Gadget Venue

Microsoft [MSFT] research is working on a project that automatically translates languages by listening to a voice. The demo shown on video over at Giz shows a German researcher at Microsoft speaking in German with the software translating it to English and speaking with a voice.

As will be seen in the video, the translations are a little clunky, but still functional. The system is based around the Bing translation service, so you get almost what you’d get if you were to type the text in to a computer.

Uses for such a system could be to automatically translate conference calls for business, or perhaps translate for anyone wanting to communicate with someone in another language. If Microsoft were to embed this in to their Windows Phone software it could be a very handy feature should you need to talk to someone speaking a different language. Obviously there are a few more obstacles to clear before this could actually happen, but the video does give a glimpse of what could be a few years down the road in terms of translation services. [Read more…]

Over at CeBIT a couple of new Intel Atom processors for Netbooks were spotted called the Intel Atom N455 and Intel Atom N475. Intel have yet to announce these two newly spotted processors even though the announcement was made/released on Saturday regarding the Intel Atom N470.

From what we understand about the two new versions, the Atom N455 looks to be an update to the Intel Atom N450 and the Atom N475 looks to be an update of the Atom N470. It is believed that both will run at the same 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz that the previous models run at with the only difference being that there is support for DDR3 memory instead. [Read more…]

We are now hearing that the Sony PlayStation 3 bug is fixed. Reports are coming in saying that users of the older chunky console can actually now connect without experiencing the errors that were listed earlier.

The PS3 bug was related to the internal clock that effected the older consoles for about the last 24 hours and now that it is fixed, users can log on to the PSN as normal as well as play all games. Trophies are also reported to be re-synced to PS3’s successfully. [Read more…]

Users of Windows 7 RC have been getting warnings for the past few weeks to upgrade their operating system due to the release candidate version expiring. The final date has now hit and if you are running Windows 7 RC then you are probably seeing your computer reboot every 2 hours leaving all open documents unsaved and perhaps being quite annoying at the same time.

If you feel you can live with the bi-hourly shut downs then go ahead and carry on using it although on June 1, the wallpaper will also be changed to say “this copy of Windows is not genuine”. At this point you will be unable to download updates as Windows Update doesn’t function with non genuine copies of the software. [Read more…]

Google Street View has caused a bit of a stir from time to time as some users feel it’s a little intrusive having a camera capture pictures of your home. Generally though it seems like most people actually think it’s a cool service to use.

Google [GOOG] had plans to update the images every 12 months when the service launched although this could be reduced in the EU has it’s way. The 12 monthly updates would allow Google to capture changes in scenery and buildings that have occurred over the year. However, due to various privacy reasons the EU want it changing to the 6 months we mentioned which could lead to great expense for Google to effectively double it’s efforts to achieve the same work. [Read more…]