Learn about Google Translate in Coffee with a Googler

Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate

Over the past few months, we’ve been bringing you Coffee with a Googler, giving you a peek at people working on cool stuff that you might find inspirational and useful. Starting with this week’s episode, we’re going to accompany each video with a short post for more details, while also helping you make the most of the tech highlighted in the video.

This week we meet with MacDuff Hughes from the Google Translate team. Google Translate uses statistics based translation. By finding very large numbers of examples of translations from one language to another, it uses statistics to see how various phrases are treated, so it can make reasonable estimates at the correct phrases that are natural sounding in the target language. For common phrases, there are many candidate translations, so the engine converts them within the context of the passage that the phrase is in. Images can also be translated. When you point your mobile device at printed text and it will translate to the preferred for you.

Translate is adding languages all the time, and part of its mission is to serve languages that are less frequently used such as Gaelic, Welsh or Maori, in the same manner as the more commonly used ones, such as English, Spanish and French. To this end, Translate supports more than 90 languages. In the quest to constantly improve translation, the technology provides a way for the community to validate translations, and this is particularly used by less commonly used translations, effectively helping them to grow and thrive. It also enhances the machine translation by having people involved too.

You can learn more about Google Translate, and the translate app here.

Developers have a couple of options to use translate:

• The Free Website Translate plugin that you can add to your site and have translations available immediately.
• The Cloud-based Translate API that you can use to build apps or sites that have translation in them.

Watch the episode here:

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Google I O and whats next for work

Posted by Amit Singh, President, Google for Work

Google I/O, our annual developer conference, is wrapping up this afternoon. I always love this event because it’s our chance to shine the spotlight on our amazing global developer community – the creative coders who are building what’s next. As we think about developers, along with our own products and tools, we’re focused on the big opportunities of the future: provide the best-in-class mobile platform, help the next billion users by putting the power of the Internet in their hands and solving big problems to make people’s lives better through machine learning and access to great products. There were lots of exciting announcements this year, from Now on Tap to a completely new Photos experience. If you haven’t already, be sure to watch the keynote given by Sundar Pichai, SVP of Products and read the official blog post. For cool scenes and coverage from the floor, check out our Google for Work at I/O Collection on Google+.

I’m particularly excited that many of the announcements we made will impact the world of Google for Work and Google for Education. To highlight a few:

• Android M. Android’s latest release packs hundreds of performance improvements, including better battery life, easier app linking and streamlined permissions. And with our recent launch of Android for Work, the momentum for Android in the workplace is growing.

• Firebase. One of the key themes of this year’s I/O is empowering developers with the tools they need to thrive. To that end, Firebase makes building great mobile and web apps easier than ever. It manages the infrastructure on the backend on behalf of mobile developers so they can focus on the high-value stuff: delivering an awesome user experience on the front end. Firebase addresses key mobile use cases, including native support for offline usage when a network connection is unavailable, and automatic data synchronization in real time to the cloud and across diverse client devices. Nearly 200,000 developers rely on Firebase already, and I’m confident it will help accelerate development of mobile apps, including enterprise apps. Check out the team’s I/O Session to learn more.

• Inbox. Back in October, we introduced a new kind of inbox—one that works for you. In March we announced the Inbox early adopter program, to bring Inbox by Gmail to Google Apps customers. And while we’re still in the early stages, at Google I/O we announced that we’re expanding the early adopter program so any Google Apps for Work customer who wants to use Inbox can. We also announced new ways Inbox can help save you time and stay organized, with Undo Send to take back emails you realize are a mistake, even from your mobile phone, and something many of you requested: custom signatures.

• Places API for iOS. We launched the Places API for Android in April, along with an iOS beta. Now the Places API for iOS is officially available for all developers with all the same features as the Android version. This means you can integrate Google’s database of 100 million places worldwide into your app experience. Check out the announcement post to learn more and read customer experiences.

• Google Expeditions. Expeditions is a new educational tool that lets teachers take their classes on virtual field trips to anywhere using Google Cardboard. It’s a great, inexpensive way for the next generation of creators to experience their world.

We know that technology works best when it gets out of the way and helps people get stuff done from anywhere. These announcements are a step in that direction: new approaches to managing email, powerful tools for developers to build great apps and an updated version of Android. The future of work is bright, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

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My fight with Samsung part 1

It is a common knowledge that the theory is one thing and the practice is sometimes completely different. Today Ive felt on my own skin how Samsung is trying to fool its customers. Keep on reading and please share this on any of your social network.

Some time ago I bought a Samsung tablet – Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition). Few days ago I realized that the S-Pen stylus is no longer working. The touch screen simply didnt react when I was trying to write anything on the front panel. So I took the device to the authorized Samsung service in Krakow - "W&K Wlodarski ?ukasz". 

How much I was surprised when I received a text message after 20 minutes that my device is ready to be picked up. When I came back I was told that the warranty is voided because of "unauthorized software integration". Lets now point out some important technical details.

1. In ODIN mode: CURRENT BINARY: Samsung Official
2. In ODIN mode: SYSTEM STATUS: Official
3. Current OS: official P605XXUCNF2
4. Kernel: official
5. Recovery: official
6. ROOTED: no!

So... what the f... hell? Where is the "unauthorized software integration"?

I asked the technician for some more details. He wasnt able to answer any of my questions. He wasnt able to show me this "software integration" and what would that be.

Lets now focus on the legal part. Warranty terms attached to my device do state about software modifications, but its a crucial ability to read it with understanding and a proper interpretation.

What does it mean? The key word in this part is "due to". So basically, there has to be a causal link (a cause ---> effect relationship). So if the modified software caused the failure, the warranty does not cover it. But if the modified software has no relation with the failure, then YOU MUST FIX IT, DEAR SAMSUNG!

The other very important thing is the burden of proof. The burden of proof is the imperative on a party in a trial to produce the evidence that will shift the conclusion away from the default position to ones own position. In simply words that means: if you say something - prove it! It is not MY obligation to prove that I havent modified the software. If you, dear Samsung claim that my warranty is voided because of software modification, you need to prove this software modification.

To sum up this first part:

1. Samsung service didnt prove their statement that I made an unauthorized software integration.
2. Samsung service didnt demonstrate a causal relationship between the unauthorized software integration (if there was one) and the device failure.
3. Samsung service refused to fix my device and the worker said "Sir you have no chance, just give up and leave".

Few minutes ago I wrote a long e-mail to Samsung support centre, explaining the whole situation. What comes next? Lets wait for a part two...

Please share it.

Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!

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Samsung Look Package Some Fundamentals

Again, based on the fact that the Samsung SmartApp Challenge  that has already begun on the 5^th of September and is going on currently with the last date of submission being 30^thNov 2013, which expects the use of the pen package and the look package, this is the promised article on the look package. Let us start from some fundamentals.

First, What is Look?

From the last 3 articles, we have seen that Samsung Mobile SDK is a SDK that brings 10 different small packages together into one SDK to ease the developers world. Look is a java package available as part of that same Samsung Mobile SDK. It is a package that provides specialized widgets for additional functions beyond what the Android Views already provide. And of course it builds on what the pen package already provides. In fact, Look requires that S Pen be used to access its features.

Next, then, what are the functions Look provides?

It supports

• ·      WritingBuddy – This basically helps by giving an editor when a S Pen comes closer to an area that can take an input from the pen. The user can write in this editor, which would then by recognized by the WritingBuddy and converted into a digital format for further usage! 

Quite a useful feature considering that the S Pen would lead to a lot of apps that would take a written input but the UI should still be compact with out having large canvases occupying the UI for pen inputs. 

     

      This can be used with on any view layouts and in TextEdit. WritingBuddy recognizes numbers and alpahabets and even handwriting images which would lead to usages like signature recognition etc.

• ·      AirButton – I see this feature as an advanced context sensitive menu! A set of items or images or what ever may be relevant to a particular context can be shown using an air button. 

The wow factor in this is you can creatively define the gravity, the direction and the display type making it look like a feature that was always needed but not invented till now!

Based on the user selection of a menu item / a recent item display there, the next set of actions can be invoked.

• ·      SmartClip – As the name says, SmartClip is indeed a smart clipboard, which does not just capture the selected content, but also the metadata related to the content! This metadata is converted to text that can be searched on or sent to other applications for further use.  

This is certainly an interesting feature that can be used very imaginatively to provide seamless copy and paste options between various apps and also help in capturing related content.

This feature would look more magical especially when there is metadata available with the content captured. For example, if there are URLs that are part of the content that is captured, the SmartClip can capture data from the URL too and send it to the destination app.

• ·      PointerIcon – This is a good to have feature – something that is taken for granted in many desktop apps but has found its way into a mobile through this package! 

This allows you to modify the look of the pointer when you place an S Pen on a view.

The Look Package Architecture

This diagram is taken from the Samsung documentation.

Lot of custom apps can be developed using the look package and as you see the look package is mainly an extension to the Android View package.

The Development environment

In order to develop an app that uses the look package and support all of the above-mentioned features, you need to download the complete Samsung Mobile SDKwhich can be downloaded independently or through an eclipse. Both ways of downloading the SDK and setting up the Development environment are described here.