E-Paper
ACHTUNG! Auto translation in search
A new service will automatically translate any German search term into English and French, and will simultaneously search websites in those languages, writes Deepak Mankar.
Hands-on, "breaking news", eyewitness history, anyone? Try Durga Das's India From Curzon to Nehru and After (Rupa & Co, New Delhi, 2004, Rs.295/-). Or, if there's a Strand Book Stall near you, Rs.236/- only. It's one of the best ways of updating one's knowledge of recent history.
Durga Das's writing, happily enough, is objective, sane, even-keeled, fast paced - and without rancour or malice even when he's telling a tale of the wickedest villainy. He has told whatever happened as he "saw" it happen. As an Associated Press of India employee and a close associate of KC Roy, the news syndication pioneer in India, right from the time of Curzon's viceroyalty, Durga Das had an intimate access to the high and the mighty.
He used his opportunity to advantage and did a great job of news gathering and dissemination for a long, long time. The book is an insider's take on and a view from the wings of twentieth century Indian history. Absolutely edge-of-the-seat reading, far more exciting than the most thrilling of thrillers! Read a sample excerpt here: hvk.org.
ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! Auto translation in search.
"You urgently need to know how many bags of rice have just fallen from a certain truck in Lyon (or any other town in any foreign country with a language that you're not fluent in), and you just can't find the information on the Web. What will you do?" asks Katja Riefler (15 July) at E-Media Tidbits. poynter.org. In the old days, you'd have to rely on the hit-and-miss way of thinking up various search terms, getting them machine-translated and going on searching. But, says she, "Yahoo!'s Search Blog ysearchblog.com just announced that it has introduced a beta version of a search translation technology on the German Yahoo! search site yahoo.com.
The new service will automatically translate any German search term into English and French, will simultaneously search websites in those languages, and will present a translated result list! Even better, a click will present you with a translated page, just as Babelfish altavista.com does!" And: "You still can see which language a result originated from and … switch to the site in its original language if you can't make much sense of the machine translation. But my first tests showed … it looks like a really useful service." Want to know more? Try this link: searchenginewatch.com.
THE WEB CHANGES. Text to multi-media.
Under production right now and slated for a 6 September launch is PBS's first Internet-only, downloadable TV series: NerdTV. It'll feature PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely's interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology, e.g., PayPal co-founder Max Levchin; original Macintosh programmer Andy Hertzfeld; and Sun Microsystems co-founder and the father of Berkeley UNIX, Bill Joy. pbs.org. Cringely explains: "NerdTV will have an uninterrupted hour with the smartest, funniest and sometimes nerdiest people in high tech. These are people who have changed our lives whether we know it or not.
Through NerdTV a broad audience of enthusiasts and students will gain a much greater understanding of these techies and the context of their lives and work." lostremote.com True, it'll most likely attract the techie crowd to begin with. But by and by the audience will turn mainstream and the old distribution channels will become less relevant. Random BedHead Ed's comment: edholden.com. Also cited by Slashdot: slashdot.org.
SPARE THE TREES. Read front pages online.
Take a look at Newseum newseum.org. It shows the front pages of 300 newspapers for free. Now there's a Flash interface newseum.org - a nice addition so you can choose a continent and use your mouse to see front pages by location rather than alphabetically. Then there's PressDisplay pressdisplay.com - a service of Newspaper Direct - that lets you see 225 newspaper front pages for free.
You also can read the rest of the papers if you are willing to pay. A useful feature is the ability to search through a newspaper by keyword, something that is a little difficult in the paper version. PressDisplay uses AJAX on top of a .NET server. (AJAX wikipedia.org is the current craze on the Internet - also the technology that powers Google Maps google.com.
BANNER ADS THAT JUST MAY WORK. Meet 'eMiniMalls'.
At long last, Katja Riefler (E-Media Tidbits, 13 July) found Chitika chitika.com, "a pay-per-click contextual advertising service based in Marlborough, Massachussetts, that has introduced "eMiniMalls" - banners I'd probably like to click on if offered in the right context". In other words, these banners are "a sort of mini-shops" with "prices, product reviews, and links to merchants". They use the Demo-Banner chitika.com to show the services on Chitika's website. Earlier on NYTimes.com nytimes.com had more background on the service.
Bob Tedeschi in his article entitled 'Internet Banner Ads Look to Get More Interesting (and Thus Less Easy to Ignore)' explains the concept as follows: "Late last month, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), an advertising company based in Marlborough, Mass., began testing eMiniMalls, a technology that scans a Web page, chooses a product the reader might be interested in, then displays banner ads that are miniature shopping comparison pages, with prices, product reviews and links to merchants."
He cites Gary Stein, an analyst with Jupiter Research, an online consultancy, who opines: "I know it's interactive, and shopping search is a good idea, but it's still perceived as this thing, this space. Banners just aren't all that great at attracting attention." Nonetheless, argues Tedeschi: "Chitika's unusual approach to banners is aimed at attracting attention. The ads, which are being tested by a handful of online publishers, including the college savings site upromise.com, allow users to click on different tabs to view various features of a product without being whisked away to another site."
NO MORE RELEVANT? Disintermediation revisited.
One of my earliest feelings about the Internet was that it would make intermediaries irrelevant and thus cut costs. Now, years later, I came across an article by John Battelle who used to edit Wired magazine once on this very topic. adage.com. In it, he defines disintermediation as "just another way of saying that you've become irrelevant to your customers." For the content makers, it may be advantageous because they can now go directly to their audience without the need to be employed by a media company.
Battelle's advice for both marketers and publishers is along the following lines. Make sure, he urges, that your content is visible prominently "when the consumer's intent is declared" — that is, when they look for something on search engines. Encourage links to your content, because links enable you to "join the conversation". Look for new models to connect content, audience and marketers. Makes sense, doesn't it?
That's all for now though there's plenty more out there. Join me again next week, same place.
Copyright (c) 2001- 2005 by Deepak Mankar. All rights reserved. Deepak Mankar, an advertising practitioner on the creative side since 1965, is also intensely passionate about the web and web content creation. Read his online articles athttp://www.asiaondemand.com/. Website:http://www.addgandhi.com/original/. You may e-mail him at dmankar@bom8.vsnl.net.in
