Germany - Tag Archive

Worldictionary – The Perfect Travel Companion

17 Replies RonF

Have you found yourself staring at signboards in an attempt to decode the unfamiliar words written in a foreign tongue? Have you sighed in despair wondering why you didn’t think of carrying that bulky multilingual dictionary when you set out on your world tour? Wouldn’t it be unnerving to find yourself lost in a strange land?

If it wasn’t for Worldictionary, I would have felt like a fish out of water during my recent trip to Germany. Thankfully, a friend of mine had told me about it earlier and I was able to make the most of my vacation. With the simplest and most efficient translation tool in my hand, I didn’t have to pore over tourist brochures or look for assistance from locals.Worldictionary iPhone App Translation ScreenshotDesigned to be the best travel tool, Worldictionary is an iPhone app that provides instantaneous translation of words. It recognizes words in several languages like traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Germany, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Czech, Slovak and Romanian and translates them immediately.
This app is synonymous with versatility. All I had to do was point my iPhone’s camera at a word and Worldictionary swung into action! The word was translated in a flash. And I didn’t have to manually type it in or take a snap of the word. This is indeed technology at its best.

Worldictionary keeps a record of the words you’ve searched for, making it easy to come back to them for later reference. This feature is indeed of great help to those who are interested in learning a new language. There is also an option of taking a picture of a line of text and getting it translated word by word. I found this feature to be quite helpful. Images of words saved in your phone can be easily translated too, without any typing.

The only improvement I would hope for this app is the ability to recognize and translate handwritten fonts too. Though there were places where I couldn’t use this app due to the unavailability of a network connection, I still think it is the perfect travel companion one can find.Worldictionary iPhone App Dictionary ScreenshotThanks to this app’s instantaneous translation services, you need not fret when you come across words on a signboard, in a menu or in a newspaper that are in a language that’s not your own.

Download Worldictionary now and visit exotic holiday destinations all around the world. Its available in iTunes for £3.99.

England out of the World Cup 3 times in two years!

8 Replies Christopher Roberts

Just to let you know this is article number 50!
What a fantastic milestone! 🙂

South Africa 2010, England was knocked out of the FIFA Men’s World Cup by Germany being beaten 4-1 – although goal line technology would have shown that it was 4-2.


On Sunday, England was knocked out of the FIFA Women’s World Cup to France on penalties.

The final blow for England came as its UK team was knocked out of the 2011 RoboCup in the group stages just a few days ago.

The RoboCup took place in Istanbul on Saturday the 9th and Sunday the 10th of July.

There were many entrants from a whole range of different countries. The game played was four-a-side football, but only humanoid robots were allowed to compete.

RoboCup Humanoid Football

Some robots playing football to try and win the RoboCup

The UK squad was designed by a team from Edinburgh University. The team’s coach said that they were down by they weren’t out, and that they would be returning next year!

The teams loss was blamed on system bugs, all of which the team thought could have been eradicated, but they just didn’t have the time to fix them before the game.

Next year the UK is going to have a much better team

Assistant professor at the School of Informatics, Dr Subramanian Ramamoorthy, stated that if the UK had had an internal RoboCup before hand, to select the best robots and fine tune the hardware, software and strategy, then the team could have performed much better.

2011 was the first year that the UK entered a team, but at the Mexico City RoboCup next year it is hoped that the team will perform much better!

Technology and sport

13 Replies Christopher Roberts

Should we use more technology in sport? Well it depends on the sport I guess, or does it?


I have been watching a bit of Wimbledon lately and it’s got me thinking about technology and sport. Go back 50 years and technology had a very small part in the sporting world. There was no Hawk-Eye technology in tennis or cricket, meaning that it was purely down to human perception as to whether the point was scored, or out.

Hawk-Eye at Wimbledon

Hawk-Eye technology being used at Wimbledon

This is still true of football. Some say that it “adds to the excitement of the game” but others say that it is time to move on. Last years world cup started serious discussions into the use of technology in the sport, specifically goal line technology. There were incorrectly awarded goals as well as goals not awarded.

England was cheated of a point against Germany when the referee decided not to award a goal. It was hard for the linesman to judge, due to where he was standing, however goal line technology and goal cameras could easily have verified the truth. This wasn’t the case for England though.

England's discounted goal against Germany in the 2010 South African World Cup

The ball clearly went in the goal, however the referee decided that it was not a goal

Many sports have now adopted the use of technology to improve the accuracy of scores/results, athletics, tennis and cricket are just a few. But my question to you is should other sports yet to use the technology, like football, make the switch too, or does technology just not have a place in every sport?