MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - In Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) vision of the future, people will be able to translate documents instantly into the world’s main languages, with machine logic, not expert linguists, leading the way.

Google’s approach, called statistical machine translation, differs from past efforts in that it forgoes language experts who program grammatical rules and dictionaries into computers. Instead, they feed documents humans have already translated into two languages and then rely on computers to discern patterns for future translations.

While the quality is not perfect, it is an improvement on previous efforts at machine translation, said Franz Och, 35, a German who heads Google’s translation effort at its Mountain View headquarters south of San Francisco.

"Some people that are in machine translations for a long time and then see our Arabic-English output, then they say, that’s amazing, that’s a breakthrough," said Och. "And then other people who have never seen what machine translation was … they read through the sentence and they say, the first mistake here in line five — it doesn’t seem to work because there is a mistake there."

But for some tasks, a mostly correct translation may be good enough. Speaking over lunch this week in a Google cafeteria famed for offering free, healthy food, Och showed a translation of an Arabic Web news site into easily digestible English. Two Google workers speaking Russian at a nearby table said, however, that a translation of a news site from English into their native tongue was understandable but a bit awkward.

FEEDING THE MACHINE

Och, who speaks German, English and some Italian, feeds hundreds of millions of words from parallel texts such as Arabic and English into the computer, using United Nations and European Union documents as key sources. Languages without considerable translated texts, such as some African languages, face greater obstacles.

"The more data we feed into the system, the better it gets," said Och, who moved to the United States from Germany in 2002. The program applies statistical analysis, an approach he hopes will avoid diplomatic faux pas, such as when Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s translator miffed then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder by calling him the German "Fuehrer." The word is verboten in that context because of its association with Adolf Hitler. "I would hope that the language model would say, well, Fuehrer Gerhard Schroeder is … very rare but Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder is probably 100 times more frequent than Fuehrer and then it would make the right decision," Och said.

The center of Google’s effort looks surprisingly modest. Och shares a Spartan office with two others on his team, with little clutter other than a shelf of linguistic books above his desk. That’s because the muscle work is performed by machines.

So far, Google is offering its own statistical machine translations of Arabic, Chinese and Russian to and from English at http://www.google.com/language_tools. Third-party software gives access on the site to German and other languages, Och said. "So far, the focus is let’s make it really, really good," Och said. "As part of a general Google philosophy, once it’s really useful and it has impact, then there will be found ways how to make money out of it."

Miles Osborne, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, who spent a sabbatical last year working on the Google project, praises Google’s effort but sees limitations. "The best systems (e.g. Google) can be very good indeed for language pairs such as Arabic-English," he said. But he added software will not overtake humans in expert translations as it has in playing chess; software should be used for understanding rather than polishing documents. "It may also be useful when deciding whether to pay a human to do a good job: you could imagine looking at Japanese patent documents and seeing if they are relevant, for example," he said.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt also sees broad political consequences of a world with easy translations. "What happens when we have 100 languages in simultaneous translation? Google and other companies are working on statistical machine translation so that we can on demand translate everything all the time," he told a conference earlier this year. "Many, many societies have operated in language-defined communities where they really don’t understand and are not particularly sympathetic to other peoples’ views because of the barrier of language. We’re about to have that breakthrough and it is a huge thing."

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A federal judge issued a permanent injunction on Friday barring Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE:VG - news) from using Internet phone call technology owned by Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ - news).
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton granted Verizon’s request for an injunction prohibiting Vonage from using some Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies that allow consumers to make calls over the Internet.

Vonage shares fell 6.2 percent, or 25 cents, to $3.80 shortly after the judge’s decision. Trading in the stock was then halted.

A jury on March 8 found Vonage had infringed three patents owned by Verizon. The jury said Vonage must pay $58 million plus 5.5 percent royalties on future sales.

Judge Hilton agreed with Verizon that it would suffer irreparable harm if he allowed continued infringement of the patent. He rejected an argument by Vonage that the injunction would harm the public interest.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Medical Association, using a program like SugarStats will reduce the complications associated with diabetes by as much as 40%.

Volcano, Hawaii - Marston Alfred, founder and chief architect of SugarStats.com, himself a diabetic since he was 9 years old, has developed a web based self-management application in which users can track, manage and monitor the most essential and important of their diabetic information online. Through a user-friendly web interface using the latest in web and information technology, SugarStats.com also enables the Diabetic to selectively provide friends, family, educators and health care professionals ‘read only’ access to their statistics. Primary elements affecting blood sugar levels including medication, food intake and physical activity are addressed in a manner that is not overly complex or too feature rich, enabling the end user to expediently self-manage via the Internet and Internet-enabled mobile devices. The core of this system will be available free to the public.

20.8 million people, approximately 7.0% of the U.S. population, have diabetes. Diabetes was the sixth leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2002. The prevalence of diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate, as are the associated personal and societal costs, including long-term complications such as blindness, kidney damage, cardiovascular disease and lower-limb amputations. Further studies show diabetes and its complications cause substantial loss in quality of life, are the fourth most frequent reason for ambulatory physician visits, and incur $132 billion dollars in U.S. health care expenditures, directly and indirectly annually. There is now abundant evidence that complications of diabetes are preventable.

According to Dr. IM Stratton, Al Adler, HA Neil, et al, management of glycemia in diabetes is crucially important to the prevention of both acute and long-term complications. In general, every percentage point drop in A1C blood test results (e.g., from 8.0% to 7.0%) reduces the risk of micro-vascular complications (eye, kidney, and nerve diseases) by 40%. When programs like SugarStats were used regularly by the diabetic, they showed an average of a 1 point drop in the A1C levels.

Web-based tools have been emerging as effective methods for lowering HbA1C levels and several other key health markers in diabetics such as blood pressure however, to date, none have been available to the public. SugarStats.com provides a proven means to substantially lower these important health markers while also supporting the important opportunity to shift the focus of diabetes management toward patient self-management.

Alfred was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes as a child. He always felt dissatisfied and uninspired with the various ways to monitor and track his blood sugar levels and trends, finding them either over complicated and involved, or pedantic and & ‘boring’. Now 24 years old, Alfred’s professional expertise in the field of computers, networking and Internet technology/programming provided the foundation from which he developed for himself an engaging, informative, time saving and means to effectively address his diabetic management needs. From his personal quest, SugarStats.com has now emerged to support Internet-accessible diabetics the world over an alternative means to effectively address, control and ultimately improve their health.

Alternate Contact: Daerick Lanakila at dlanakila [@] sugarstats.com SugarStats POB 909 Volcano, HI 96785

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Journalists, newsletter publishers, bloggers and others: You may reprint anything in this article as long as you include a link to our website and email.

Need a screenshot of what a diabetic would see on their personal SugarStats page along with more info regarding SugarStats is available at http://www.sugarstats.com/tour

CONTACT: Marston Alfred at 619-573-4071
SugarStats
PO Box 909
Volcano, HI 96785
http://www.sugarstats.com

About This Release: If you have any questions regarding information in these press releases please contact the organization listed in the press release. Issuers of press releases and not PR Leap are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

Likebetter: I don’t know about you, but I take a ton of digital photos. I literally have ten thousand photos on my hard drive, just sitting there in folders. No one besides me has ever seen them, and really, I only saw them when I took the picture in the first place. This shouldn’t be.

We want to help you dust off those monster collections of photos, by acting as a “goodness filter” that only the best photos can pass through. You upload your collection to likebetter, send a link to your friends, and within minutes you have a list of your best photos - which you can then do cool stuff with, like exporting them to flickr, printing them, or posting them on your blog.

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Likebetter: There are a ton of companies in the photo space. No one that we know of has tackled this particular problem in the way we have.

A lot of companies have adopted our lovely interface though. Which we take as a compliment, and then we make catnip voodoo dolls of their creators, and introduce them to Felix.

Likebetter.com stands out from other photo-centered sites like Flickr because it’s all about helping you find your best photos. Since finding your best photos is hard, and Flickr isn’t helping much, we’re fixing it ourselves.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Likebetter:

* It’s much easier to upload tons of photos at once here than there.

* Social editing features - your friends sort and rotate your images for you.

* Photo viewing and voting are the same - whenever someone views your photos, they’re giving you feedback. Everyone participates in some small way.

* Exporting to other photo sites (soon): no one we know does/allows this. Most photo sharing sites don’t allow sharing in this way, which sort of defeats the purpose. You own your photos, so we’re going to help you do what you want with them.

* Our interface is super-simple and really, really pretty.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

Likebetter: Anyone with a digital camera, really. Since that list now includes my mom, it must be really, really big.

Our power users are photographers, graphic designers, web designers; anyone who works with visual information, and needs to evaluate it in some way. There’s nothing stopping you from finding your best logo designs, web site layouts, or whatever you want. We’ve kept likebetter general on purpose.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

Likebetter: Lots of stuff. Right now we’re fleshing out the flickr/smugmug/etc integration. That’s coming soon.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

Likebetter: Likebetter should be the place you put your pictures as soon as you plug in your camera.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

Likebetter: No, none really (hurray!). Some people complain about a lack of so-and-so a feature, but we just add it and they’re happy.

Scaling was a hard problem to lick, and will likely continue to prove difficult in the future. It’s just one of those things you need to deal with.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

Likebetter: Make something that people want.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

Likebetter: Wait, is this a trick question? Are you trying to get me to change my story? Likebetter is going to revolutionize the telecommunications industry, of course.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

Likebetter: We were funded by ycombinator.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

Likebetter: October 2006. Digg was very helpful.

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

Conduit: Conduit is the inventor of the community toolbar concept. Community toolbars are a great new way to engage users and drive loyalty as they put the best of any website directly on the users’ browser. Today’s Web savvy organizations are looking for new ways to connect and engage their users, beyond the boundaries of their Web site.

As an example, Major League Baseball launched a ‘Conduit’ for each team in the league so the fans can stay connected with scores, plays, team information, tickets and breaking news on their favorite team, straight from the browser.

Bottom line, a Conduit community toolbar delivers:

• More Traffic: Drive higher traffic through unprecedented face time, resulting in an average increase of two extra clicks per user, per day
• Brand Presence: Conduit allows publishers to put their brand directly on the user’s browser
• Lower Attrition: Retain customers through engaging content, community chat, contests, and more
• More Revenue per Customer: Monetizing users beyond the boundaries of the Web site. Drive higher spending with more targeted offers and more relevant services delivered via a ‘Conduit’

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Conduit: There are several things, but most importantly there are three:

1. Hosted turnkey service approach which eliminates all the challenges of traditional software offerings.

Typical off-the-shelf toolbar building software requires technical resources, constant maintenance staff, and presents issues in regard to user support and security, not to mention their limited component offerings. In the past, these challenges have prevented the majority of smaller websites from building and launching their own branded toolbars.

Conduit dramatically changed the model from traditional software to a hosted, global, turnkey service that is very easy to use, and requires no maintenance or technical skills. This has resulted in Conduit’s community toolbars exploding in less than 18 months to over 5 million users in 112 countries, 125k publishers in 22 languages, and over 30,000 downloads a day. For more details, see our recent milestone news release here.

2. Conduit’s business model is powered by search, which enables us to be completely free to the publisher and yet empower the toolbar with the most required functionality – search.

Conduit monetizes user searches via its Google search partnership, thereby delivering superior user experience despite being a free service for organizations.

3. Conduit supports its customers with a full suite of solutions that walks the user through the entire toolbar creation process:

• Building (Conduit provides easy to use Toolbar Wizards that make building a snap)
• Promotion (Pre-made templates for toolbar promotion include banners and download pages)
• Maintenance (Changes made to the toolbar in the hosted environment are automatically reflected in the toolbar field)
• Analysis (Reports to help optimize the solution for maximum value to publishers and users)

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Conduit: Conduit is free, hosted, extremely easy-to-use, completely customizable, ready in minutes, guaranteed to be secure, and available in 22 languages. The Toolbar Wizard is easy to use tool for any publisher, despite their level of programming expertise.

There are several key features that have contributed to our explosive adoption:

• Pre-defined components including customizable menus, news ticker, RSS reader, radio, chatroom, NEW video window, email notifier, weather button, and more
• Open environment that allows publishers to develop their own custom components using standard web development technologies
• A set of customizable search tools, powered by Google
• Cross-platform solution enabling publishers to provide instant availability in IE & Firefox
• Pre-packaged marketing templates for deployment and promotion
• Analytics and reports for management of the community toolbar
• Hosted solution enables seamless and dynamic updates of content, components, and updates
• 24/7 free support for publishers and users via email
• Fully localized by supporting 22 languages for the toolbar and its peripheral pages

TechAddress: Who is your target customer or audience?

Conduit: Any website with a passionate community of online users can benefit from a Conduit community toolbar. Our range of customers represents every industry including entertainment, event planning, music, gaming, non profits, libraries, business, news portals, forums, real-estate, legal enterprise and more. While we have leading brands such as Greenpeace, Major League Baseball and REMAX, the largest segment of Conduit customers are “Long Tail” publishers that come from a diverse cross section.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

Conduit: Our technology teams are working on exciting product releases that will transform user engagement and communication.

The first is the ability for a publisher to extend their presence beyond the current real estate of the toolbar. With an upcoming version, Conduit will transform toolbars from being a single story house to a skyscraper.

The second will empower a user to benefit from multiple toolbars without sacrificing the browser real-estate typically required, and by eliminating the need of multiple downloads. Users will be able to easily manage and control their toolbar library through this new product.

We are also looking to launch a “smart wizard” that will automatically detect community information and will build it into a community toolbar simply from a website URL. This is part of our commitment to making it easier to build and launch a toolbar.

Stay tuned for these and other exciting announcements coming soon.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

Conduit: We envision Conduit evolving into a global leader in marketing platforms for building user-centric applications that drive engagement and loyalty. To that end, we are focused on forging content and product partnerships to deliver the broadest array of content and components to our publishers. From a product perspective, we are focused on being an innovation leader with breakthrough new features regularly added to the roadmap.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

Conduit: Historically, toolbars were perceived as a search device associated with search companies, and as such they raised the question of “Who needs another toolbar?” In addition many have a bad reputation for opening up users to outside threats from adware, spyware and malware. Conduit community toolbars are strongly associated with the communities they serve (vs. being a search device only) and address a wider cross-section of information needs which goes beyond the simple search function. In addition, Conduit, delivers a safe and secure user experience.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

Conduit: Publisher-focused value creation. If we help our publishers be more successful, then we will be successful. So whether it’s product development, marketing, or support, the company is completely focused on what drives a positive outcome for our publishers. We believe that publishers know what’s best for their users and they want to be able to offer them the very best solutions. Conduit provides them with the full-service solution they need to achieve that. As an example, we worked very hard to secure a partnership with Google, as we wanted to provide the ultimate search experience for our publishers’ end users while still enabling our publisher customers with the ability to embed their own site search into the community toolbar and the search page.

Outside of our dedication to products, our overall guiding principles are fairness and integrity. These are the cornerstones of Conduit. We treat everyone who interacts with the company with highest level of integrity.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

Conduit: Our mission is to democratize the building of connected communities, and to enable traditional Web 1.0 companies to become Web 2.0. We aim to provide every publisher with the solutions they need to connect, engage and build online communities quickly and cost effectively.

In terms of innovation, we are the first, completely free service for building a community toolbar, powered by Search. This is a significant value proposition for the market in general but more importantly, for the long tail of the Internet. Conduit is putting a powerful, free marketing platform, previously only available to large companies, in the hands of organizations of every size and capability. This is revolutionary – we are leveling the playing field and doing it with a free, secure service that is backed by a solid business model.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

Conduit: Conduit is currently fully funded and has no plans to raise additional capital at this time.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

Conduit: The company was founded in 2005; however, we just recently launched an official marketing campaign in November, 2006. Incredibly, Conduit has grown virally from 0 to 125,000 website publisher customers and 5,000,000 users in less than two years.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, Director of Content at SplashCast, said, “Splashcast is a multimedia platform that I believe is going to change the web in some important ways. From independent journalism to modern dance performances to photo slide shows of train yard graffiti set to the music of emerging underground hip hop artists - Splashcast is going to be a great way to spin out channels of thematic media content. I’m excited to demonstrate how it can be done by creating and co-ordinating channels like that myself. I hope that many people will want to use the Splashcast media sharing system but I intend to create a premier destination for highlighted User Generated Content that will be worth visiting regularly for anyone online.”

Check out their new website at http://splashcastmedia.com/.

LUXEMBOURG, January 18, 2007 – Skype, the global Internet communications company, today announced its new global pricing structure which offers a simple, convenient and cost-effective way for consumers worldwide to call landlines and mobiles over the Internet. The new pricing structure complements the foundation of Skype’s success in letting anyone in the world talk for free, from one Skype software account to another.

The pricing structure is the latest in a series of new steps Skype is taking to give consumers a choice of easy-to-understand, value-based Internet communications packages. Initially focused on Europe, Skype’s new pricing strategy will roll out worldwide during 2007.

When launched in full, the pricing strategy consists of a premium subscription package (Skype Pro), one feature of which removes per-minute charges for SkypeOut calls to domestic landlines and includes a small connection fee.

“People like using Skype to make free calls from one Skype account to another but more and more they are choosing our paid for products that offer excellent value. As a result of this, we’re introducing a new pricing strategy today that will include a premium package. This premium package builds on the success we’ve had in North America and the UK with subscription-based calling promotions. It offers our users more for less because they can buy additional Skype paid for products but for a smaller cost,” said Stefan Öberg, General Manager, Skype Telecoms.

As a part of Skype’s premium package the global dialing rate to a number of countries is also reduced. The first phase of the SkypeOut pricing structure, effective from 13.00 CET on Thursday January 18th 2007, includes a reduction in global dialing rates to 0.017 € per minute for: Czech Republic (including Prague), Guam, Hungary (including Budapest), Israel (including Jerusalem), Luxembourg, Malaysia (including Kuala Lumpur), Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States.

For some countries, this represents a reduction of up to 65 per cent.

Skype also confirmed today that its previously announced connection fee rates, applicable worldwide, are now effective. The connection fee is a straightforward set-up charge per call. The Skype Unlimited Calling plan in the U.S. and Canada and the Talk for Britain campaign in the UK do not include a connection fee for national calls.

The connection fee is 0.039 Euro, excl VAT or the equivalent in local currency.

Today Skype users around the world can make free voice and video calls to any other registered Skype users as well as send instant messages, transfer files and participate in Skypecasts which are live moderated conversations with up to 100 people.

Skype users can also take advantage of Skype’s premium calling features, including SkypeOut™ (calls from Skype to traditional landlines or mobiles), SkypeIn™ (a number which can be called from a normal phone anywhere in the world) and Skype Voicemail (takes calls when users are busy or offline).

As the world’s largest Internet communications community, Skype is committed to giving its users the ability to set their conversations free at home, at work and on the move. It is focused on further developing its ecosystem of more than 50 hardware partners and more than 150 Skype-certified devices to broaden the appeal of Skype to a wider base of users who want to use Skype away from the PC, no matter where they happen to be. This is especially true for Skype users who want to take advantage of the mobile Skype experience, which is already accessible to more than 5 million Skype users on over 120 different Windows Mobile Smartphones and pocket PC devices.

For more information, please go to http://www.skype.com/products/skypepro/

Connection Fee Rates Rates Based on Currency* (excl. VAT)

• Australian Dollar (AUD) 0.059
• Brazilian Real (BRL) 0.09
• British Pound (GBP) 0.029
• Canadian Dollar (CAD) 0.059
• Danish Krone (DKK) 0.29
• Euro (EUR) 0.039
• Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) 0.39
• Japanese Yen (JPY) 4.9
• Norwegian Krone (NOK) 0.29
• Polish Zloty (PLN) 0.149
• Korean Won (KRW) 49
• Swedish Krona (SEK) 0.39
• Swiss Franc (CHF) 0.059
• Taiwan Dollar (TWD) 1.6
• US Dollar (USD) 0.039

*If your currency is not listed, the Euro rate is applicable

About Skype Skype is the world’s fastest-growing Internet communication offering, allowing unlimited free voice, video and instant messaging communication between users of Skype Software. With over 136 million registered users, Skype is available in 28 languages and is used in almost every country around the world. Skype generates revenue through its premium offerings such as making and receiving calls to and from landline and mobile phones, voicemail, call forwarding and personalization including ringtones and avatars. Skype also has relationships with a growing network of hardware and software providers. Visit Skype at www.skype.com.

Skype is an eBay company (NASDAQ: EBAY). To learn more visit skype.com.

Access to a broadband Internet connection is required for Skype and all Skype Certified devices and accessories. Skype is not a replacement for your traditional telephone service and cannot be used for emergency calling.

Skype, SkypeIn, SkypeOut, Skype Me, Skype Certified, Skypecasts, associated logos and the “S” symbol are trademarks of Skype Limited.