TransPerfect, the privately held provider of translation services, announced the release of a new iPhone application for translation, which is available free to users. The application is called TransPerfect TransImage and it provides real-time machine translation via the device’s camera for users who come across text they would like to instantly understand. Machine translation has not yet advanced to a point where it can replace a human translator for mission critical content, but it can be an informative tool for getting the gist of content in another language. TransPerfect’s iPhone application leverages OCR (optical character recognition) and MT (machine translation) technology to form an application that takes text within a picture and translates it automatically. The current version includes support for 49 languages. The free application is now available from the Apple iTunes Store. www.transperfect.com.
Category: Computing & data (Page 91 of 94)
Computing and data is a broad category. Our coverage of computing is largely limited to software, and we are mostly focused on unstructured data, semi-structured data, or mixed data that includes structured data.
Topics include computing platforms, analytics, data science, data modeling, database technologies, machine learning / AI, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, augmented reality, bots, programming languages, natural language processing applications such as machine translation, and knowledge graphs.
Related categories: Semantic technologies, Web technologies & information standards, and Internet and platforms.
Updated March 3, 2010
Government agencies produce a lot of information. Making it accessible to the public, which essentially paid for it, can be quite challenging. The volume is high. The formats are varied. Much of it remains locked in information silos.
Support is growing to take steps to make as much government information available to the public as possible. President Obama issued a directive describing the official policy for Transparency and Open Government that mandates an unprecedented level of accessibility to government information. At the same time, technical advances have improved the feasibility of increasing access to the data.
I recently completed a Gilbane paper on this topic and how some agencies are improving access to public data. It is now available for free on our Web site at https://gilbane.com/beacons.html. The paper’s sponsor, Mark Logic, has provided interesting case studies that illustrate the challenges and approaches to overcoming them. I also explore some of the major hurdles that need to be crossed to achieve this goal, including:
- Extremely high volumes of content and data
- Highly diverse, heterogeneous data formats and data models
- Complex content integration and delivery requirements
- Time-sensitivity of content
- Changing information environments
The approaches described have enabled that users of this technology to implement high-volume, disparate-data applications that not only overcome old technical barriers but also deliver new value to their organizations. This is, after all, the essence of open data – be it for open government, open publishing, or open enterprise.
I encourage you to read this paper to get a better understanding of what works to make government data more open.
Update: the Beacon is also available from Mark Logic.
Omniture, an Adobe company (NASDAQ:ADBE) announced an integration with CrownPeak that combines Omniture Test&Target with CrownPeak’s content management system (CMS) through Omniture Genesis. Designed to allow marketers to manage content for tests and targeted campaigns from an integrated interface, the combination allows for the creation and deployment of content to drive A/B tests, multivariate tests, and content targeting. As a result, marketers could benefit from the speed and control of Test&Target as well as from the content creation and management workflow of CrownPeak. Through the integration, content is built within CrownPeak’s CMS, then deployed and managed by Omniture Test&Target from within the CMS. The integration should provide the following: Continuous testing and targeting that can automatically promote top performing content; rapid implementation of integration and ongoing deployment of tests without requiring IT involvement, putting control in the hands of marketers; API Integration allows one-step live deployment of offers; easy management of any testing scenario via an integrated interface. www.omniture.com www.crownpeak.com/
Serendipity 1.5.2 has been released to address the outstanding issue of SQLite installations with Serendipity. Upgrading an earlier version of Serendipity prior to 1.5.1 to this version should work without any problems, fixing the database upgrades that were faulty in Serendipity 1.5.1. blog.s9y.org/
Jease, a content management framework based on open source Java technologies, has added support for the Perst object-oriented, open source embedded database system from McObject. When used with Jease, Perst becomes the persistence engine for highly customized, content- and database-driven Web applications that leverage the productivity and efficiency of working with “plain old Java objects” (POJOs). Jease (the name combines “Java” and “ease”) provides building blocks for developers with even a little Java experience to assemble Web applications tailored to specific needs. The goal of Jease is to offer a flexible content management framework rather than a full-blown content management system. Other open source software components used by Jease include Apache Lucene for full-text indexing and search, and the ZK Ajax + Mobile Java framework. Perst and Perst Lite are part of McObject’s family of small footprint, high performance embedded database software products. The eXtremeDB in-memory embedded database from McObject is used in devices including MP3 players, industrial automation solutions, digital TVs, telecom/network communications equipment and military/aerospace technology. Perst is available for Java and .NET, including Java ME and .NET Compact Framework. http://www.jease.org/, http://www.mcobject.com
FatWire Software announced that its FatWire Content Server fully integrates with Google Analytics to help customers measure and track the success of their FatWire websites. FatWire customers can download the integration module free of charge from FatWire to automatically generate Google tags and feed data directly into Google, for out-of-the-box monitoring and reporting. The integration will enable FatWire customers to use Google’s free analytics package to measure and optimize online content and campaigns, providing a better understanding of website effectiveness, including traffic, usage patterns and visitor behavior. The FatWire Analytics module, which is natively integrated with Content Server, provides granular tracking of content assets for specific customer segments and across dynamic, targeted web pages, enabling optimization of content on a granular level. Google Analytics provides complementary capabilities for tracking and measuring website and user behavior at a site and page level. With this packaged integration, customers can now combine FatWire’s platform with Google Analytics, thus providing a combination of page, behavior and granular content analytics. http://www.fatwire.com
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) and Omniture, Inc. (Nasdaq:OMTR) announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for Adobe to acquire Omniture in a transaction valued at approximately $1.8 billion on a fully diluted equity-value basis. Under the terms of the agreement, Adobe will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash. By combining Adobe’s content creation tools and clients with Omniture’s Web analytics, measurement and optimization technologies Adobe will deliver solutions intended to enhance engaging experiences and e-commerce across all digital content, platforms and devices. For designers, developers and online marketers, an integrated workflow, with optimization capabilities embedded in the creation tools, will streamline the creation and delivery of relevant content and applications. This optimization will help advertisers and advertising agencies, publishers, and e-tailers to realize greater ROI from their digital media investments and improve their end users’ experiences. http://www.adobe.com http://www.omniture.com
O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0 events took place last week. We’ve had some time to think about what the current wave of activity means to buyers and adopters of content technologies.
Both the Expo and Summit programs delivered a deluge of examples of exciting new approaches to connecting consumers of government services with the agencies and organizations that provide them.
- At the Expo on Sept 8, 25 speakers from organizations like NASA, TSA, US EPA, City of Santa Cruz, Utah Department of Public Safety, and the US Coast Guard provided five-minute overviews of their 2.0 applications in a sometimes dizzying fast-paced format.
- Sunlight Labs sponsored an Apps for America challenge that featured finalists who combined federal content available on Data.gov and open source software in some intriguing applications, including DataMasher, which enables you to mash up sources such as stats on numbers of high school graduates and guns per household.
- The Summit on Sept 9 and 10 featured more applications plus star-status speakers including Aneesh Chopra, the US’s first CTO operating under the Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy; Vinton Cerf, currently VP and evangelist at Google; and Mitch Kapor.
A primary program theme was “government as platform,” with speakers suggesting and debating just what that means. There was much thoughtful discussion, if not consensus. Rather than report, interested readers can search Twitter hash tags #gov20e and #gov20s for comments.
From the first speaker on, we were immediately struck by the rapid pace of change in government action and attitude about content and data sharing. Our baseline for comparison is Gilbane’s last conference on content applications within government and non-profit agencies in June 2007. In presentations and casual conversations with attendees, it was clear that most organizations were operating as silos. There was little sharing or collaboration within and among organizations. Many attendees expressed frustration that this was so. When we asked what could be done to fix the problem, we distinctly remember one person saying that connecting with other content managers just within her own agency would be a huge improvement.
Fast forward a little over two years to last week’s Gov2.0 events. Progress towards internal collaboration, inter-agency data sharing, and two-way interaction between government and citizens is truly remarkable. At least three factors have created a pefect storm of conditions: the current administration’s vision and mandate for open government, broad acceptance of social interaction tools at the personal and organizational level, and technology readiness in the form of open source software that makes it possible to experiment at low cost and risk.
Viewing the events through Gilbane’s content-centric lens, we offer three takeaways:
- Chopra indicated that the formal Open Government directives to agencies, to be released in several weeks, will include the development of “structured schedules” for making agency data available in machine-readable format. As Tim O’Reilly said while interviewing Chopra, posting “a bunch of PDFs” will not be sufficient for alignment with the directives. As a result, agencies will be accelerating the adoption of XML and the transformation of publishing practices to manage structured content. As a large buyer of content technologies and services, government agencies are market influencers. We will be watching carefully for the impact of Open Government initiatives on the broader landscape for content technologies.
- There was little mention of the role of content management as a business practice or technology infrastructure. This is not surprising, given that Gov2.0 wasn’t about content management. And while the programs comprised lots of show-and-tell examples, most were very heavy on show and very light on tell. But it does raise a question about how these applications will be managed, governed, and made sustainable and scalable. Add in the point above — that structured content will now be poised for wider adoption, creating demand for XML-aware content management solutions. Look for more discussion as agencies begin to acknowledge their content management challenges.
- We didn’t hear a single mention of language issues in the sessions we attended. Leaving us to wonder if non-native English speakers who are eligible for government services will be disenfranchised in the move to Open Government.
All in all, thought-provoking, well-executed events. For details, videos of the sessions are available on the Gov2.0 site.
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