Business, software and languages...

class-built-apps-fortunes-nytimes: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: "After a few false starts, he created an app that let people send points and 'kisses' to friends. It struggled until Mr. Matei, who speaks several languages, translated the app. The next day, traffic jumped fivefold. He added games, and employees, and the app became one of the most popular Facebook programs in Europe. In late 2009, he sold to Zynga for an undisclosed sum."

What the E.C. Won’t See – Systran Introduces MT for European Commission Corpus - GLG News

What the E.C. Won’t See – Systran Introduces MT for European Commission Corpus - GLG News: "What does this prototype mean for the market? As we have note in earlier posts, the rules-based MT engines have been adding statistical modules to offer hybrid solutions, supporting application programming interfaces, and improving their user interfaces. What Systran has done with this release is demonstrate both its new engine’s ability to be tuned to specific domains and its SaaS credentials, although the first instance won’t get the usage that it might have seen prior to December 16th, 2010. In any case, this new Systran prototype shows that there is plenty of room for competition and innovation in the MT sector."

Computer automatically deciphers ancient language

Computer automatically deciphers ancient language: "Regina Barzilay, an associate professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Ben Snyder, a grad student in her lab, and the University of Southern California’s Kevin Knight took that claim personally. At the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in Sweden next month, they will present a paper on a new computer system that, in a matter of hours, deciphered much of the ancient Semitic language Ugaritic. In addition to helping archeologists decipher the eight or so ancient languages that have so far resisted their efforts, the work could also help expand the number of languages that automated translation systems like Google Translate can handle."

Overview (BOLD:PNG)

Overview (BOLD:PNG): "There is a pressing need to document the world's linguistic heritage while there is still time. The consequence of language shift is that many genres -- and many whole languages -- are quickly falling out of use. Professional linguists are compiling grammars and dictionaries, but this is painstaking work, and is not keeping up with the pace of language loss. This project is addressing the problem by training university students and literacy teachers to collect and curate oral texts from indigenous languages."

Language Log - The annihilation of computational linguistics at KCL

Language Log - The annihilation of computational linguistics at KCL: "But why target linguists? Of course linguists are by no means the sole target of the various restructuring exercises. In the sciences at King's the entire division of Engineering was shut, whereas a host of other disciplines have been targeted in the humanities (including Classics, Paleography, and American Studies). Linguists at KCL are scattered across a number of depts, so are an easy target for slogans like `only units with critical mass will be retained.' There had been discussions several years back about forming a linguistics department from the dozen or so linguists spread across CS, Philosophy, Greek, German, Education etc, but the administration decided against it.

Still, it's probably true that the marginal position of the field (neither hardcore humanities, nor hardcore science, nor hardcore engineering) and the widespread lack of awareness of what linguists do or why is an important contributing factor. Mark Liberman has, with some justification, been castigating linguists for their part in this over the pages of this blog. How critical this problem is is illustrated by the current crisis, though alleviating it is of course a long term project."

Language Watch: Is Gibbs Striking the Wrong "Denote"? - Political Punch

Corpus Linguistics and Politics:
Language Watch: Is Gibbs Striking the Wrong "Denote"? - Political Punch: "But is this a word favored in Washington, DC, by officials?
Apparently not.
Using the website CapitolWords, Jeff Connor-Linton, an associate professor of Linguistics at Georgetown, plugged in the relative frequency of use of the words “denote,” “note,” “say,” and “indicate” in the Congressional Record since 2002.
“Note” has been used 436 times, “say” 2,850 times, “indicate” 88 times.
“Denote” has been used zero times.
Connor-Linton calls the absence of the use of the word “striking.”"

New search engine aims to come up with just the right answer

New search engine aims to come up with just the right answer: "That's the idea behind Wolfram Alpha, a new search service that could be as much of a game-changer as Wikipedia or Google. Alpha, created by renowned mathematician, author, and entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram, uses fast computers and vast statistical databases to answer questions just as a human would — a human with advanced degrees in math."