Friday, May 07, 2010

Touring by motorcycle just got easier with Google Goggles

Photo: Japanese menu



Imagine your riding in a foreign country and stop for a break at a roadside restaurant and go in to try the local food.You are all smiles as you get ushered in and sat down at a table. Then you pick up the menu and you don't know what to order because you can't read the local language.Your smile turns to despair and you fumble as you work out what to do next, grab for your paper dictionary, mime or ask the waiter to take you to the kitchen to show you the food. Well hope is at at hand as Google Goggles is reducing this problem with their new Android based software that can run on mobile phones.

According to the press blurb you can take a shot of the menu with your phones camera, isolate the text you want to read, and then translate the item using Google translate software. So not being able to read a foreign menu may soon disappear. It is making the world a little smaller and a whole lot more accessible.

Current languages Google Goggles can read include English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. It can translate into those languages, plus Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Galician, Icelandic, Irish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish.

For more technical information click here

Read Goggle's release click here

Download the software here






See the best of Japan by motorcycle at

Motorcycle Japan

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