Boydo's Tech Talk

In what might seem a blow to Google, Microsoft and its Bing search engine will get a leg up with Facebook integration in the form of post and comment translation abilities. In a nutshell, if you come across a comment that is in a language other than your selected Facebook language then a “translate” button appears next to the “like” button.

At the moment, this will only work with users that have set their language to one of a selection of Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese as well as Russian. Users will also have the choice of having translation undertaken by machines alone or involvement from the community as well. Page administrators can also choose whether or not to enable translations on their pages as well as being able to handle abusive and spam translations as well (if community sourced).

However, machine translation can go awry and I wouldn’t be surprised if websites spring up to capture some of the terrible and hilarious translations that will probably occur

Is the world going to become that little bit smaller again?

A new feature in Windows Phone 7 Mango is “Local Scout” which is a location based service powered by Bing. Think of it of something like a mashup of Urban Spoon and Google Maps allowing you to find local eateries, shops and landmarks. Depending how your phone is configured when Mango is installed you may or may not have the Local Scout tile active. Otherwise, if you’ve accidentally deleted it, this is how to get it back.

1. Open up a Bing search window by hitting the search key on the phone,
2. Drag up the context menu and choose “Settings”,
3. Make sure “Use my location” is set to “On”,
4. Press the “Back” button on the phone,
5. Click on the “Local Scout” icon which should be the first one on the left of the icons at the bottom on the screen,
6. Within “Local Scout” drag up the context menu and choose “Pin”.

Voila! You should now have Local Scout back on your home screen!