01
Apr
unnamed

[New App] Rosetta Course Says Bonjour To The Play Store

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News

If you've ever wanted to learn a language but don't want to be tethered to a PC or stuck in some classroom, this might be your lucky day. Rosetta Course has just launched on Android, and you can try it out for free. You are welcome to choose from more than a dozen languages to explore, but only the first few lessons are available without paying up.

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Rosetta Course uses a combination of text, images, and speech to help you learn the ins and outs of a new language. The speech features should work on almost all devices, and those with a stylus can also do writing exercises.

24
Jan
skypetiny

Skype Updated With Portrait Calling On Tablets, Portuguese, Norwegian, And UK English Languages

Posted by in Applications, News

Well, it's a start. While the Skype app for Android still has a bizarre and uncomfortable habit of forcing landscape mode, today's update at least allows users to use the portrait orientation if they're making a call. That's nice. Especially since the positioning of front-facing cameras on devices like the Nexus 7 make landscape video chats extremely awkward. Now if only we could get this for the rest of the interface, that would be great.

skypeportraintcalling

This isn't just for phones anymore!

Additionally, today's update brings a few bug fixes and support for Portuguese, Norwegian and English of the UK variety. Not a bad update.

04
Dec
2012-12-04_11h41_24

Google's Knowledge Graph Expands To Several New Languages Including Spanish, French, Russian And Japanese

Posted by in Google, News

Under the hood of Google Now, powering all those beautiful cards that pop up when you search for certain things, is Google's Knowledge Graph. In what might be the company's most ambitious project ever, Google aims to categorize and classify all information so that when you search for, say, Jeff Goldbum, the search engine knows you might also be interested in information about Chaos Theory or survival tips for raptor attacks. Today, the company announced an extension to this already-huge product: availability in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian. Pretty huge.

knowledgegraphlanguages

As Google briefly explains, this endeavor is about more than just translating words ("'football' means something quite different in the U.S.

16
Aug
unnamed (3)

Google Voice Search Now Available In Thirteen New Languages

Posted by in Android OS, Applications, Google, News

In a post to its official blog that's sure to excite users across the globe, Google has just announced that Voice Search is now available in thirteen new languages. The list of newly included languages, which range from Basque to Swedish, brings the total number of supported tongues up to 42.

In the post, Product Manager Bertrand Damiba explains just what it takes to add a new language to Voice Search – first and foremost, Google must collect "hundreds of thousands of utterances" from volunteers to bring speech recognition up to par.

While this sounds easy enough, Google engineers also face challenges in adding support for new languages – Damiba explains that languages that don't follow predictable pronunciation rules (like Swedish) require that Google recruit native speakers to pronounce thousands of individual words.

27
Jun
playstore

Google Play Store Website Adds Support For At Least 20 New Languages, Indicates A Large International Rollout

Posted by in Google, News

Open the flood gates and let the Play Store news come in this morning! It looks like Google has updated support of its web store at play.google.com for at least 20 new languages. One of our esteemed tipsters pointed out today that the languages list has gotten bigger. Much bigger. We checked it out for ourselves and it's true.

oldlist 2012-06-27_11h05_37 2012-06-27_11h05_50

Left: Old list of languages. Center, Right: So many more languages!

As you can see the list of languages is much, much longer. Including such hits as Filipino, Kiswahili and the very odd and remote dialect of English (United Kingdom).

15
Mar
wm_market02

Developers, Take Note: Google Unleashes Fascinating New Android Market Statistics And Charts For Your Apps

Posted by in Android OS, Development, News

Late last night, the Android team pushed out a set of changes to the Android app publishing interface that developers use to upload and maintain their apps. The new features, while completely invisible to the end-users, are absolutely fascinating to app developers.

Each app now has a Statistics link, which consists of the following:

  • a Google Finance-style Flash chart of all installs, the time period for which you can adjust as you see fit
  • Android versions (conveniently placed side-by-side with the same stats for all apps in the Market)
  • specific device models
  • countries where your app is downloaded from (also side-by-side with countries for all apps in the Market)
  • languages used on the phones with your app on them (also compared to the global stats)

Have a look at some screenshots, then, if you are a developer, hurry to your own publishing console and check out those sexy stats for yourself.