Google has a lot of things going on, obviously – they rate a lot of lines here. But then there’s the video at the bottom as well

Google: Firms can get rid of Office in a year

By Victoria Ho ZDNet Asia – Posted on ZDNet News: Nov 13, 2009 6:06:14 AM

SINGAPORE–In a year, most enterprises will have the choice to “get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to”, suggests Dave Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise division.

Girouard, one of the company’s four presidents including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, said in an interview with ZDNet Asia that he expects Google’s online document application, Google Docs, to reach a “point of capability” next year that will serve the “vast majority’s needs.”

He acknowledged that Docs is currently “much less mature” than Google Mail or Calendar. “We know it. We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet,” he said.

But, this is expected to change in a year, when the company’s introduces some “thirty to fifty” updates to Docs to beef up the SaaS (software-as-a-service) office suite. These will include updates to features and performance, Girouard said.

“That having been said, I don’t think Office will entirely disappear,” he added. Instead, Microsoft’s offering will become a specialized offering for office workers who need its additional functions, akin to Adobe Photoshop, which is targeted at skilled workers, said Girouard. Microsoft Office is “an overkill tool for most people”, he noted.

For more, read “Google: Firms can get rid of Office in a year” on ZDNet Asia.

A new look for Google Translate

11/16/2009 02:07:00 AM
Today, we’ve launched three new features as well as a new look and feel for Google Translate — a service that helps people access information throughout the world by enabling them to automatically translate text and and web pages into their own language. Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today.

Along with our shiny new layout, these new features should make it faster and easier for you to translate text between our 2550 language pairs:

• Translate instantly: Say goodbye to the old “Translate” button. Google Translate now translates your text right as you type.

• Read and write any language: Want to say “Today is a good day” in Chinese, but can’t read Han characters? Click “Show romanization” to read the text written phonetically in English. Right now, this works for all non-Roman languages except for Hebrew, Arabic and Persian.

We also have a new input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi. If you want to translate from one of these languages, but can’t type the script on your keyboard, our input transliteration feature will allow you to type words as they sound and convert them to native script.

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• Text-to-speech: When translating into English, you can now also hear translations in spoken form by clicking the Speaker Icon.

Watch Josh, an engineer on our team, give a quick demo of the new Google Translate:

We hope these improvements will make reading, learning and communicating in foreign languages easier and more fun. As we continue to improve the precision of our automatic translation system, we’re also always looking for ways to evolve and improve our interface. Let us know if you have any feedback on these changes in our discussion group.

(originally posted by Awaneesh Verma, Product Manager)

Who says computer gaming can’t still be fun?

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