Translation Software used to be expensive, not anymore

Many firms operate internationally and need translations not just for their documents, but also for their apps, websites, documentation etc. New tools from Google and other small firms help small business for their basic translation needs. The trickiest part of translations are industry specific translations that a firm want to keep consistent. This is where Translation Memories come into place.

This software keeps track of the translations and automates the translation of recurring text paragraphs and words. Useful and expensive (talk about 100.000s of Dollars).

Not all firms want or can spend this kind of money. The tools from Google and services like getlocalization.com can help here. They are not super easy to use and lack sometimes some functionality (Google for example doesn't support sharing the document through an URL, or updating a current file), but they are a great tool anyways because they have built in translation memories.

#localization #tool #Google #free

Reshared post from +Google Developers

Google Translator Toolkit now supports more formats.

http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/03/localize-your-apps-and-content-more.html

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Localize your apps and content more easily – new formats in Translator Toolkit - Google Developers Blog

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I'm now responsible for Google Weather in Vancouver

.. but just for today ;)

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Everybody loves fresh free fonts - if they are high quality

Now what does high quality mean? For me it means rich character set for international use, suitable for print and web and that they have something that makes them individual. Also check out their older posts, totally worth it.

#typography #font #free #webfont

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14 Free and Fresh High-Quality Fonts (No.3 – 2012) | gonzoblog.nl In this last month there have been a lot of new and fresh high-quality fonts published, again. I have made a selection of fonts that are designed to be well suited for web as well for print, in partic...

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Spring is coming, slowly but surely

I experimented with some HDR Toning from just one "Day" Source. I found it interesting as it shows the view more realistic then the normal processing does.

In album Vancouver Highlights (1 photo)

View over the Lost Lagoon to the West End

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Great visualization of winds in the US

There is not much to add - beautiful #visualization #maps #dynamic

Reshared post from +Mark Harrison

Completely mesmerized by this map... via +Noah G

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Wind Map If the map is missing or seems slow, we recommend the latest Chrome browser. Surface wind data from the National Digital Forecast Database. (For those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum ...

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Is it to late for a small business to start a blog now?

We designers & developers live somewhat in the future and in the past at the same time. We try out the latest web app and social network, talk about responsive design and mobile first and advise our small business clients that they might not need a twitter account after all - because their target audience isn't there. Our clients on the other side are experiencing just the same. Many use social networks and modern smartphones, but have no idea what to make of a website or what services would be a great value added to their business if present on the website.

We can advise them with services we know - but how effective are those? More than one client I worked for now wants to get into blogging. Their heard it improves their "Google" - or that people visit the website more often. And I can only say that it make sense - as an SEO technique and if their audience/clients need to be educated. But do all businesses have clients that need to be educated? Yes.

Basically every business owner has information about their product on the website - but not many have background stories or content about the reasoning for certain business decision. So it's not to late to blog, as long as it lives on the main websites.

Last but not least. If you have a blog on the website show it. Not just a link on the side, show some content. And if after a while you see that more and more people "land" on a blog page and not on the home page, make sure that the visitors find the content you wanted to show gets some attention as well.

#blogging #smallbusiness #client #website

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User friendly Google Analytics Reports - aka Dashboards

Dashboards are used in many CRM (Customer Relation Management) Solutions to give a quick overview over the most important Data on one page. Often also called "Scorecards" these Dashboard give you broad indicators and detailed information at the same time.

Google Analytics has some Dashboard functionality, but the standard reports are too detailed for the normal user (=your client), and the important information is not often visible at first. The famous "what does this mean" is basically transforming these reports into meaningful ones.

Dashthis helps with this process. Even the Google Analytics Blog writes about them, so have a read and check them out.

http://dashthis.com

#analytics #dashboard

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Google Analytics Blog: Sharing Personalized Dashboards using the Analytics API Web agencies often rely on Excel and Word to create analytics reports for clients. It's a manual process that involves a lot of copy and pasting. Yet an agency's main value-add isn't repor...

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Layered font for old style appeal

I like this concept of creating a separate font for each style element. It helps to achieve a sophisticated look with a couple of easy steps. Nice - and the outline is available for free, almost you pay with a tweet.

#font #free #idea

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Frontage Typeface +freefont on the Behance Network Frontage is a charming layered type system with endless design possibilities.

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Will we use 3D for interaction on our websites?

I like technology demos - I like this one very much, especially the Michael Bay Clouds. But I try also to figure out if there is some immediate use for "normal" web interfaces, not just games. While I can see that cool animations would make a website more desirable, it would also make it slower to use - and if overdone maybe gimmicky.

Not to mention the whole mobile aspect ... yeah I know progressive enhancement - but should I recommend one of my clients to have a website using this technologies? Probably not.

#3d #CSS3 #UX

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CSS3D Clouds An experiment on creating volumetric 3d-like clouds with CSS3 3D Transforms and a bit of Javascript. Move the mouse to rotate around and mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Hit space to generate a new clo...

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Brainstorming done right - again

Brainstorming is the most popular creativity tool - and most people do it completely wrong. Some do it partly wrong and other s get the idea and evolve the tool to fit the culture of the team. The title of this article is misleading, because it's about the evolution of Brainstorming and a specific use case, but still worth reading.

#creativity #brainstorming #ideasworthspreading #teamwork

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Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue Productively Turns out that brainstorming--that go-to approach to generating new ideas since the 1940s--isn’t the golden ticket to innovation after all. Both Jonah Lehrer, in a recent article in The New Yorker, an...

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Finally an easy way to get Kindle Format E-Books on your Android Tablet

I like it that e-book publishers offer their books in multiple formats. A Book Apart for example offers also the Kindle Format. Nice, but if you just used the Kindle Apps on iPhone and Android you had no way to use these files. Now you can - the updated Android App can access files you send to it via email (or the sent to Kindle App).

Great, I'm just wondering what took them so long.

#amazon #kindle #android #workflow

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Amazon's Kindle App For Android Gets Updated To Support Kindle Format 8, Cloud Backup Of Email-To-Kindle Files Amazon updated their Kindle app for Android today, bringing about two changes that add a significant amount of functionality to the app. Perhaps the most... by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

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Optical Kerning for Webfonts - TypeButter

I'm happy to see that optical kerning has arrived for webfonts. I still see many designers avoiding optical kerning in print design and I wondered why that is. One reason could be lack of education, but then I discovered another thing. Bad fonts. Cheap fonts often lack the proper kerning pairs and are made in a way that freaks out the optical kerning algorithms so beware of cheap fonts and use optical kerning whenever it fits.

#font #webfont #kerning

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TypeButter | Optical Kerning FTW! TypeButter |  TypeButter allows you to set optical kerning for any font on your website. If you’re longing for beautifully laid out text that today’s browsers just don’t provide, this is the plugin for you! Downloa...

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Vancouver has some nice days, and nice sunsets

Vancouver has some nice days, and nice sunsets

In album Vancouver Highlights (1 photo)

Looking east

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Photoshop CS6 Preview ready for download

Try it out now, stop everything and download the preview edition of Photoshop CS6 ... and while you wait that the download completes look at the videos by Russel Brown and Juleanne Kost.

Web Designers holler - Photoshop CS6 gets Paragraph & Character Styles ... Now let's see if we can import them from other applications. Also the content aware move is great and useful, the other features presented by are meh ... but let's play with them to see how useful they are in real life. #photoshop #cs6 #download #beta

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John Nack on Adobe : Come download Photoshop CS6! Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI — Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, P...

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5 ways to use the SMS Group Service SendHub.com

I've discovered today an awesome service - SendHub.comThis service allows you to create a sort of SMS newsletter service. You create a group and can send messages to this group via mobile text. The best thing is, that people can join this list by texting - just like the big shot text services you see on TV.

This functionality has never been exposed on a self service way and makes it easy for small businesses and organizations to reach their customers/audiences with a tool accessible to everyone.

But also consumers can use it in their private life ... how many times where you feed up because you couldn't setup a group on your mobile phone.

Here are 5 uses that I thought of just now

1. A health organization can offer a daily motivational text 2. A Hockey Club can send updates to it's players about training times 3. Friends can use it to schedule meet ups - Yes, they can send a text back 4. A shop can text special offers to this "vip" group and also wishes for the holidays 5. A business can ask questions and mini surveys

Beyond this use cases SendHub.com has a nice API that seems pretty easy to use - Looking forward to see the first integrations ... Maybe ifttt.com might want to do something here.

Have you any other ideas how to use this service? #sms #campaign #inspiration #selfservice #mobile

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SendHub. SMS for Organizations. Send Texts to Individuals and Groups for free. SMS for Organizations. Watch a Video. Easy Communication. Send and receive text messages from individuals and groups with no hassle. Free. Simply Text to Join. Your contacts can text to join your grou...

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Combine Gaming and Charity

I like to game sometimes, on my Android, but also on my PCs, so the Humble Bundle is always a great fit as it gives you not only nice games, but it also helps a charitable cause. It's for Android, but not only as PC, Mac, Linux and Steam Downloads are available.

Set your own price and play :)

PS: They also have a nice HumbleBundle App now that helps you with updates - a sort of separate App store - very much appreciated.

#gaming #android #steam #charity

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The Humble Bundle for Android 2 (pay what you want and help charity) Pay whatever you want and get instant access to five epic games: Zen Bound 2, Avadon: The Black Fortress, Cogs, Canabalt, and Swords & Soldiers -- all while supporting vital charities. Each game i...

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Google Authorship - Must have Wordpress Plugin

I've tried a couple of the plugins out there which help you to get your picture next to your articles in Google Search results. To be honest, they don't really work - especially if you have multiple authors. So I kept hacking around - this plugin might be the right answer.

#wordpress #plugin #google #seo

Reshared post from +Fraser Cain

Google Authorship Wordpress Plugin

A few weeks ago I asked the community if anyone knew a way to implement Google's rel=author protocol for Wordpress sites with multiple authors. So, each different author of the blog would get their own little picture in the search results.

Since there didn't seem to be a plugin out there, we created one. This is really basic, but it does the trick. It works on single author blogs too, if you don't feel like hacking your themes to make that work.

Every writer will need to add their Google+ profile to their Wordpress user info, and then "claim" it here in Google+ profile as a "Contributor to".

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Announcing: Rel=Author Wordpress Plugin For Multiple Authors Have you noticed the pictures of authors beside Google search results? These Rich Snippets are displayed by the newly released rel=author tag supported by Google. In order to support this feature, you...

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Levelling up in an App or website?

While I'm catching up with some SXSW talks through my Huffduffer Account (don't tell me you are an avid podcast listener and you don't know about Huffduffer), I came across the talk Tapworthy Touchscreen Design. While most of the talk was pretty straight forward to anyone who is a interface designer, the concept of using a level system for an application of website was new and intriguing. Not the average gamification bla bla - but just like in a game, where you get more capabilities while you progress, you would setup the application to expose more and more functionality the longer a user interacts with it.

I still have to wrap my head around how you could use this in an extended way, but I can see immediately the advantage of an uncluttered interface in the beginning, which you then fill with more and more functionality.

#ux #interfacedesign #gamification #development

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Teaching Touch: Tapworthy Touchscreen Design Discover the rules of thumb for finger-friendly design. Touch gestures are sweeping away buttons, menus and windows from mobile devices—and even from the next version of Windows. Find out why those fa...

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Facebook New Brand Page Boilerplate

Most of you designers out there have setup Facebook Brand pages for their clients. In two weeks, those pages will get the new timeline design and you have the space on top for making the page look branded more than before. I found this great boilerplate PSD template to make it easier and quicker to create this graphics, as I know - you may have to update more than one page.

#facebook #brandpages #timeline #template #psd

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Free Facebook Brand Page Timeline Cover Photo PSD Template

Get a Free Photoshop template for the new Facebook brand page coverphotos.

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Help me Translate my How Much Euro App

I would like to make my free Sales Tax aware currency convertet "How much Euro?" available in more languages. So please help me make this possible. I'm looking for translations of the in App copy and the description used in the AppStore and Google Play. If you speak Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish please spare 10 minutes and contribute.

http://www.getlocalization.com/howmucheuro/

I use the free service Getlocalization.com as I wanted to test it out and it looks promising. They also provide integration with Github, but I have to test that out a little further.

Thank you in advance.