Where Are You Being Censored?

Google put up an interesting page this morning dealing with Transparency. As an international company, their primary goal is maximize free expression and access to information.
To promote transparency around this flow of information, they built an interactive online Transparency Report with tools that allow people to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. Google believes that this kind of transparency can be a deterrent to censorship.

I think it's a great start to identifying the problem areas in censorship. At the very least, it can allow users to figure out where in the world they are the most likely to be censored and avoid those areas.

It Used To Be... Science Fiction

Google Inc. Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Office Dr. Eric Schmidt took to the keynote stage at IFA today to preview new technologies – including tools for Android-powered smartphones that translate conversations from one language to another as you speak.
This blogger would like to remind people that these technologies were considered the realm of science fiction only a decade ago.

Remember the Universal Translator of the Star Trek series? Say hello to Google-inspired "Voice-to-voice translation". It's not working yet, but at least someone is working on it. Google claims that it should be ready within a couple years.

While we're on the science-fiction curve with Star Trek... do you remember the Tricorder - the perpetual palm pilot of every away mission the crew went on? Those are already a reality with smartphones, the Google Droid leading the market. Smartphones help people by displaying data over photographs or video input in real time. A good example of this augmented reality is Google Maps with Street View.

Smartphones are truly becoming smarter and easier to use as well. New Droids, being produced right now by Google, offer voice command capability with the eventual goal of making it possible for you to get any piece of data or even TV program with a single voice command.

Schmidt said "more than 200,000 Android-powered smartphones are activated every day, and the Internet will soon deliver information to three or four billion people, not just the elite," via smartphones.
What are some other things that Schmidt envisions for the future?
"Your car should be able to drive itself! After all, your car knows where it is, knows where the other cars are and where it should be going."
"A near-term future in which you don’t forget anything, because the computer remembers. You’re never lost."
"We’re about to see a new age of augmented humanity, when computers will make it possible for us to do what we really want to do."

What about you. What would like to see in the near future?

42 Phrases A Lexophile Would Love

1. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
2. Police were called to a day care, where a three-year old was resisting a rest.
3. Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
4. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
5. To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
6. When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.
7. The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large..
8. A thief who stole a calendar... go twelve months.
9. The burglar fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.
10. Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.
11. When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.
12. A math professor went crazy with the blackboard and did a number on it.
13. The professor discovered that his theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
14. Dead batteries are frequently given out free of charge.
15. If you take a laptop computer out for a run, you could jog your memory.
16. A dentist and manicurist fought tooth and nail.
17. A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
18. A will is a dead giveaway.
19. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
20. A backward poet writes inverse.
21. In a democracy, it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
22. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
23. If you don't pay your exorcist, you could get repossessed.
24. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
25. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft, and I'll show you A-flat miner.
26. When a clock gets hungry it goes back four seconds.
27. The guy who fell into an upholstery machine has fully recovered.
28. A grenade fell into a kitchen floor in France, and resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.
29. You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
30. Local Area Netowrk in Australia: The LAN down under.
31. He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
32. A calendar's days are numbered.
33. A boiled egg is hard to beat.
34. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
35. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
36. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
37. When you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.
38. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.
39. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
40. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
41. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
42. A lot of money is tainted: Taint yours, and it taint mine. 

The Holiest of Unions

Held together by equal parts of resin, hardener, and Holy Spirit.