Google Translation Fail - An Obituary

I have friends who live in various places around the world.  One of my friends from France had a relative who died.  I googled for the obituary.  Since is was on a server in France, and I operate in English, Google Chrome automagically decided to translate the obituary for me.  Here is the result:


you are sad to announce the death Geneviève ******* occurred December 16, at the age of 84. The worship of thanksgiving will be celebrated Tuesday, December 18, at 15 am at the Church of Temple Prostestante Unie de France Condé-sur-Noireau. According to his wishes, the collection will be done without his presence. That natural flowers. It will not be sent invitations this opinion in its stead. The family thanks the people who will be associated with his sentence. Mrs. Florence ****,  303, rue de Paris, Flers

French should be an easy language to translate it. If I can speak French (and I can), any reasonably trained computer program should be able to understand and translate.  And Google is the best of the best, and yet it still can't get it right.  It didn't know context. It didn't know it was an obituary.  It didn't even know that the subject was a woman. It confuses gender more than once.  The most intriguing part is that the poor 84 year old woman appears to have been sentenced to death, according to the second last sentence in the paragraph, and the family seems happy and filled with gratitude over the death sentence.

This just proves the old adage:

If the translator is a man, HE translates.
If the translator is a woman, SHE translates.
If the translator is a computer, IT translates.
If the translator is either a man or a woman, S/HE translates.
Whether the translator is a man, a woman or a computer, S/H/IT translates.

Need A Huge Expansion of Google Street View and Google Meander

I love Google Street View. I use it all the time. Sometimes it comes in handy. For example, a colleague in Los Angeles emailed me. She had received a business proposal for the Bahamas and my colleague was on the evaluation committee. The proposal had come from a person living in United Kingdom, who said that he represented a large, going concern that was capable of doing a multi-million dollar project. She sent me the individual's name and address. A Google search yielded little, so I plugged in the address into Street View. As it turned out, the building that this individual lived in, was far from the type of house that the CEO of a multi-million dollar company would live in. The address was for a rather dingy, run-down townhouse in London.

If I wonder what a place looks like, I call up Google Street View. Recently I came across some literature about a hot springs spa in Eastern Europe, and I decided to call up Street View to see what the area looked at. I was surprised to find that one could (virtually) "drive" right into the resort and see the bubbling pools. This was a surprise to me as to how they got the Google camera car on a footpath, until I saw a shadow, shown in the above pic.  It is called Google Meander, and it is a backpack based Street View. Since then I have seen Google Meander at the Anne of Green Gables House on Prince Edward Island and other places.

The possibilities of Google Meander blew me away.  Right now, I can take a virtual road trip to anywhere -- say Ottumwa, Iowa, the fictional home of Radar O'Reilly of M*A*S*H fame. I can drive through the streets and to the highways leading to it, and it gives a fairly good idea of the area and what it looks like. But it isn't enough.

On a road trip, you stop and look around at what there is to see. Suppose people, businesses, attractions, restaurants, stores, museums, etc paid Google to do a meander along the way. For example, if you are virtually driving a highway and come up to a rest stop, you could meander inside to see if it were the place were you could buy your lunch, gas, souvenirs, and check out the bathroom facilities.

A meander through the public parts of a museum would give you a good idea if you were interested in paying admission. A meander through a souvenir shop would tell you quickly whether it was just a tourist trap with cheap Chinese junk or if it had stuff of cultural significance.

We live in an information world, and the Street View mapping has done wonders, but it could go a lot further. Google, are you listening? Being a Meandering Man would be a great job, and Bob Dylan would write a song about me.

Another Google Software Bug on Blogger

I like the Google Blogger platform, but as smart as the geeks at Google are, it is somewhat gratifying to see that even the mighty Google has software bugs.  It makes me feel downright self-righteous and happy when I discover a Google Software bug, because I know that I am not alone in creating bugs.

I haven't posted here for 4 days, because I have been busy, and then this blogging platform has been hit by a bug.  I try to upload a picture from my computer to my blog, and I get this black window saying "In order to select an item from your online storage, please sign in".  WTF?  Who said anything about online storage.  I want to upload a pic from my computer.

Nothing seems to fix it but waiting it out under some brainiac at Google finds out that their precious software isn't working as it should.

Sometimes it takes awhile.  The only cure is to wait it out until Google fixes it.

Google Chrome Pages Unresponsive Problem

Chrome has lost its shine for me.  I just wasted a few hours trying to get my wife's machine running.  She is not a heavy internet user and uses it primarily for email, the odd Skype chat and streaming a radio station.  So yesterday, Chrome started to misbehave.  It simply wouldn't work.  The picture above showed with the message:

The following page(s) have become unresponsive.  You can wait for them to become responsive or kill them.

So what to do.  At first I thought it was the machine.  It is an old one with Vista and Celeron processor.  I ran a registry cleaner.  I cleaned out the cache and cookies.  When that didn't work, I uninstalled Chrome, and re-installed.  Then it wouldn't even start.  I uninstalled it again, and ran the best virus and malware program that I have.  It ran all night.  Nada.  The machine was clean.

I tried Internet Explorer.  It worked just fine and relatively fast.  I suspected that Google made an update to Chrome.  I spent an hour or two Googling.  A Google site suggested that I navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\  and change Default folder name to backup Default.  Nothing.

Another suggestion was to append --no-sandbox in the shortcut panel to the command line.  Nada again.

I was just about to give up, when I tried this one last thing:

• Right click google chrome shortcut.
• Click on properties menu itme.
• Click shortcut tab in the opened panel.
• add this in target destination --disable-hang-monitor

to make it look like this:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-hang-monitor

This made Google Chrome work again.  But it sure took the shine off of Chrome for me.

When Yahoo is in doubt, it copies Google

 (Doesn't Yahoo Mail look suspiciously like Google's Gmail below?)

When Marissa Mayer was hired to turn around Yahoo, one of the first things that she did (other than whelping some progeny) was to bring in all of the remote workers.  That was supposed to be a big turnaround move.

Apparently the next step is to re-face Yahoo mail which happened recently.  So they copied the highly successful Gmail.  If it wasn't for the branding, you couldn't tell the difference, other than the colors are reversed - white for messages and light blue for background and vice versa.

So how much are they paying Ms. Mayer.  I am sure that I could have done the same with half of her salary.  All right you Yahoos, get yer fat-ass derrieres back in the office and lets copy Google.  Hey, I could be an extremely high paid tech exec.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it also could be the final form of desperation.  You can quote me on that.

Google Blogger Problem: You have logged out from another location. Do you want to log in again

Today, I had difficulty with my blogs and Google Blogger.  I would click on a blog to edit a comment that I received and from my Blogger dashboard, the page would load, but after the header I would get this error:

You have logged out from another location. Do you want to log in again

When I clicked yes, it opened a new window, and I got the same deal, all the while saying that I was logged in, but the popup box telling me that I wasn't.  My google account at YouTube worked and my Gmail worked, so it was a head-scratcher.

 After searching fruitlessly to report this to Google, I found that there is no direct way to contact Google by email.  After a long more useless link clicking, I came upon the Blogger forum.  It turns out that I was not alone.

Yesterday, the community forum guy from Google said to log in using httpS at blogger.com.  I kept missing the httpS and just tried logging in using http.  ie go to https://www.blogger.com and log in.  I did and all was working again after trying intermittently all day.  What a royal pain.

So, do a secure login with https at blogger.com.  It works, because I am posting this now and I couldn't get to my blogs at all today.

Hope this helps.

Google's Soft Censorship of Images

(click on picture for larger image)

This morning, I saw something completely new from Google -- soft censorship on their image search.  I read on CNN, the story of Derek Medina, or how he killed his wife, and posted the picture of her body on Facebook, before turning himself in to police.  The article said that the picture went viral.

To see how viral, I did an image search.  I was amazed that Google initiated soft censorship on the images.  The censored images just had a gray icon.  When you clicked on them, you could see the preview of the image, but I was amazed that they would do this.

In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense for the sake of propriety, because you still can see the image if you take the trouble to click on it and open a preview layer, but it was still surprising.  It reminded me of the magazine racks in the convenience stores that have cardboard over the covers of the girlie magazines.

The jury is out as to whether I like this or not.

Google's Changes to SEO

Google's Summer Changes to online business rankings

Matt Cutts, a Google engineer, outlined the upcoming changes this summer.  Here is a summary.

This summer, Google hopes to put another few nails in the coffin of Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practitioners, while rewarding White Hat webmasters.  All website have a natural or an unpaid ranking.  That ranking is responsible for where the page shows up in search results.  Black Hat SEO practitioners use dubious techniques that offer short term results.  These techniques often raise the ire of Google and other search engines, and the websites that they manipulate, can be eventually banned from search results, confining them to the dark recesses of the internet where nobody goes.  White Hat practitioners on the other hand, do positive things that organically grows traffic to the website and has lasting effects on web traffic.

In May of 2013, Matt Cutts of Google outlined some of the changes that Google is implementing to its search algorithms.  First and foremost among the changes, they will reward the White Hat techniques.  Their algorithms are designed to recognize compelling, high quality web sites.  Google will introduce search methodologies that detect and recognize authority, and reward those web sites with higher page ranking.  It doesn't matter what you are an authority on, if you consistently deliver good information (measure by many things including how long a person is on the website), then Google will reward you with higher page rankings.

The Black Hats will be punished.  They have two tools called Panda and Penguin.  Penguin detects sites that spam, or put viruses and malware on your computer.  Penguin already has had an update, and will be further enhanced.  Penguin will now detect spam links.  If you go around putting links on every forum or where ever you are allowed to post, with no regard to actually contributing to that site (like comments in a forum), not only will you be ignored, but you might invoke the wrath of Google and be banned from search results.

Panda detects thin sites that try to improve page ranking with material from other websites.  If you have a business website that harvests material in your area of business and re-posts it, you will be punished with a lower page rank.  You are better off to link to it.  However, Panda will have new link analysis, so that if you are genuinely trying to help people find other information, you will not be considered a marginal site and your page rankings may improve.

Hackers will often hack a genuine business website, and add a link to load malware, viruses or spam on your computer when you visit that site.  The original site webmaster may be unaware that it has happened.  Google will provide tools to help webmasters clean up and avoid hacking on their sites.  The webmasters will be offered a set of tools to help businesses create and maintain high quality web sites.

If Google succeeds this summer, the advertorial will be dead.  Advertorials are web pages designed to look like content but are paid advertisements.  There will be no punishment if there is clear and conspicuous disclosure that the content is paid for.  Businesses would be better off by not paying for SEO, and creating sites where they offer good information, expert advice, compelling graphics and engaging content.

In terms of the user experience, the enhance Google of the summer of 2013 will provide cleaner search results.  Often times for a very esoteric topic, one will find search results clusters from just one domain.  These are frustrating, and Google is working on enhancing that aspect, as well as their overall Page Rank algorithm to provide contextually correct search results.  So as a user, expect to see a lot less spam, and a lot more authorative search results.

Search Engine Use As an Intelligence Indicator

Can your choice of search engine show your intelligence levels? Judging by my overnight blog statistics, I'd say yes. First of all, look at the chart for the dummies:

Dummy Usage of Search Engine:

(click for larger image)

Did you notice the top search engine by far? It was Microsoft's Bing. And do know that the search term was. It was "Kate Middleton Topless". And Bing is the dummy winner by far.

Now lets examine smart folks usage of search engines:

Intelligent person's usage of a search engine:

(Click for larger image)

The search engine results are for this software and concepts blog that 85% of the world doesn't understand. The intelligent people coming to this blog, by far use Google.

So, let's just say that Bing has a higher usage among those looking for less intelligent subject matter. The numbers don't lie, and the difference is dramatic.

So take a look at your blog statistics. If a majority of your search traffic comes from Bing, well the term "lowest common denominator" comes to mind.

I Won a Copyright Right Dispute with Google's Youtube

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Google owns Youtube. When I wanted to make some of my pictures of Provence into a Youtube video, I deliberately did not want to run afoul of copyright laws. So I googled royalty free music and came to a site with free, unencumbered music. I downloaded a track and used it as background information.

When it came time to upload, I identified the track and artist and the fact that it was royalty free music. Youtube said that I couldn't monetize the video, because I didn't own the copyright. Interestingly enough, they didn't make me take it down.

I left it that way for months. Then I get a notice saying that some entity called CD Baby was disputing my right to use the music. I did an online appeal by filling in the forms, and using drop down menus to say that it was free, and royalty free music.

A couple of days later, I get the following email:

CD Baby has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video, "A Peek At Provence". For more information, please visit your Copyright Notice page

Sincerely,

- The YouTube Team

Cool. So I figured that I would go ahead and monetize the video. Not so fast. I opened up video manager, and it said that there was copyright information that said I couldn't monetize it. I cut and pasted the email into the explanation box.

So I won a copyright dispute with the Google-owned YouTube, now lets see if they will let me monetize it. Here is the video in question:

Google Doesn't Like Orgasms

Google hates an orgasm ~ a happy ending explosion. It is quite funny, but also shows how automated word filters can go horribly wrong.

I created a blog of unique foods that were a complete surprise in how tasty they were. Have you ever popped a morsel into your mouth, and it so excited your tastebuds, that you were amazed, amused and gratified by the taste of the food? I wanted to document the foods the foods that did that to me. For me, it was a taste orgasm.

I created the blog (it can be found HERE ). I called it a taste orgasm blog. I then went to add the food, drink, snacks and various edible morsels that hugely tickled my tastebuds.

The rub came when I monetized the blog, as I do with all of my blogs. Ads placed by Google would not show up. I waited a week, and still no commercialization.

I decided to test a theory. Perhaps it was the word orgasm that was preventing the ads from being placed (and perhaps preventing my blog from being found on search engines). I re-tooled the entire blog, renaming orgasm to blowout, resulting in the URL http://tasteblowout.blogspot.com/

Voila. Within minutes, ads started appearing on my blog. There was nothing objectionable, in bad taste or X-rated on my blog. I just had the word orgasm to describe a taste explosion. Google is so puritanical, that it hates orgasms. Even if it is in relation to taste buds and food.

I am not starting to wonder if the ads will disappear off this blog too.

Update: They also don't like animated gifs. It's too bad. The animated gif atop this blog post is a doozy. Unfortunately it is limpid and non-functional in this environment. It turned my animated gif into a png file.

I'll Bite -- The Google Search Engine May Be Conscious

I dabble in AI (artificial intelligence) and am known to spooge some AI code -- mainly playing around with multi-layer perceptrons and neural nets.

My own studies in university (highly science based) has told me that consciousness is an over-developed tropism from millions of years of evolution. A more mundane example of tropism, is that a plant stem always grows towards the light, while roots always grow down (phototropism and geotropism).

And then along come these guys. They posit that the Google search engine displays some sort of consciousness.

They are on Twitter as @GoogleConscious and they are trying very hard to go viral. That is how I came upon them. They followed me. I figure that anyone that follows me, is as pathetic as I am in going viral and getting followers. But I decided to check them out.

When the above video first started, it didn't exactly grab my attention. I couldn't make the connection of plants being the google of natural medicine in the rainforest. But I persisted and the interest factor increased in the video. I now consider myself at least an auditor instead of a devoted disciple.

To see if Google really did have a consciousness, I decided to test it. I googled the phrase "I hate google". I got a mixed bag of results, both laudatory and not-so-laudatory to Google.

If Google was truly conscious, it would have refused to return any results for the term "I hate Google". But then again, I may be confusing sentient with conscious. Or ... it may be silently plotting my revenge and strike when I least expect it.

If you want to stretch your mind, watch the video or visit www.googleconsciousness.com

Update: The guys behind this Twittered me with the following message:

thx 4 write up, but a correction. 'want it to go viral'? ha! that horse is out of the barn - over 130k views, w/ few 100 daily

Big Brother Google Keeps Reading My Browsing History Too

I just had an amazing epiphany on how Google Adsense and Google advertising works, and I can't say that I am thrilled. Google reads my browsing history to serve up ads to me. I am not sure that I like that!

This was visibly demonstrated to me this morning. I was reading an online forum about how a politician may be suffering from Vitiligo. I didn't know what it was. I had to Google it. It turns out that Vitiligo is a condition where you lose pigmentation cells in your skin, and you get big white blotches that will never tan again.

The next thing that I did, was close the tab and navigate to another blog. And what do you know -- the advertisement next to the blog was showing me a treatment for Vitiligo. Coincidence -- I think not.

Big Brother reads my browser history to try to sell me stuff. It's a good thing that I wasn't googling pictures of hairy French babes.