[Download Squad] 6 New Entries: BlahblahFish shows just how bad machine generated translation can be

BlahblahFish shows just how bad machine generated translation can be

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Web services

You know how when you enter some French, German, or Japanese text into a web-based translator, the results always look a bit... suspect? BlahblahFish is a website that shows you what it looks like when you translate an English phrase into another language and then try to translate it back to English. The results are often baffling and occasionally downright funny.

If you get a particularly funny translation, you can post it on the site where other users can vote. Not surprisingly many of the translations that have been posted so far are somewhat dirty. But I also found out that "great googly moogly" translated into Korean comes out as something like "Indirect nine moogly where is serious."

[via Neatorama]

BlahblahFish shows just how bad machine generated translation can be originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rayhound: A space shooter where your only weapon is gravity

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

It seems a bit odd to call Rayhound a shooter when your ship doesn't actually have a single gun, but that's the best single-word description I can offer.

Your opponents, however, have lots of firepower and they're not shy about using it. How exactly do you go about defending yourself? Use your enemies' strength against them.

Use the mouse to control your ship's movement and left-click to engage your ship's gravity field. Time it right, and you'll gain control over enemy attacks and be able to redirect them to your advantage. Hold the mouse button down to keep the field engaged to drag their fire with you and release when you're ready to strike.

The visuals are simple yet stunning, especially in later stages when enemies become more numerous.

Rayhound is a free download for Windows, and is totally portable so Linux users might also be able to give it a shot using Wine.

Rayhound: A space shooter where your only weapon is gravity originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Internet Explorer share drops to an all-time low (again)

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, Browsers

Despite some excitement generated by Windows 7, things aren't all rosy for Microsoft as they continue to lose ground in the browser market.

On December 1, NetApplications announced that Firefox had maintained more than a 20% share for the first time in history. Last month, Mozilla's browser crept over 21%. Now out of "beta," Google Chrome has broken the 1% barrier, and Apple made gains as well - thanks in part to strong holiday sales of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Interestingly enough, current economic conditions and holidays seem to be contributing factors. Layoffs and long weekends mean more people browsing at home, and more people browsing at home, apparently, means increased use of alternative browsers.

This isn't the only bad news for Microsoft lately on the browser front. Several bloggers (myself included) have reported stability problems with Internet Explorer 8 in the Windows 7 beta build.

With Internet Explorer numbers steadily on the decline and the fact that it keeps placing poorly in comparative testing, will it be able to maintain its hold on the enterprise?

[ via Alley Insider ]

Internet Explorer share drops to an all-time low (again) originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WinCDEmu mounts disc images as Windows drives

Filed under: Utilities, Open Source

There are plenty of apps that let you mount a disc image (like an ISO file) as a virtual drive in Windows. And to be honest, WinCDEmu is just another one of those apps, without too many special features. But the utility is light weight and open source, so it might be worth checking out if you're into those things.

Once you've downloaded and installed WinCDEmu, you can have Windows treat any ISO, CUE, BIN, RAW, IMG, or SMB network share as a hard drive just by double clicking on the file. If another program is already your default utility for mounting images, you'll need to right click on the file and select "open with vmnt" to use WinCDEmu. You can unmount a file by right clicking on the virtual drive letter in Windows Explorer and clicking "eject."

[via gHacks]

WinCDEmu mounts disc images as Windows drives originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PicClick: Visual browser for ebay and Amazon

Filed under: Search, web 2.0

PicClick is a tool that lets you browse eBay and Amazon product listings by sifting through images rather than text based descriptions. The web app was developed by Ryan Sit, the same guy who brought us ListPic, a visual browser for Oodle classifieds.

The new site works reasonably well. You can click on eBay or Amazon and then pick a category to start looking through images. Drag the slider bar at the top right of the screen if you want to make the images larger or smaller. And you can drag your mouse over an image for more details including the price. Clicking an image will take you to the product page.

You can also search for items and set a minimum or maximum price or limit your search by zip code. Those features only work for eBay searches though, not for Amazon. And some of the Amazon prices are a bit inaccurate. For example, when I searched for Amazon MP3 downloads, every song and album had a $0 price tag. I figured maybe there was a huge sale/promotion going on, but when I clicked through to Amazon, the real prices showed up.

PicClick: Visual browser for ebay and Amazon originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Find the hidden menu in Google Mobile for iPhone

Filed under: Fun, Google, iPhone

Google's iPhone app, Google Mobile, was already pretty handy with the addition of voice search, but it turns out that it's got more features than anybody realized. The Google Mobile team just blogged about an easter egg, a hidden menu in the app that enables some extra goodies. To find it, go to the settings tab in Google Mobile, and keep trying to scroll down below the "About" option at the bottom. Eventually, a menu called Bells and Whistles will appear.

So, what are these bells and whistles? Some of them are actually sounds: you can replace the default sounds with chicken or monkey noises. You can also change the color of the Google Mobile theme and see a live waveform when you talk. This is all kind of fun, but not that useful. Oh, but wait: the reason you really want to find this easter egg is the "open links in app" option. Some commentators argue that it should have been there in the first place, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

[via VentureBeat]

Find the hidden menu in Google Mobile for iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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