One of the things I love about working for Google is the 20% time. While it's popularly touted in the media as "one day a week to do whatever you want", it's really just an acknowledgement that there are times when you get an itch, and have to scratch it. The company let's you do that on their time for up to 20% of your time.
This is a great way to explore new areas, and try new things. It's also a great way to get a product out the door that might not happen otherwise.
My latest 20% project is an iPhone interface for Google Translate. You can see the blog post where I introduced the feature over on the Google Mobile blog.
This was a fun project to work on. First I got to dive deeper into client-side javascript and HTML5 AIPs. Second I got to work with some great engineers like my friend David Singleton.
So far the response to the app is pretty good. There are about 1200 links on a relevant Google Blog search, and about 40 results on the same search in Google News. So far, I've seen a lot of great recommendations, and will have to plow through all these articles to see what people are saying.
I'm already hard at work on adding recommendations and incorporating feedback, expect to see more updates in the future.
1 comment:
HI Allen,
I am very grateful for that iPhone version, I have used it extensively this summer in Russia. The one thing I am missing is the ability to delete individual entries in the database, so I can keep a clean list of words for repeated review. Is that something you can add?
Thank you again!
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