A Music Video That’s out of This World

May 13, 2013

The Sky’s Not the Limit

Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, concluded his five month stay in space with style – he filmed a music video of himself covering David Bowie’s hit “Space Oddity”. The 53-year old astronaut can be seen floating in zero gravity on the International Space Station, strumming on his acoustic guitar while he sings. The lyrics are, of course, suited to the occasion.

This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating
In a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do

Though I’m past
One hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go

Stock Market Trends Revealed by Google Search Suggestions

May 7, 2013

Stock market players could be turning to Google suggest for financial insight in the near future. A recent study conducted by U.S. and UK academics has suggested that there is a connection between the direction of stock market trends and search data.

Can Google Predict Stock Market Trends?

The analysis by researchers from the Universities of Warwick and Boston is the newest attempt to pinpoint online behaviour patterns for the purpose of chartering movements in financial markets. The published results have shown that during the period of the study, Google Trends data was effectively used to gain insight into the current state of the economy. An example given from the findings was the increase of search terms such as “stocks,” “economics” and “portfolios” by individuals during times of global economic stress. The conclusion drawn from the changes in search frequency for the collection of financial terms used (98 in total), is that they could be used as early signals of upcoming stock market trends.

Currency Wars No More

May 2, 2013

G20 Meeting Calms Fears

After predictions that the deliberate devaluing of the Japanese and Chinese currencies by their leaders would lead to a domino effect across the global market, mentions of an upcoming currency war appear to have ceased.

In February, both Asian nations faced criticism from Western leaders, accused of pushing up the values of other currencies and harming their export market. However, at a recent meeting of the G20 nations, countries kept their currency criticisms to themselves.

Fickle Financials

At least your forex broker can breathe a sigh of relief – it appears that the financial market is not about to implode anytime soon. The Chinese yuan, however, is at a 20-year low to the US dollar, whilst the Japanese yen has dropped below the 100 yen to the dollar mark.

Online Translation: Google Leads the Pack

April 22, 2013

Search Engine Giant Adds 66th Language

Google’s famous translation service has just added its 66th language – Khmer, the official language of Cambodia. There are around 16 million speakers of the language, but Google had great difficulty in adding Khmer since there are not a lot of web resources available, and the language doesn’t usually use spaces to separate the words.

Google Translate currently supports languages such as Afrikaans, Basque, Icelandic and Lao, which was the 65th language to be added last year in September. Whilst the translate tool can be incredibly useful, it is best to rely on professional translators for business or legal documents, in order to avoid embarrassing gaffes that sometimes occur when translations are left to algorithms and machines.

Humans versus Machines

Indeed, the offices at Google Translate do not contain native speakers of the languages that are featured. Instead, the algorithms examine language patterns already present in existing documents and books. Thus, the more literature available for a particular language, the more accurate the online translation is likely to be.