Google is working on a speech-to-speech translation tool for the mobile phones. With this translator loaded on your mobile phone, you’ll have no language barrier while communicating with your foreign friends or business partners.

The Google Speech Translator for mobile phones shall allow the users to chat verbally with their foreign friends over the phone, without the need to use dictionary. The Google Speech translation works similarly to voice recognition technology where its has drawbacks that need to be ironed out including differences of voice, accent and pitch etc.

The Google Nexus One phone was initially rolled out with very limited multi-touch capability in the phone’s virtual keyboard only, which has raised lots of dissatisfaction from the users. And now they’ve announced the multi-touch functionality is made available, where the users can get their the update onto their Nexus One phones via Google’s over-the-air update.

The multi-touch functionality on the Nexus One phone is called “Pinch To Zoom functionality” by Google team. And they also have plans to allow over-the-air update for Android 2.x smartphones to get the multi-touch functionality. But the decision will be left to the Android phone manufacturers and the carriers.

Besides the multi-touch, the over-the-air update also lets Nexus One phone to get Google Goggles, 3G fixes and a new version of Google Maps (3.4). To access the update, the users need to wait till they’ve received a message on their phones’ notification bar. From that on, just download the update, it shall install and get your phone updated.

via nexus404 slashgear

Renders of a device called the Motorola Shadow have appeared today followed by some pretty interesting rumors. While the Shadow looks to me a sort of Droid successor, sources our telling us that this will infact be the Google Nexus Two.

If true, this means that we will be seeing this device sold straight from Google unlocked. Unfortunately we have no word on its specs or anything of the sort other than the obvious fact that it features a touchscreen and slide out QWERTY keyboard and presumably the Android OS.

We’ll keep you posted as this one unfolds.

via engadget

Yes, we were almost certain Google Nexus One would have GPS but it is still good to see it in writing. Engadget revealed some more details about Nexus One just yesterday.

As far as location awareness goes Nexus One will be utilizing an A-GPS receiver, cell tower and WiFi positioning, a digital compass, and an accelerometer. Pretty much just like T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G. More of this gadget »

While there have been various pictures Google’s Nexus One floating around there haven’t been any the give us such an up close, not to mention clear, look at it.

All of these pictures come from twitter user phillm. More of this gadget »

Looks like Google’s been busy on the camera tip lately — not only is it launching a new QR code-based Favorite Places mobile search product today, it’s also demoing Google Goggles, a visual search app that generates local results from analyzing mobile phone images. Favorite Places isn’t super-complicated, but it sounds like it’ll be pretty useful: Google’s sent QR code window decals to the 100,000 most researched local businesses on Google and Google Maps, and scanning the code with your phone will bring up reviews, coupons, and offer the ability to star the location for later. (It’s not implemented yet, but you’ll be able to leave your own reviews in the future.) Google hasn’t built this into the Google Mobile app yet, so you’ll need something to read QR codes with — Android devices can use the free Barcode Scanner, and Google and QuickMark are offering 40,000 free downloads of QuickMark for the iPhone today. We just tried it out using QuickMark and it works pretty well — although we’ll wait to see how many QR codes we see in the wild before we call this one totally useful. More of this gadget »

Apparently us Yanks have been spoiled by the warm embrace of Google Maps Navigation, forgetting that our friends in the UK don’t have the same luxury. Leave it to Electricpig to connect worlds, finding a somewhat hack-induced way to bring the app upgrade to British Android 1.6 devices.

The Google Chrome OS is a web-centric operating system, which every application will be web-based and launch in a browser. And the OS itself is just a launchpad of the browser. If you wanna try out the Chrome OS on your netbook, now you can get the Chrome OS on a USB stick, allows you to boot it and run on your netbook. More of this gadget »

It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Google’s Chrome OS is really launching this week (not that we were really that convinced anyway). What is true, however, is that the company is hosting an event later this week at its Mountain View, CA headquarters to showcase its progress, provide an overview of the platform, and give information on its "launch plans for next year." Excited? Us, too.