Tag Archives: google

Make Google Translate go a bit mad

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Google Translate is quite good, especially since it has a speech function that’ll read out most translations for you.

You can make it go a bit odd too. What I did was translate a simple English word or phrase into Chinese (Simplified), then copied the Chinese characters and pasted them into the input box. Now, leave the ‘From’ language as English and choose another language to translate to – like German or Afrikaans, it doesn’t matter so long as the ‘Listen’ option appears.

So you’re translating English to some other language, but instead of writing English in the input box, you paste some Chinese.

Wait for it to translate (it won’t) and then hit ‘Listen’ and listen to the gibberish that comes out. It reminds me of the speech from the old Amiga and Atari game Captain Blood.

New Google is not Good Google

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Google have been messing around updating their design again…

No Google, this is not a good layout.

Not only has the handy horizontal bar gone that clearly separates the search box from the results, but they’ve now added a sidebar with options on. I think I’d rather just press the “Advanced search” button if it’s all the same to you. The sidebar is annoying, I read from the left to the right which means I look at the sidebar before seeing the search results. Google have already done studies that show people hate waiting, even for milliseconds.

And please, never ever try to override the host OS’s GUI controls, it just looks horrible. If you must, at least make them match your own web browser’s style…

Cloud Computing Fail!

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Google Docs failing to save a document

Google Docs failing to save a document

There I was, working away on a Google Docs file, enjoying the whole “cloud computing” idea. I type data into my browser, magic happens and it gets stored somewhere. Using any other PC I can edit the data.

And it’s great until it breaks, then you can lose data and there’s nothing that can be done. For reasons unknown to me the login cookie expired while editing a document on Google Docs. I didn’t notice this until pressing ‘Save’ gave me the error you see in the image.

If you see this error, you’re pretty much screwed since there is no way to save your data locally if the network goes down, your browser has a fit, or something else breaks the delicate link between your PC and the almighty Google. You just sort of have to keep the browser open and hope things fix themselves.

Which is kind of crap if you want to switch your PC off for the night.

Fortunately I tried to load Docs up in a second tab and it asked me to log in again, solving the problem.

They do need some sort of “emergency” backup option though for when the network really does go down. I’ve not lost data due to my PC locking up for years because pressing Ctrl-S is usually guaranteed to work. Google won’t be scaring Microsoft if basic things like printing and saving don’t work properly…

The new Glen Coe mountain route

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You take the high road, and I'll take the low road

I’ve found other Google Maps mistakes before, but this one is quite fun. Now, while I’m aware Scotland contains many steep mountain passes, that are only just passable in a car I don’t quite think this is one of them.

According to this image, the A82 splits in two – you can either take the normal route through the valley, or strike off purposefully onto the Aonach Eagach ridge… in your car.

Maybe not.