Daily Archives: February 8, 2010

Feb 8 2010

Edit PowerPoints On Your iPhone

Diminutive as the iPhone may be in comparison to the average desktop or laptop, there is no denying that this particular phone in the hands of clever applications developers can result in a near full-size experience. Take, for example, Documents to Go’s new Premium version (iTunes link) – it now allows you to edit PowerPoint presentations on your phone! This newly-added ability makes DTG’s application the first to permit mobile manipulation in all three of Microsoft Office’s main programs – Word, Excel and PowerPoint. While the price isn’t cheap ($14.99), anyone who regularly travels and presents may find this suite an excellent addition to their mobile office toolbox.

Having just presented a PowerPoint show at the Boston Bar Association, I can easily envision the need to edit a presentation arising at the last minute, perhaps in the absence of an available laptop or desktop. Although I haven’t tried this new version (I have the Word and Excel program on my phone), I may just spring for the new Premium version to try it out.

Hat tip to Just Another iPhone Blog.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Advertisement
Feb 8 2010

A Real Live Babel Fish???

Yes, science fiction may soon meet fact. Word on the Web is that Google is working on making its own speech-to-speech translation tech for future smartphones. What’s more, the Google people are suggesting this technology could be viable and live within a few years. Think about the implications for international business! I pulled this quote from the article on Gizmodo (link here), which in turned pulled it from an interview with The Times:

Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, said:

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.

Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on.

If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently.”

If the universal translator of science fiction fame is right around the proverbial corner, could the ever-elusive time teleporter be far behind? Grab your Towel and hang on tight!

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Feb 8 2010

There Really Is A "Day" For Everything

Mark your calendars: March 31, 2010 is Document Freedom Day. What exactly is Document Freedom Day? Well, despite the somewhat silly name, the day does serve a useful purpose – to educate regarding and promote the use of open standards and free document formats across the Web. This purpose serves you because adoption of open standards ultimately results in a Web that is more user-friendly and accessible. While the process of opening up the Web in this regard is a bit “techy” for the average lawyer, any Web user can get behind the idea of open sourcing and freely accessible information. Gotta go get my “I ♥  Open Source Docs” pin right away!

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]