Friday, May 07, 2010

What Sites Future Employers Are Checking When Looking at You [Job Search]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5532404/what-sites-future-employers-are-checking-when-looking-at-you

What Sites Future Employers Are Checking When Looking at YouAs part of a Data Privacy Day report, Microsoft commissioned a study of over 1,200 hiring and recruitment managers. In one segment, they asked what kinds of sites they considered in researching applicants online. The short answer: almost everything.

As PC World put it—and as Jason detailed in his online identity primer—having a decent-looking personal web site, with blog-like material showing your grasp of topics and general up-to-date skills, is the best defense against anything and everything else a potential employer or contractor might find about you online.

Then again, take a look at how many online realms hiring managers peek into when peeking at you. It's reassuring, if you've put time into cleaning up your online image, and perhaps a wake-up call if you've still got LOLcats littering your photo service pages.

Have you hired someone, or turned someone down, based on their online presence? Been on the receiving end of that kind of judgment? Gripe or brag, as the case may be, in the comments.

Read More...

Google Goggles Can Now Translate Foreign Text from a Picture [Android]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5532703/google-goggles-can-now-translate-foreign-text-from-a-picture

Google Goggles Can Now Translate Foreign Text from a PictureAndroid: Google's Goggles app for Android can now translate foreign text that you capture (and crop) with your phone's camera, potentially helping with signage, papers, and other text found while traveling. In a quick test, the results were, well, interesting.

In the update for Android's Goggles app, already in the Market, Goggles gets both new language translation skills and a crop function that makes Goggles a lot easier to use when pinning down something in particular. I lack for foreign-language documents around the house, so I loaded up the web site of Der Spiegel, the one German newspaper I know from memory, and started snapping and cropping.

Google Goggles Can Now Translate Foreign Text from a PictureThe lead article in the Der Spiegel news magazine was, of course, about the Greek debt crisis. Using the screenshot I uploaded with Goggles, Google knew the text was in German, and offered a "translate" bar on the results page. It came back with some still-German text, then "A main road in the Plette." By actually typing the line I'd captured into Google, though, I found the actual translation of the cover line, done by humans: "A continent on the way into bankruptcy."

A picture of a laptop screen isn't, in fact, quite the best test case, and slightly metaphorical news cover lines aren't necessarily the best use of a literal translation tool like Google's. So assume that your mileage will vary, but that if you need to know whether a sign says a restaurant is open or closed, you're probably good to go.

Google says at this point that a few languages are covered both ways, and more can be translated to from there:

The first Goggles translation prototype was unveiled earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and could only recognize German text. Today Goggles can read English, French, Italian, German and Spanish and can translate to many more languages. We are hard at work extending our recognition capabilities to other Latin-based languages. Our goal is to eventually read non-Latin languages (such as Chinese, Hindi and Arabic) as well.

The Goggles update is available for Android phones running at least Android 1.6. Tell us what you think of Goggle's new image-based translation tool in the comments.

Translate the real world with Google Goggles [Official Google Mobile Blog]

Read More...

PowerPoint Viewer Now Opens PowerPoint 2010 Files [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5532775/powerpoint-viewer-now-opens-powerpoint-2010-files

PowerPoint Viewer Now Opens PowerPoint 2010 FilesWindows: PowerPoint Viewer, savior of those who need to open, but not create, Microsoft PowerPoint files, has been updated to open the PowerPoint 2010-formatted presentations you just know people are going to be sending soon.

If you don't plan to have Microsoft Office 2010 installed by this summer (when it's slated for release), you'll want to hold onto PowerPoint Viewer. This version of the program opens up the new PowerPoint 2010 file format, and includes all the bells and whistles, such as the new transitions and video effects of the next edition of the suite. There's a caveat: it won't support embedded online video.

Unfortunately, it's not a portable utility so you can't carry it on-the-go, but it's useful if you don't want to install all of Microsoft 2010. PowerPoint Viewer is a free download for Windows systems only. Are the new abilities in PowerPoint 2010 worth the upgrade, from what you've seen (or tried)?

Read More...

Instant Image Edit Opens Web Images in Picnik for Online Editing [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5533326/instant-image-edit-opens-web-images-in-picnik-for-online-editing

Instant Image Edit Opens Web Images in Picnik for Online EditingFirefox: Online image editor Picnik is pretty convenient, but you still have to manually upload image files or post their URLs to the site. Not so if you've got a new, Jetpack-powered extension that sends images to Picnik with a right-click.

It's an experimental extension, but even though it was built using Jetpack's no-restart-needed methodology, you don't need to have Mozilla's experimental platform installed to add Instant Image Edit with Picnik. After a standard install and restart, you'll see a new option when right-clicking images. It seems to just work, though there's one big caveat—the extension doesn't work behind password-protected sites, VPNs, or other restricted pages. Other than that, it's a convenient tool for those who sometimes need just a bit of basic crop/color/edit functionality.

Instant Image Edit with Picnik is a free add-on, should work wherever Firefox does.

Instant Image Edit with Picnik [Add-ons for Firefox via CNET]

Read More...

Underwater Turbines Attached To Kites Could Save A Few Climate Problems [Energy]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5533384/underwater-turbines-attached-to-kites-could-save-a-few-climate-problems

Underwater Turbines Attached To Kites Could Save A Few Climate ProblemsWhile underwater kites might sound like another one of those crazy concepts we like so much here at Gizmodo, the company behind the design has already attracted €2 million in investors, with testing beginning next year for the next-gen turbines.

Underwater turbines is such a great idea I'm surprised it's taken this long to kick off. As they're hidden in the depths of the ocean, the land isn't dotted with unsightly creatures—a fact that Senator Dianne Feinstein would appreciate, after she blocked the Mojave Desert solar farm project last year.

Each turbine measures 12m in wingspan width, and is attached to 100m of cable, with a rudder tethered to the sea floor, generating 500 kilowatts of power. The first tests begin next year in Northern Ireland, but the company behind the project, Minesto, is hopeful that they'll be widely used within the next four years. [CNN via DVICE]

Read More...