipping through a magazine, a change that could eventually provide additional advertising sales revenue-hungry publishers.

The leader of Internet search revealed Monday the experiment called "Fast Flip" (Quick Tour) in a conference presented by TechCrunch, a popular blog of the global network.

The service is intended to replicate the visual appearance and operation of a print publication. The stories are displayed on websites that can be moved quickly by pressing large arrows at the side instead of the standard web link required to wait several seconds to display a page. Readers can choose through the content based on topics, favorite writers and publications.

For now, Fast Flip display only the first page of a story. Readers who wish to continue will have to click through the site's editor, where the deployment is rolled back to a traditional Internet page.

More than three dozen publishers, broadcasters and electronic media Web sites have agreed to share their content on Fast Flip. Among the participants are two major daily newspapers: The New York Times and Washington Post and major magazines like Newsweek and BusinessWeek.

Publishers who provide stories to Fast Flip get the bulk of the revenue from ads that Google tries to show in the new format. That is a change in relation to the main search page of Google and its news section, where the company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, gets all the money from the ads displayed alongside headlines and snippets of stories.

Fast Flip is the latest step made by Google to improve its relationship with publishers of newspapers and magazines, many of whom have complained that the company benefits financially from its articles without sharing the money.