Google working on speech translation for phones

Google already runs a successful online translator, Google Translate, but they’ve got far-loftier ideas than simply converting the written word. They want to translate languages spoken over the phone, according to their head of translation services.

Speaking to The Times, Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, said:

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on.

If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently.”

Apple tablet “in full production”

An analyst at AVI Securities said Friday morning that the Apple tablet is “in full production” and a research note stated that Apple “NAND” flash chip requirements may be increasing because of the tablet.

The Apple tablet information comes from “a maker of components going into the Apple tablet,” according to analyst Matt Thornton. “It’s been in the supply chain for a while and entered full production this month. A couple of suppliers actually had weaker Decembers than they would have expected because production was pushed back a little bit,” he said in an interview.

Thornton expects little cannibalization of smartphones and notebooks. “You can either fit something comfortably in your pocket or not,” he said, referring to the expectation that the tablet will not be a pocketable device.

From CNET.com

Google plans January 5 Android press event

Google has announced an Android related press conference for January 5, the same day that earlier reports indicated would see the launch of the Google Phone, Nexus One.

Invitations were sent to various members of the media Tuesday promoting the event at Google’s headquarters, to be held just as the annual CES gadget fest gets under way in Las Vegas. Expectations are high that Google will use the occasion to announce the launch of the Nexus One phone as its first phone sold directly to consumers.

It also seems Google is finally ready to address the questions that have risen about its Android strategy following reports that it planned to sell this particular phone directly to consumers through its Web site. Google has invested a lot of time and money during 2009 promoting the Android phones of its partners–namely Motorola and Verizon–and could be about to complicate the work of those partners with its own device.

In any event, Google’s announcement will likely kick off a crowded week for the technology industry and could perhaps overshadow any news to emerge from CES later in the week.

From CNET.com

Google Phone is called the Nexus One

Nexus One Concept

It’s just about confirmed now: Google will sell its own phone, built by HTC and named the Nexus One.

It will sell the Google Phone online and unlocked, so you’ll need to buy your cellular service separately. The entire user experience is designed by Google, according to the WSJ. It may resemble the HTC Passion, pictured.

Here are the details so far:
Software: Android 2.1

– Hardware: HTC

– Specs (according to Jason Howell): Capactive touch screen, on screen keyboard only, thin, scroll ball, and animated desktop wallpaper

– Launch date: Rumored January 2010

– Tweets describe it as “an iPhone on beautifying steroids.”

– Google designed the entire user experience

– Google will sell the phone online, unlocked

– Google is “dogfooding” the Google Phone and has given it to employees all over the world to test it.

Final release of Nexus One

Will you have interest in buying a Nexus One? Let me know in the comments.

From Mashable.com