We can imagine the scenario where a local news journo may still use traditional methods of research, simply because it’s so much easier to contact and interview local people; visit local sites; and maintain long term ‘tabs’ on local issues.

However, consider for a moment the journalist who needs to report on events at the other end of the country, or on the opposite side of the globe. Those ‘traditional’ methods soon become unwieldy, expensive and just not do-able in a given timescale. Clearly, the leading vehicles for news – national TV stations, national press etc. – have got the budgets to pay more than lip-service to ‘phone calls, travel, surveillance, and shoe shuffling groundwork. What about other journalists – the freelancers in particular?

There’s a danger that just using the internet for news research will lead to simple regurgitation of source material, thus dimishing the value of each subsequent news item, and devolving the journalist to nothing but an echo box.

One way to inject freshness, other viewpoints and perhaps more facts, is to procure news from non-native language sources. For example, relying on English-language websites and blogs to get any kind of perspective on the unfolding Iranian story is a sure-fire way to Get The Wrong Slant.

This is where Mloovi comes in. ( Come on, don’t be surprised: this is why I’m here! )

By using Mloovi to search for foreign language blogs, newssites, bulletins, and then by subscribing to translated RSS feeds, it’s possible to get quite specific information piped right at you.

Here’s an example, using the Iranian election debacle.

Over time it’s possible to build up suites of translated feeds to cover not only topical events but also to monitor the most obscure activity. Want to know how a Vietnamese blogger manages his vegetable plot for your parish magazine? Well, if our green-fingered buddy is blogging about it, you can now understand it!

Albanian
Arabic
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Farsi (Persian, ‘Iranian’)
Filipino
Finnish
French
Galician
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Norwegian
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese

By using Mloovi  it’s now possible for Iranian bloggers to reach a much wider audience. It’s also possible for the rest of the world to ‘opt in’ to information  coming from Iran. Simply enter the URL of an Iranian blogsite you’d like to understand, and Mloovi will do the rest.

I think we would all agree that the translation of Farsi, the most widely spoken and understood language across Iran and Afghanistan, is especially appropriate considering the democratic crisis ocurring right now.  Not for the first time the internet is being used as the means to spread the opinions of a unhappy population – and it would seem that the development team at Google worked very hard to speed up the release of this facility.

According to Franz Och, principal scientist at Google…

We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. (This) is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa – increasing everyone’s access to information.

As with all machine translation, it’s not perfect yet. And we’re launching this service quickly, so it may perform slowly at times. We’ll keep a close watch and if it breaks, we’ll restore service as quickly as we can.

It’s acknowledged that the Farsi translation isn’t as good as, for example, the Spanish one – but it’s early days. As time goes on the translation becomes more accurate as it is honed according to a growing database of results. Users can influence this, via the Google Translate website, by offering better translations as they see fit.

For far more information than I’d care to ’steal’ just pop over to here!

Trying to explain Mloovi succinctly in just words on a screen is one thing, but you just can’t beat getting the full story from a walking, talking human being

Cue along to 11.40min, and have a look…

If you come across any other bugs/errors please let us know.

next09 is the latest in a successful sequence of networking and trend conferences, bringing together leading decision makers and media information personnel. Mloovi supremo, Mike Robinson, is scheduled to deliver a start-up presentation during the conference, and he’ll try to explain why Mloovi is important to the notion of the Share Economy. He’ll also use the opportunity to explain Mloovi’s history as a recent start-up.

If you have any ideas about Mloovi and the Share Economy, then please *share* them with us. Part of the ethos of the Share Economy is central to the workings of Web2.0: crowd participation! Leave a comment here, and any useful points will be raised during our short presentation.

Tickets for this important conference are available from here.