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Google Helps Break Down The Language Barrier (In A Brilliant Way)


Posted by Artem Russakovskii on December 19th, 2007 in Awesomeness

Today Google announced the release of 29 translating robots that you can just add to your friends list in Google Talk. Then you can talk to them, getting instant translation in return. You can also enter a group chat and use the bots as translators between other people and yourself.

The only downside is that the Google Talk client doesn't seem to support group chats just yet, so you have to use the Gmail in-page one.

I think it's a brilliant idea if you ever deal with foreign languages. How many times have I forgotten a word while translating a paper or trying to talk to my mom back in Ukraine? A quick IM to the en2ru Google bot and …

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Touristy Things To Do In San Francisco And Around It


Posted by Artem Russakovskii on December 17th, 2007 in Personal, Stuff

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I was looking through some old papers while cleaning out the closet and found this list that Milla made for my mom when she was visiting. I quickly jotted it down for future reference. Here it is in no particular order:

In San Francisco

Outside San Francisco

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Fun With The Kill-A-Watt


Posted by Artem Russakovskii on December 15th, 2007 in Personal, Stuff

Updated: December 19th, 2007

If you haven't heard yet, there's a cool useful little device that you can buy for about $20, called the Kill-A-Watt. You plug it into the power outlet, then plug something into it and observe various fun facts about the plugged in device, such as the power consumption, voltage, amperage, etc. I started plugging things in and recording power consumption that you can see below. Here are the results I got so far (updated often):