Skip to Content

Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

web-publishing posts

Filed under: Web services, Google, Web

Google launches universal translation tool for web publishers

Google Translate Widget
Google Translate certainly isn't the first machine-based translation engine that lets you translate text or entire web pages from one language to another. But it's certainly one of the most prevalent. And something tells me it's about to get even more ubiquitous, as Google has just launched a gadget that web publishers can use to let users translate pages to any language with the click of a button.

For instance, if you publish a web site in English but notice that a significant portion of your traffic comes from Germany, Japan, or elsewhere you can add a box to your sidebar (or anywhere on your web page) that lets readers choose their language from a drop-down menu. Google wil go to work translating the page and a small toolbar will pop up at the top of the page alerting readers tot he fact that the page has been translated. There's also a button to restore the site to its original language.

The most obvious benefit is that readers can translate your page without copying and pasting the URL into Google Translate. But there are a few other advantages as well. First, the tool adds a few letters to the end of the URL for any translated page, but it doesn't append "translate.google.com" to the start of the page, thereby robbing you of page views.

Second, if your site is in English and a visitor's browser settings are set to, say, Estonian, the toolbar should pop up automatically prompting them to translate the page. This could make your site a heck of a lot more attractive to international traffic.

Of course, the results are only as good as Google Translate's normal translations, which is to say, not very. While you can usually get the gist of articles translated by the service, you wouldn't really want to read literature converted from Russian to English via Google.

Filed under: Internet, News, Web

Prepare yourself for bigger, harder to miss web advertising

Big ads
A huge number of web site publishers make most of their money from advertising. That's true of this site, and it's true of the 27 major web publishers that have come together in an effort to find some form of advertising that's more effective than the old fashioned banner ads that populate many web sites today.

The 27 publishers are part of the Online Publishers Association, and they've each agreed to try at least one of three new units before July. The units are a 336 pixel by 860 pixel ad that scrolls up and down the page, a wider 468 pixel y 648 pixel box with page turning and video features, and a Pushdown box (pictured above0 that is 970 pixels wide by 418 pixels tall and which can be minimized.

In other words, all three ad units take up a ton of screen real estate. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing for readers. If you look at most web sites today, you'll notice a fair amount of space is dedicated to advertising. It's just that you typically see ads from many different companies. If these new ad units wind up being more effective at grabbing your attention, advertisers might be willing to pay significantly higher prices, which means that while the future could be filled with enormous ads on web pages, you won't find nearly as many ads on each page.

Or the whole experiment could end in failure. Download Squad publisher AOL isn't currently involved in the experiment, but the 27 participating companies have a combined reach of over 100-million page views a month. So odds are you'll see one of the new ad units soon enough.

[via Techmeme

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Livescribe Store
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio

Joystiq

TUAW

Daily Finance

Autoblog

Urlesque

Engadget

WoW

Switched.com

FanHouse