Google builds translation engine for Arabish language (Sh5bar)

Salam 3lekom
Sh5barkom enshalla 6ayben?
Atamna lekom kel altwfee8 ya 8ra2y al23zaa2.

You will not get a single word if you are not familiar with Arabish language. (Not Arabic)

In the early start of the computers, Arabic wasn't supported in the internet chats and room. So the middle east guys invented this new language that mutate Arabic letters but in English.

The numbers stands for Arabic letters.

Now that isn't official, but a lot of people still use it (including me).


Why I am writing about it now?

Well, it seems Google never gets tired, they've developed an API to translate Arabish to pure Arabic!

I've pulled an example out to my website here it is.

http://geshout.com/3rby.html

Google just fires at well!

So do we have to be boring?

We do boring stuff and we make sure they remain boring.

Meetings are boring. Who talks about a meeting to his friends?
Air safety instructions are boring. Who pays attention to those?
Offices are boring. I don't care how large or small your office is.
The list goes on.

Imagine a meeting with no chairs? Worth talking about.
Imagine the cabin crew do the belly dancing before giving the saftey instructions. People will board just to see the crew dance.
Imagine an office that identifies your visitors, displaying their profiles on the your screen with the last visit date. You will get a lot of visits.

Think of boring stuff you do everyday. Think of ways to overcome it.

The 6 (Why?)s

When you have an idea you tend to naturally defend it even if it sucks. Worst, some people don't ever admit a tiny possibility that they just might be wrong.

Can you Be Wrong?
When you have an idea or new system or a business structure or a market niche or a model or a paradigm and you want to make a point, try this, ask yourself why? then answer.

Ask yourself again why? Then answer.

Ask up to 6 whys. And answer each time. You'll feel much better while presenting your idea.

That's a tip I learned from the PresentationZen book.

-Posted from my E71 Nokia

Quick and Dirty

Sometimes I love to switch to that side. Its easy and quick and simple. But there is an equalizer I need adjust.

Programmers blame me sometimes for using QD methods.

When I want to develop a cure for a virus I used to use VB5, (Yes I used to do that when antiviruses takes long time to recognize an unleashed virus) . I love VB5. Simple and quick compiling, It can run on all windows even Windows 95 without the need of any additional dlls.

Note that I don't need framework. I give my users a single exe and it does the job right. Quick and dirty.

However, when I setup my mind to do an complex and sophisticated system that have many components. I use VB.NET, before I write any single line of code, I design the Object Model Diagram OMD (I love that part).

That's the most important experience before doing any coding. Getting familiar with design patters is also an important step before development.


So if you are a developer, you need to set that equalizer just right.

FileTwit: Ever felt like twitting your files?

Have a document, a pdf, a presentation, a video, a picture, a file that you want to share in twitter?

You can use Rapidshare to upload it. Get the link. Then go to twitter and twit the link.

Or you can install FileTwit. Then just right click on any file you want to share in twitter and select "Twit this file!.

FileTwit is a client application built for windows that uses Twitter API.
FileTwit uploads the file, creates the link and asks you to type something before it twits it.

Download the package from here.

Unzip, and run setup.bat. That's it.

Go to the file you want to twit, right click on it, select Twit this file. The application will authenticate you for the first time. Please test it guys and tell me if anything went wrong, its working fine for me and Anders

Thanks a lot.

Enjoy

Can't change your company? Zoom instead

"We have more priorities than that one, lets wait."

"Ya allah alek ya Hussein (Jesus Hussein!), what's wrong with you? Our system is efficient we just need to advertise it well."

"Sorry we can't implement that now, but hey, thanks for bringing it up."

"Lets keep it safe, don't want to take risk."

"Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with the system. Its good enough"

Those were actual CEOs' answers to an employee who want to introduce something new. Companies tend to stay safe and avoid change because change is pain. The inertia of the mediocre force is formidable, you have to suffer if you are a change junkie. That's why companies tend to stay safe, gradually become boring.

Customers hate boring.

In his book Small is the new Big, Seth suggests if you have so much pain changing, don't. Just zoom instead.

Zooming is the process of introducing new things that don't or have very minimal risk.

Examples of Zooming:

• Trying a new restaurant.
• Hanging with friends with different job scope and domain.
• Sending a personal letter (hand written) to each customer of yours.
• Take Spanish classes.

Seth have another checklist of Zooming that you may want to try.

TwitColr Twit Color schemes

Colr.org is a website that allows you to play with colors and color schemes, create your own color schemes and much more.

I was visiting that site, and I've seen that it has an API. Hence I've integrated the twitter API with Colr.org API and created what I called TwitColr.

Why is it useful? Its just an easier why to see random color schemes and share it in Twitter. I might add some features to search colors by Tag. Example, give me colors with Cheese tag.

This is great for Designers to share colors with other designers via Twitter.


Visit TwitColr

Research: Saving feelings "Digitally"

The brain has two memorizing mechanisms.

You can remember an event clearly if it happened concurrently with another event that touched your emotions at the same time span.

For example, most of you can remember clearly where you were when the 9/11 events happened.

The other approach is done by repeating something over and over until it get written to the brain. Of course this is not as effective as the emotional memory.


Lets talk about the first day of your wedding. You were extremely happy and while you are in that mode, your wife puts a new perfume that you never smelled before. That's it, that perfume will act like a pointer to this happy event, and it will keep pointing to that happy moment all the time.

After ten years if you smell that perfume, it will be indexed through the brain, point back to that emotion and restore it. Of course unless if that pointer didn't get 'overwritten' by some other memory.

Here is a great way of saving feelings and read it back.

The smell is a signal sent to the brain. If we could integrate this in the Human API I talked about few months ago. Psychics could use that to remove the depression from people and tap back the great moments.

The Human API can search the brain for happy moments and associated indexes/pointers (Like perfumes, paintings, colors, etc..) And send the signals when needed.

I know. I'm crazy.

See your Twitter friends on Google Earth! EarthTwit

Yes. I've added a new feature to EarthTwit such that when you login with your twitter account, I read all the people you follow, determine their location, ask Google GeoCoder to get me the Latitude/Longitude and then add their picture with their status to Google Earth with a line connecting YOU to them.

It may be of use.

Enjoy and let me know your feedback :)

Visit EarthTwit

No fear. Google is here

If you wrote a manifesto 10 years ago in a piece of paper, it is unlikely you will find it again now.

If you write something in a blog, a bulletin board, or commented on an Image or a board-post. Google can find it, clean the dust over it and hand it back to you with dates.

If someone claims he found something that you previously wrote about or discovered. Google can pull it back in seconds and prove him wrong. None of your work will be buried, it will be fetched one day if needed.

Seth conveys a great story here about personal branding with Google. A woman looking for a babysitter, she receives three CVs, search the names in Google. Google hunts the applicants and finds them showing pictures on Facebook of themselves drunk, or muttering in a chat room that they don't want to take a mundane job because they see themselves as artists.

"Ships" Great Google Earth Game

Paul van Dinther created a game with Google Earth Plug-in. He called it Ships. Think of it as a Ship Simulator, you can choose your Ship type, navigate, carry things.

Paul utilizes large set of APIs to develop the game.

The Google Earth Blog has written about this here.

Excellent job Paul.

EarthTwit: Just Tweet for Stars, if it feels right!

I've added a new feature to EarthTwit.

You can now share stars, weird clouds of dust, the Sun or different planets.

Tweet anything on the sky with your friends and start discussions easily.

http://geshout.com/earthtwit

Be the best in my world

You can't afford to be the best in "the" world.

Every consumer has his own world. One's world might be Twitter applications. Another consumer's world might be the Electric High-Voltage maneuvering with GIS.

Utilize that world, find a market niche (a very small one) and hammer it with all your power.

Know the 80/20 rule. You may have developed something so large and so big aiming for the mass average people. Sadly, that won't work anymore.

Be:

• The best Social Marketing Blogger.
• The best kids Shoe Maker.
• The best IPhone social network application developer.
• The best Linux to Windows Application Programmer.
• The best hacker? No. The best bank ATM hacker.
• The best Mac applications cracker.

And you'll get the best middle name ever.

• Elie The Social Marketing Blogger.
• John The Kids Shoe Maker.
• Jasmin The IPhone social network developer.
• Cody The Linux to Windows programmer.
• Yaseen The ATM hacker.
• Anders The Mac Cracker.

So, be "the" best in my world.

EarthTwit, MapTwit and TwitTube are now authorized by Twitter

Yesterday I got the approval of my 3 Twitter applications, you can access them from here.

I used oAuth to validate the data sent via the applications and twitter. Now, I don't take responsibilities of the passwords. Passwords are entered and verified in Twitter.

Now when you post something via each of these applications you can see the source of the twit.

Keir Clarke @ Google Maps Mania wrote an article about these applications.

Twitter Trends: What people really talk about

Finding what people are really interested in is difficult. Newspapers don't discuss what people are obsessed about. They merely "collect" discrete news and consolidate them together in a paper.

Twitter Trends are topics twitters mostly talk about. You really want to see what people are talking about? Check twitter trending topic. You can see the current , daily or weekly trends.

I noticed that after I integrated Twitter Trends with YouTube into what I called "TwitTube"

Now you've got a list of HOT topics, pick one and start a niche on.

That's pure Web 2.0

It's easy

I'm referring to those who stand far away and point at the successful person

"Aha she just used that feature and combined it with this feature to create her niche, anyone can do that. That's easy."

Yes It's easy, but do you have the gut to do it?

Once you hear someone says that, mind that you had upset him so bad because he defends mediocre.

TwitTube launch (Twitter Trends + YouTube)

When I login to Twitter, on the right pane I see a list of what Twitter calls "trends". Those are the most commonly words being discussed in Twitter in a given period.

Frankly I don't recognize most of them so I need to go to YouTube and search for that trend. Like for instance Apple Shampoo!.

Shhhh I also knew the Swine Flu from those trends.

Then it hits me. What if I used Twitter API to read the latest trends and then use YouTube API to feed the trends to?

Well, you get TwitTube.

http://geshout.com/twittube

Enjoy.

MapTwit launch (Twitter + Google Maps)

After I launched EarthTwit, the limitations started to appear. Downloading the plug-in for Google Earth costs. It costs time, it costs memory. Some people can't download it due to some permission on their machines.

Google Maps on the other hand work on most browsers without a plug-in. It loads faster too ( check this) . You will only miss the Earth spherical look on Google Earth.

So how about if we make people twit maps?


Meet MapTwit

http://geshout.com/maptwit



I love you all my dear readers. If you have suggestions don't hesitate :)

EarthTwit launch (Twitter + Google Earth)

Today the 7th May 2009, one month past the launch of geShout, I have launched a service on top of geShout to allow Twitter users use Google Earth to share locations and landmarks.

I used Twitter API and Google Earth API with my knowledge in PHP to build that.

What remains is to use oAuth and let Twitter approve my application. So twitter can identify the source. example: about 1 hour from earthtwit.


This would be the first attempt to integrate Twitter with Google Earth.

Let me know your comments and suggestions.

Enjoy earthtwiting

-Hussein

Work Less

You spend 2 weeks working on a report. Every out and in, double check spelling mistakes and rewriting the executive summary every time.

In 30 minutes your colleague prepares a presentation with 10 slides. 1 word in each slide.

Both of you submit your work. Bang! your friend gets the credit and you get the "but thanks".


Elie illustrates Pareto's law here. How 20% of our work can lead to 80% of results. The challenge is to identify that 20% of your work that impact. Its not easy at all just like the concept of writing less.

EarthTwit

Twitter is a useful tool. Its handy. Simple to use. Less boring as I don't need to read zillions words to get the point.

Just type what you are doing in 140 characters or less and interested people will get it.

Developers started to build really nice websites and clients on top of twitter. I spent the last week playing with the twitter API and I have some good news for you.

I will create a new website, that allow you to login using your twitter account. You can then twit Google Earth locations and landmark. That's the only function on the site.

The site will contain Google Earth plug-in, a Box to type your status and one Update button.

The name of the site is earthtwit.

Lets hear your comments and suggestions.


EDIT: The site is up and running now
visit it here
or from geShout.com

MEET EarthTwit

It's selfish

Stop thinking about yourself for a while. You create a product that you like and then try to sell it to me?

Stop feeding me your ads on TV and facebook and lampposts. It's no good. It won't work anymore. I just don't care.

Do something that I want or need and treat me with respect.

Its about me not you.

An Idea: Matching Clothing

Women spend hours in the mall shopping. They love to match clothing and accessories.

"It's art", my wife claims.

Here's an idea that will make married men life easier (I hope).

Attach a device at your shop that scans the color of a top and propose matching clothes pieces based on the color. Only clothes available will be displayed with their location in the store.

Sorry its a Technical Limitation, but Thanks!

That's what you get from senior people at your organization when you try fight mediocre.

I do that too, if I like the current system or I'm just not in the mode to change or I'm too experienced with it. I would tell you the same. Sorry Its a technical limitation, we can't do it. But Thanks anyway!

What does Technical Limitation REALLY mean
Type "Technical Limitation" in Microsoft Word.
Right click -> Point to Synonym

You will get the following:

1. I don't feel like doing it.
2. The current system is doing fine.
3. I want to leave the office early.
4. Go away.
5. Not part of the contract.
6. Pay more.
7. That would ruin my experience.

I decided to delete that from my dictionary.