Blogging Lesson Learned

Some of our wonderful readers noticed and contacted us because our blog was offline for roughly a day earlier this week. Thanks to our IT guru and guardian angel Thomas Gruber, it's now back online, and we couldn't be more grateful. This is a Blogger blog (part of Google), and here's what happened and what we learned:

• Google found some suspicious activity in the Gmail account that's associated with the Blogger account, which is Judy's (she rarely uses it). Google promptly shut the account down, which is a good thing.
• When Judy logged in to Blogger to publish some comments, the system informed her that she had no access. A quick Google (yes, always) search informed her of the Gmail security issue.
• She logged into her Gmail account, verified her identity by receiving an activation code via text message, and Google quickly restored access to all associated services (Picasa, Google profile, etc.) That is: everything but the blog.
• While we had backup files, that didn't do us any good, as Google was not giving anyone access to the blog -- neither to the owner nor to readers. 
• After Thomas communicated with the Google folks via the online forums and asked them to restore access to the blog, it was done within a day -- sometimes it just takes a while for all the information to be re-linked to your account.

Here's what we learned:

• Add a second user to the blog. We've now added Thomas as an administrator to our blog. If the Gmail account gets hacked again, Thomas will have access and the blog won't be owner-less in cyberspace.
• This all happened because Judy's Gmail password was weak. Bad Judy: she uses the highly sophisticated password database Keepass (we wrote about it here), but her old Gmail password was too easy to guess. Easy lesson: use difficult passwords with special characters and numbers. Keepass automatically generates complex passwords.

We are generally very happy with Blogger, but also use Wordpress for other blogs and websites. For now, the issue was user mistake (weak password) combined with a smart hacker with a smartphone in Brasil (who sent out some drug-related e-mails on Judy's behalf). We are incredibly grateful it's been resolved. We wanted to share what we learned so it doesn't happen to you. 

Free PDF Conversion Software Until February 5

PDFZilla is a Windows application that converts PDF files into Word documents, HTML files, JPG images and a variety of other formats.  The program usually costs $29.95, but you can now get it for a grand total of $0, which we like. Our techie guru found this great offer, and we figured we would share it our colleagues who have been looking for an affordable PDF conversion tool. We downloaded it in less than a minute. 

To get started, go to the PDFZilla website. The program is free until February 5th, so you only have a few days to get the download.  It runs on Windows 2000 and more recent versions. At 6 MB, it is quite small. 

When you go to the website, you will be shown a registration code. Be sure to write it down (or copy it) before you begin the installation process.  Then, once installed (execute the program as administrator if you run on Vista or Windows 7), click the "Register" button and type (or paste) your code.  Your software will be fully licensed and ready to use. 

Charity Donations: Free Deduction Calculator

Tax season is approaching rapidly in the U.S., and we wanted to share a website that our American CPA (whom we highly recommend; we finally found a great one!) told us about. It's a nifty and free tool to help you figure out how much your charity donations are worth. To claim 2010 deductions, can use this tool for donations you made last year for which you have a receipt from the charity, but for which you not yet calculated the value. Then attach a print-out from the software to the dated receipt you received from the charity to make sure you have all the proper documentation to prove your donations. Although this tool is developed by Intuit, maker of the fee-based Turbotax, the deduction tool, aptly named It's Deductible, is free. All you need is a free account -- and yes, they do want your e-mail address (but won't send you unsolicited stuff). It also keeps track of all your donations throughout the year.

We've found this tool to be highly intuitive and quite useful, and it turns out that the donations we made in 2010 (furniture, scanner, clothes, sporting goods, etc.) actually had a higher monetary value than we thought -- a pleasant surprise indeed. Get started and let us know what you think.

Virtual Watercooler

As many of our readers know, we have mixed feelings about large, catch-all, welcome-all translation sites as Proz.com. While we applaud their efforts to put on virtual and in-person conferences (and are happy to donate to their raffles) and think they have solid terminology databases (with many not-so-stellar entries), the site tends to attract a lot of newbies and folks who translate "on the side" or "as a hobby," which is not good for the professional linguists in our profession. The problem is a basic one of economics: lack of barrier to entry. We rarely participate in online discussion groups and forums because there are so many folks who are just looking for basic advice (that they should consider paying for, or taking a class, or buying a book). Don't get us wrong: hundreds of our top-notch colleagues are on Proz as well, but the true professionals seem to be outnumbered by the folks who are willing to work for peanuts and ask for advice on whether they should use Google Translate instead of Wordfast (really). Thus, we've shifted our focus to the listservs of professional associations, which are limited to paying members (ATA, UNIVERSITAS, NITA) and to Watercooler. Many times, you get what you pay for, right?

Judy discovered the Watercooler Network, run by affable Brit Andrew Bell out of Australia, when he invited her to join earlier this year. Back then, the well-designed site was still free of charge. Since then, Andy has had to shift to a modest fee-based model, which has yielded, in his words "mixed results." What Judy likes about the site is that it creates a real barrier to entry (read: $24.99 every six months) to keep out the folks who are not serious about our profession. It's the same idea as the one behind listservs: they are only open to members of the particular professional associations. Judy is a regular paying member of Watercooler, and has recently started contributing content to the site. The layout is simple, easy to navigate, and the site is equivalent to a listserv on steroids: you have your own Facebook-like profile page, can post video, comments, articles, participate in contests, etc. At the moment, the site has roughly 100 members, and many are coming around and realizing that this is a site worth re-joining (unfortunately, many left once they had to open their wallets). So consider supporting a fellow linguist in his quest to continue building a private network that will benefit us all. Try the free 30-day trial. See you at the Watercooler? 

Software for Linguists: Free Online Task Manager

Our ITI guru and web guardian angel, Thomas Gruber, recently found a nifty little task management tool that you can use to track projects and tasks. It's web-based and free, so there's nothing to install. The site promises "10-second sign-up" and we just tested and verified that -- true! The interface is clean and simple, and the program easily integrates with Gmail. We are not sure it would replace a few other programs we already use, such as Translation Office (TO) 3000 and just our good old Outlook, but it's a nice free piece of software that's portable and can be accessed from any computer. We like the clear functionalities such as tagging, assigning categories, due dates (integrated calendar), and the ability to sort projects into sub-projects. Yes, we love organizational tools, and perhaps this one could make your life easier -- for free.
Get started on the TODOIST website and watch the informational video here. 

Choosing a CAT Tool - Free Videos

If you either own a CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) tool -- also called TenT (Translation Environment Tools) or are thinking of purchasing one, chances are you have heard  the name of German translator and CAT guru Jost Zetzsche (and no, you don't have to pronounce it). Years ago, when we were looking for CAT tools, both for our business use and for corporate use when Judy was working as an in-house translation department manager, we turned to Jost for help, who very graciously answered all our questions. Jost has been a relentless advocate for CAT tools, a progressive forward-thinker in terms of technology, an expert on anything computer-related that makes translators' lives easier, and the publisher of an outstanding free computer newsletter for translators, the Tool Kit. He has also created Jeromobot (pictured); the modern patron saint of translators. You can follow him @jeromobot on Twitter.

Without a doubt, the best place to find out which CAT tool is the best for you is Jost's website, which is fee-based, but worth every penny. However, there is some fantastic free content, too: he has just added 20 excellent videos about tools that give you a great overview and should make your purchasing decision easier. If you like what you see, please consider supporting his efforts by purchasing a membership. 

The Facebook Experiment

Readers of this blog will know that we are both big fans of social media and the opportunities that these technologies create for small business owners like ourselves. The traditional marketing/advertising model seems almost obsolete because of these innovative new ways of creating interest, spreading the word, and keeping in touch with our customers. For us, Facebook is a hybrid in the sense that we use it for both professional and personal reasons -- a happy medium. We spend roughly 30 minutes a day on Facebook, and just like everyone else, we are not immune to the almost hypnotic powers of Facebook and its ability to draw one into its world -- which can result in spending more time on the site than one would like.

We are always quite busy, but this week is especially challenging for Judy, as she is presenting the oral exam in the hopes of becoming a Supreme Court of Nevada state-certified court interpreter (a long shot, due to insufficient simultaneous interpretation experience). She needs every minute she can get to study, so she has decided to save the 30 minutes a day usually reserved for FB by staying away for 7 days. Can she do it? Stay tuned and find out. Today is day #2 and she is alive and well. Note: if you are reading this posting on FB, it is because it is fed automatically into the application by our blogging software. Judy is keeping in touch with the world via Twitter.

What about our readers: can you live without any particular form of social media? 

Free Translation Price Calculator

This free translation price calculator, which you can easily install on igoogle, comes courtesy of our IT superhero and guardian angel, Thomas Gruber. We use Translation Office 3000 for our professional quotes, but sometimes we just want to get a quick rate without actually logging a not-yet-approved project. Thomas was tired of seeing us pull out our very uncool handheld calculators; so he programmed a tool for us. We are happy to share it with all our colleagues -- simply enter your rate, the lines/words, etc., and click on "calculate." We hope you like it as much as we do. Download it here.

Google Docs Features OCR Reader

Good news for those of us who frequently have to struggle with converting locked PDFs into editable documents. While we really like ABBYY FineReader, at $399, it is an expensive program (try the free 15-day trial). Our friends at Google have integrated similar functionalities into their powerful and popular Google Docs, which supports several languages, including English, Spanish, German, and French. We haven't tested that functionality yet, but with all things Google, you can expect it to be quite solid. Best of all: it's free. Read all about it on the Google Apps blog. Yet another solution: charge a PDF conversion surcharge. Your clients will understand that your expertise is not primarily in the document conversion area, and that having a professional linguist spend time on converting documents is neither the best use of the linguist's time nor the best use of the client's money. You would be surprised how quickly an editable document is found at your client's office once they realize they can save money by looking for it! Truly a win-win situation, isn't it?

The Facebook Security Debate

We are both big social media enthusiasts, and the marketing opportunities for small businesses are simply incredible. Web 2.0 has changed the way we market ourselves and reach new customers -- all mostly for free (well, there's the cost of our time). While the pros outweigh the cons, security is a huge issue, especially with Facebook, which has been getting a lot of well-deserved negative coverage as of late. The topic is complex and concerning, and Facebook is certainly guilty of setting its default security setting to much less privacy than one would like. Sure, the user can change the settings at any time, but we agree with many Web 2.0 experts that the default settings should be more private than public. The power of Facebook, which is about the hit the 500-million user mark, is undeniable, but the company also has a tremendous responsibility. They are making positive changes, but there's still a lot to be done. We get asked about security during our Web 2.0 workshops quite a bit, and it's something ever user needs to think about.  Our recommendations include checking your privacy settings on a regular basis (as they can be changed with system upgrades without your knowledge) and to not post anything that you'd rather not see on the cover of next morning's newspaper.We recently read a great article on Facebook's security debate in the European issue of Time. We highly recommend you read Dan Fletcher's well-researched article to get a better look at this issue.

Blog Redesign

After almost two years of blogging here at Translation Times, we decided it was time for a facelift (no Botox required). We looked at many other blogs, and especially liked Sarah Dillon's clean, beautiful layout with all the Web 2.0 elements. Our IT guru Thomas Gruber did a fantastic resdesign, added some categories to the top navigation for easy access to the topics we write about the most, and added some new elements. We are very happy with the result. Others seem to agree, as Kwintessential just included us in the Top 10 Translator Blogs list, which mentioned that they liked our brand-new layout. Thanks for the honor. What do our readers think? Do you like the new layout?

Flash Player Security Warning

Our IT superhero, Thomas Gruber, would like all our readers to know about this serious Flash Player security issue. He equals it to the worst-case scenario (think BP oil spill). He's a pretty laid-back guy, so this is quite serious. It should only take you a few minutes. Basically, Adobe just came out with a list of problems, 29 in total, that allow code to install viruses (don't ask us about the techie details on this). There have already been reports that some not-so-nice people are  cheerfully taking advantage of this, and Adobe highly recommends getting the newest version of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.

Here is how to fix this:

Adobe Flash Player

Adobe recommends all users of Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions upgrade to the newest version 10.1.53.64 by downloading it from the Adobe Flash Player Download Center or by using the auto-update mechanism within the product when prompted.

For users who cannot update to Flash Player 10.1.53.64, Adobe has developed a patched version of Flash Player 9, Flash Player 9.0.277.0, which can be downloaded from the following link.

Adobe AIR

Adobe recommends all users of Adobe AIR 1.5.3.9130 and earlier versions update to the newest version 2.0.2.12610 by downloading it from the Adobe AIR Download Center.

Disposable E-Mail Addresses

Our almost-weekly technology tip comes, as always, from our IT superhero Thomas Gruber. Today's topic is so-called disposable e-mail addresses. There are a variety of uses for them, including using them to get free stuff online, such as e-books or free software. While we love taking advantage of free stuff, and thank the many people who make the products available, we are increasingly weary of giving our business e-mail addresses. One never knows if our e-mail addresses could be sold or otherwise used in ways we don't approve of. Plus, spam messages are likely to increase when downloading freeware, and we don't read spam -- we read books (clever, but it's not really our own line). One way around this is to simply get a free e-mail address (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) and use that one for non-essential messages. The better option is to get a disposable e-mail address, which are is only valid for a short period of time. Does it sound too good to be true? It's not. Thomas recommends 10-Minute Mail, Meltmail, and the hilariously titled SpamGourmet.

Too Many Open Browser Tabs = Bad

Today's technology tip comes, as always, from our IT superhero Thomas Gruber, who has long been on both our cases about having too many broswer tabs open (we use Firefox). Judy is especially guilty of this. Thomas just sent us information that too many open tabs, in addition to slowing down your processes and loading times, could also leave one very vulnerable to phishing attacks (hackers trying to mine one's confidential data by posing as legitimiate websiste, including banks). This might finally be incentive enough for Judy to start closing tabs when she doesn't use the page and just open it again as needed. Read this page for a lot of important information about this subject, but it's a bit techie even for technology lovers like us. The bottom line: close the tabs of your browser to ensure online safety.

Google Docs Gets Even Better

As many of our readers might know, we are big Google fans and love Google Docs, which lets you collaborate on documents with colleagues from around the world. It's a very powerful, user-friendly tool. As with all things Google, the interface is simple and clean, and yes, it is free. We thought Google Docs was quite impressive before, but the company just released a new version with many upgrades. Our favorite is the sidebar chat, which lets you chat with collaborators in real time as you are working on a document. In addition, Google Docs now shows you character-by-character changes as they are being made without the need to refresh the page. The folks at Google have put together a short video explaining all the powerful updates. Get started with Google docs here.

Link: The Evolution of Google Translate

Machine translation is a heavily debated topic in our profession, and not surprisingly, Google is leading the mainstream efforts. While we have personally only scratched the surface of the debate, we applaud Google's goal of making all online information available to all people via their translations. We are quite confident that professional translators will never go out of style -- because, really, who wants a computer that doesn't understand syntax and tone to translate their confidential multi-million dollar sales contract between two global companies? Our clients don't (and won't, we hope). We look forward to playing around with Google's capabilities and were happy to hear that German researcher Franz Och, who is very well-known in the field of machine translation, is leading Google's efforts.

This week's New York Times article about Google Translate does a good job at analayzing the issues. However, we were surprised that the NYT did not get a quote from a representative of the translation industry, such as the American Translators Association.

Royalty-Free Images for Blogs and Newsletters

Our wonderful IT guru, Tom Gruber, just told us about a new website with more than three hundred thousand royalty-free stock photos in every possible category you can possibly think of. These are great for those of us who write blogs and/or create newsletters for non-profit associations that don't have the funds to pay for images. There's no catch to the site, but be aware that if you search for say, dogs, the first results you will see will be "sponsored" - that means, those images won't be royalty-free, and it clearly says so. The really free images appear on the same page. We've used several different royalty-free image websites, and are delighted to hear that a new one has become available. The website also includes a myriad of free tutorials about useful photography and web issues, such as changing eye colors in Photoshop, making a flag wave in GIMP, and all sorts of other things you hadn't even thought of. Check out the stock.exchnge site. You can also contribute to the free photo movement by uploading images that you'd like to share with the world. Sharing is good.

Adobe Reader Warning

Our IT guru just alerted us to the following issue, which we would like to share with our readers. If you are like us, you probably use Adobe Reader quite frequently. Unfortunately, some critical vulnerabilities have just been identified. Here is more information:

Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. All it takes is to open a PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one. This issue only affects users on Windows PCs (lucky Mac users).

The solution is to disable JavaScript support in Adobe Reader and Acrobat. You can disable it via the Preferences menu (Edit -> Preferences -> JavaScript and un-check Enable Acrobat JavaScript).

Multilingual Food Glossary

One of our colleagues from the American Translators Association, Kristina Moeller, just shared a link to an interesting four-language online food dictionary (French, Spanish, German, English -- just up our alley). We quickly tested it with a few fancy food terms, and it appears to be quite accurate. As with every online resource, this is simply a glossary and not a painstakingly compiled dictionary, so take the results with a grain of salt. This is a good place to start if you do translations in the area of hospitality, travel, restaurants, etc., which we do quite a bit. Enjoy and let us know if you find the glossary to be solid! Visit the Gourmetpedia here.

Nifty Online Tool to Frame Digital Pictures

Our web guru, Tom Gruber, is always on the lookout for new useful software that we can use and share with our colleagues. This free online tool, still in beta testing, is delightfully simple and effective. Try Clip Your Photos Framer --nothing to download, install, or learn. Simply upload an image and make it look professional/interesting/edgy/artsy (your choice) by adding one of a dozen or so digital "frames." This will beautify your image and make it ideal for use in company presentations, marketing materials, PowerPoint presentations, etc. We tried one of our images, and in ten seconds produced the framed image to the left. We are partial to simple, useful, and free tools, and this one certainly fits the bill. Have you used it?