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With the World Cup in full swing, people from across the globe are gathering in Brazil to enjoy the football/soccer matches that create friendly rivalries among nations. In celebration of the international spirit of the World Cup, The Wonder of Tech is covering international tech today.
Learn about:
- How YouTube is used in different countries
- Word Lens international translation app
- Pizza Counter app
- The international launch of Facebook’s Slingshot app
YouTube Around the World
YouTube is the third most popular site in the world, including everything from TED Talks that educate to stupid human tricks that make you wonder about the future of civilization. But did you know how different YouTube is in countries across the globe?
This infographic illustrates the popularity of YouTube in various countries. While you might assume that the US, home of YouTube, would be the source of most of the traffic to the site, in fact, 80% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US and 60% of YouTube viewers are in countries whose primary language is not English.
Find out other interesting statistics about YouTube from this infographic:
Infographic courtesy of YTD
Check out which videos are popular on YouTube, from music to movie trailers to humor and learning there are videos for you to enjoy. Whether your goal is to be educated or entertained you’ll find plenty of videos to watch.
Word Lens
Word Lens is a free augmented reality app that can help you bridge the gap of language translation. Download and open the app, then point your cell phone camera at text in a foreign language. Like magic, the words will appear translated on your screen.
Word Lens will translate words between:
- English ↔ Spanish
- English ↔ French
- English ↔ German
- English ↔ Italian
- English ↔ Russian
- English ↔ Portuguese
The app used to charge for in-app purchases of each language but now all of the languages are free. You need to download each language separately for it to work with the app. Google recently purchased Word Lens from the developer and made all of the languages available for free! Grab it now while you can.
You don’t need an Internet connection to use the app, which is handy when you’re traveling internationally and don’t have a data plan. The app also has a dictionary so you can look up individual words without using the camera.
Word Lens is available free for:
iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch
Google Play
Pizza Counter App
Is there a food more international than pizza? If you’re enjoying the World Cup games with friends, or having a pizza party for any other reason, you may struggle to figure out how much pizza to order.
With Pizza Counter app, your struggles are over. Pizza Counter will calculate how many pizzas you should order based on the size of the pizzas, how many people will be eating, and how hungry they are. Unfortunately, there isn’t a button to make people agree on which toppings to get!
The app opens to the screen that tells you how many pizzas to order.
⇒ Scroll the number wheel at the bottom to indicate how many people will be eating (I’m thinking the fractions are for kids?).
⇒ Swipe the screen to the left to choose the size of the pies and the appetite level of your friends (bird, normal human, velociraptor).
⇒ Swipe the screen back to the right to see how many pizzas you should order.
The app also lists local pizza parlors which you can call directly from the app. Tap the location icon in the upper left corner of the screen to see a list of local pizzerias.
Pizza Counter is free for:
Slingshot Goes International
Slingshot, the Facebook app that allows people to exchange videos, photos and text messages, but keeps them hidden until the sharing is reciprocated, has just been launched internationally.
Slingshot is available for free for:
You can find out more information about Slingshot’s international launch from the Slingshot Goes International post.
See, 5 Updated Tech Tools You’ll Want to Get Now! for more information about Slingshot.
Your Thoughts
Which YouTube statistics were the most interesting to you? Do you like the idea of an international translation app you can use without Internet? Have you ever struggled to figure out how many pizzas to order? Have you tried Slingshot yet? Let us know in the Comments section below!
Hi Carolyn,
Love the Word Lens App. Now all I have to do is go somewhere to try it out.
Carlo
Hi Carlo,
Just think, with all the money you save in not having to buy the languages, you can take a wonderful trip! :-bd
Hai,
Youtube is top most video hosting site. Infographic is informative. Pizza counter app and Word lens app is so good. recently i used. Thank you Carolyn Nicander Mohr for this nice infographic share.
Hi Satish, I’m glad you are enjoying Pizza Counter and Word Lens. I like to share useful apps with my readers, especially ones that are free!
That World Lens app is really something. I think I saw it on Ellen or some other talk show where they took it to the streets. Glad to discover it’s now free.
Hi Dylan, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, World Lens has been around for a while but you previously had to pay for the languages. Now that it’s free for all languages, the app is even more exciting!
I like this!
Well YouTube is great and we usually get very effective information apart from music such as tutorial videos on how to do certain operations. This is one of the greatest contribute on high views and hits on YouTube. The idea of translation apps is just wonderful and I like using it. However, I think the popularity of an app is contributed by its effectiveness.
Hi Fredy, Yes, translation apps can be very handy. World Lens is especially handy because you can use it even when it’s not connected to the Internet.
I would agree with you about the usefulness of apps contributing to their popularity, except for the rising popularity of the Yo! app. See, Yahoo Finance, And you thought the Yo app was goofy.
Hi Carolyn
That Word Lens looks cool. I read about such tech a while back now, but had not seen it in practice. I guess text recognition and translation are more or less that far. Just waiting for that to happen on the fly with voice now, like the babelfish in Hitchhikers Guide (if you have read it).
Nice collection! you always seem to find the stuff that works well.
Interestingly, I have been comparing my fitbit with my iPhone5 counter and there is a big difference. Might be worth an article – the pedometers on the iphone are impressive
ashley
Hi Ashley, So, do you get credit for more steps with the iPhone or the FitBit?
I use the Nike Fuelband and I get more credit for steps with my iPhone. But I can’t have my iPhone in my pocket when I play racquetball which is when I get my most strenuous workout!
Considering that Youtube gets more than 80% of its traffic from outside US I find it kind of foolish to make some videos available only in the US. At first they used to have this policy even with some music videos and it was super annoying, at least for me.
Hi Aura, Good point, we should be able to watch videos anywhere around the world. But I imagine it’s the decision of the owner of the video, not YouTube, to restrict viewing to US only.