Goggle!
Google, the web's best search engine, now lets you choose which language to use for the Google interface. And if the language you want is not available, you can do some of the translation. The beta program still needs help with Pig Latin and Klingon, for example, though you can always opt for BorkBorkBork instead.
As everyone knows, BorkBorkBork is a language based on the speech patterns of the Swedish chef from the Muppets. For more details, check Steven Carr's Chef page. This has a link to an encheferizer program that will convert any plain text into mock Swedish. There's also a Usenet news group, alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork .
Incidentally, the announcement that Excite UK planned to offer regional dialect versions in scouse and cockney was, of course, an April Fool joke. See www.excite.co.uk/brummie and so on.
Amazon time
Mike Daisy is an actor and playwright who spent two years working for Amazon.com. He has turned his experience into a popular one-man show in Seattle - 21 Dog Years: Doing Time@Amazon.com. The show and his website www.mikedaisey.com explain "how he learned to slavishly love idealistic mouthbreathers, 60-hour weeks, and the cult of personality that is Jeff Bezos". The site includes a webcast of the show, video clips to download (which I could not download) and much else besides.
Pay off
www.nochex.com is, despite its name and internet domain, a UK-based rival to the American PayPal ), and also lets users send and receive money by email. "The transactions are secure, instant and guaranteed," the company says. However, you do need to have a debit card to use the service, and it costs 99p to transfer money between a debit card and a Nochex account.
Nochex has been on trial since February and about 1,800 users have already signed up.
Deadly
Asbestos kills more than 4,000 people a year, and the toll could be reduced by the first non-profit web-based national asbestos register. Property developers, surveyors, planners, builders, and even fire fighters will be able to access the register from a personal computer or Wap (wireless application protocol) phone to find out if there is an entry before they start work on a build ing. Presumably mobile phone users will not be lumbered with the bizarre and pointless animated intro.
Offside
Lawyers acting for the world's richest football club may have started putting the boot in. Dave Woods, the fan responsible for United Online says he has had a letter claiming that he is in breach of copyright. Apparently the lawyers want the words "Man Utd" and "Manchester United" removed immediately. That should be easy. A simple search and replace could be used to change them to Morons United.
The pay off
Web design company Bluewave has launched a free system that could help companies clear their unpaid invoices. The idea is simply to publish duplicate invoices on the web. "Debtors' breaches of contract are aired in public until invoice payment is received, and the creditor removes their details from the web," says Bluewave. The site that creates the HTML invoices is at www.unpaidinvoices.com.
Top class
The latest ThinkQuest competition winners have been announced ( www.thinkquest.org/library/ic_2000_winners.html following a judging session held late last month at Cern in Switzerland, where the world wide web originated.
The annual competition for student web designers again produced an excellent set of finalists, and Sighting the First Sense: Seeing is Believing was selected as the best.
It was produced by three teenagers: Brad in Connecticut, Morris in San Diego and Glavin in Singapore. Another site that should prove hugely popular is Hogwarts Online http://library.t hinkquest.org/C006090/ , a Potter fan site produced by Saskia and Sarah Preissner, sisters aged 14 and 10 respectively. They live in Berlin and have done the whole site in English and German, and some parts in other languages.
Many ThinkQuest sites compare favourably with the supposedly professional ones shown in the Third Annual International Web Page Awards. The home page is spectacularly awful. The awards will be presented at a black tie dinner in San Jose on April 26.
New & noted
• Free firewall to compete with Zone Alarm: www.tinysoftware.com.
• Delia Smith is cooking at www.deliaonline.com.
• Do androids dream of www.geocities.com/siennaj/ Esheep2/ ?
• Resources for record collectors and music-obsessives: www.staxotrax.com
• Tickets of Russia provides news and links in English.
• ClaimNet has won a DTI Smart Award for developing a secure system for putting the insurance claims process online.
• Share and compare opinions at www.moneywhispers.com.
