Babelfish are Here!!!!!

Google has finally brought us the Babelfish! For $159 US?

We are the next step closer to a universal translator. I want this! I want to be nosy around people speaking foreign languages...I want to be able to communicate with most people I encounter on travels. I would have loved to have this back when I was traveling the world for work!

But the most intriguing feature of the Pixel Buds is the integrated Google Translate feature. Demoed on stage at Google's event today, this feature lets two Pixel Bud wearers chat in their native languages by translating conversations in real-time. In the demo, a native English speaker and a native Swedish speaker had a conversation with each other, both using their native languages. Google Translate in the Buds' translated the English phrases into Swedish, and the Swedish phrases into English, for each user. There was barely any lag time in between the speaker saying a phrase and the Buds' hearing those words and translating them into the appropriate language.

Read the full article, "Google Pixel Buds are wireless earbuds that translate conversations in real time" at  Ars Technica.

Google "Drag-N-Drop" Image Search

Somebody posted about this feature on G+ that I had never heard of...Google's Drag-N-Drop Image Search. I immediately thought "What a great frickin idea"!
So I went to the URL to try it out. The first thing I did was to try to D-N-D an image from another website...SUCCESS! I dragged my LinkedIn profile photo into the search bar and got the following results:

Headshot Drag-N-Drop Search

It showed links to my G+ profile (with the same photo) and three other profiles that I have in my circles. The really funny part is that it also served up a grid of head shots of bald or balding guys in suits from around the web.

I tried several other photos, but didn't get great results...a picture with some wood-grain prominent in it resulted in pictures with lots of wood-grain; Ones with a dominant color resulted in pictures with that dominant color present AND dominant; A picture with one of my daughters and me sitting on a bench resulted in picture of either multiple people or people sitting down. All in all, fairly interesting. 

I finally decided to try using one of the pictures from my travels, choosing one of a castle I visited in Scotland, but had forgotten the name of. I got the results listed below:

Fyvie Castle Drag-N-Drop Image Search

Not only did it find similar pictures, it also reminded me which castle it was with a couple of thumbnails from just about the exact perspective from my picture.

I can see where this can help you if you are trying to find similar pictures to one you have already, say for a project, or if you think someone may be using your photographs without your permission on the web.

I like the tool, but it would be nice if they could come up with a way to refine how it searches for the images you drag-N-drop onto the search bar. 

Let me know what you think about it...