Pieces of me on community... : strategy

Star Trek and the future of the internet(s) courtesy of Microsoft's translation technology?

b2ix — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:22:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Genevieve Bell where she talked about the future of the internet(s). One of the points she raised was that that "There is now an end to the 'anglosphere'" on the internet. More languages, more stories and more context to what is online is fast becoming the norm. From a tech perspective, this raises some interesting questions regarding design and strategy for how we create our online resources. At its most basic, how do you create experiences that work for multiple languages and norms?

This notion of language and communication is central to issues surrounding community. Having grown up with two languages at home, and even more when around extended family members, I always thought it would be great to have a universal translator of sorts, much like they have in Star Trek and other science fiction story lines. Imagine what we could accomplish if we all understood one another? While those days are still a long ways off, we are getting closer.

Microsoft translation technology has been making some great progress lately from both a tooling and a community standpoint. A couple of examples:

Windows Live Translator -- type in text, or translate a webpage into several languages using this free tool

Windows Live Translator in Internet Explorer 8 -- I haven't tried this yet but it sounds like the Windows Live Translator is a "right click" menu option in IE 8.

Windows Live Translator add-in -- have a site you want to translate? All you have to do is add this to your site and people visiting your pages can choose to translate it into another language. See John Martin’s blog for more details.

Windows Live Translation Bot -- chat with a bot, have it translate in another language, and bring in another person to the conversation. The bot will then serve as a translator for you.

Translation Library -- The MSDN Library recently leveraged some of the translation tools and applied it to the Portuguese version of the MSDN Library. Basically, the text is automatically translated and people can make suggestions to improve/edit the translation.

While with any translation, there's room for refinement I think these initiatives are a great start towards that universal translator envisioned by Star Trek. If you feel like translating my blog, I just updated my blog to include the Windows Live Translator add-in.

More than bookmarks are coming to MSDN and TechNet...

b2ix — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:26:00 GMT

John recently wrote about the broader vision we've been working towards here for technical professionals. Rather than rehashing the whole thing, I encourage you to see what John has to say, and to stay tuned for these updates. With my passion around the intersection of community and technology, I'm quite excited about this coming to fruition on sites like TechNet and MSDN.

Is love more powerful than the web?

b2ix — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:10:00 GMT

With two high profile product launches being a bit bumpy (here, here) I can't help but wonder if the all of the love for their products (and the spread of love via social networks) is causing strain on the underlying infrastructure.

Course, from a community standpoint, this sounds like a good problem to have.

Ray Ozzie on community and Live Mesh

b2ix — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:03:00 GMT

Being a community guy of sorts, I am always quite interested when folks like Ray Ozzie talk about community. Check out Ray Ozzie's memo on our software + services strategy (via the ReadWriteWeb), in addition to announcements regarding Live Mesh. I still need to take a close look at Live Mesh, but it looks quite promising. More links below.

•   Windows Live Developer Blog: Amit Mital Introduces Live Mesh
•   Channel 9 Interview with Ray Ozzie
•   Screenshots: Live Mesh
•   Live Mesh Web site