As anyone who’s developed an add-on for Firefox is probably aware, Mozilla’s AMO pages offer a multitude of localization options for your add-on’s webpage: 33 different languages, including English, to be exact. This is an unparalleled opportunity to reach and communicate with users virtually everywhere around the world. However, actually translating your AMO page, quickly and economically, can be challenging. Outside of paying large sums for professional translation services, or hitting up foreign language-speaking friends, we know of two good options.

BabelZilla: www.babelzilla.org

While the UI might be a little obtuse and the process a bit complicated, many add-on developers have told us that they’ve had great success with BabelZilla. If you create an account and upload your add-on, volunteers will translate the embedded text for you. If you would also like to have the text on your AMO page translated, you could drop the strings in .property files. We were never quite able to get it to responses, and the activity seems somewhat low, but it’s free so you might want to give it a try. Apparently there are ways to kindly solicit translators on the forums.

Amazon Mechanical Turk: www.mturk.com

This is not free, but for a very modest amount of money you can get your AMO page quickly translated by native speakers. Create an account and then follow the instructions to upload the text of your AMO page. We used the “Basic Open-ended Question” template. On the Properties page you can specify the location of the worker. For virtually all of our translations we chose people living in the country where the language is spoken. The Reward is up to you, but we paid $5-10 per translation for our AMO page. Publish and then wait for the replies to roll in.

Some translations took a while to be returned, but the majority came in under 1 day, and some came back in hours. The average time a worker spent on a translation was 20-30 minutes. In the end, we were able to get 30 translations in just a few days:

Arabic (ar), Catalan (ca), Czech (cs), Danish (da), German (de), Greek (el), Basque (eu), Spanish (es-ES), Finnish (fi), French (fr), Gaeilge (ga-IE), Hebrew (he), Hungarian (hu), Indonesian (id), Italian (it), Japanese (ja), Korean (ko), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR), European Portuguese (pt-PT), Romanian (ro), Russian (ru), Slovakian (sk), Albanian (sq), Swedish (sv-SE), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Chinese (zh-CN) and Taiwanese (zh-TW). We’re still working on Farsi (fa) and Mongolian (mn).

There are some things to look out for.  When you get the translations you might want to drop them into http://translate.google.com/ which, while far from perfect, can help to make sure they are not way off base. Also, if you get a response from someone that took less than a few minutes, he or she probably just got a machine translation, which is not particularly desirable and naturally you could do yourself. Most people will not do this, but sometimes it might be worth specifying that you want a human translation. (As the Mozilla Devloper Wiki indicates, “You are kindly advised NOT to use any automatic online translation, which can bring unpleasant low-quality output to users.”) Lastly, if there are translations that look suspect, you can even go back into Mechanical Turk and set up another job to have the translations proofread by a different native speaker.

In the end it took a bit of effort, but making your hard development work understandable by so many people around the world makes it worth the while. Feel free to contact us should you have any questions or need any help.

While Surf Canyon personalizes the search results so that content from The Columbus Dispatch is given priority, Brand Thunder customizes the entire browser experience. In addition to visually enhancing the browser with shots of the Columbus skyline or The ‘Shoe, users will now be able to effortlessly access Dispatch news and content through links in the top of the browser as well as a side bar that may be opened and closed.

Together the two applications offer readers of The Columbus Dispatch unprecedented control over the information coming through the browser as well as being delivered by the major search engines.

Here is Brand Thunder’s press release:

Brand Thunder and Columbus Dispatch Deliver First Daily Newspaper Browser Experience

COLUMBUS, OH — August 19, 2009 — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the custom browser specialists, announced today the availability of the Columbus Dispatch Boom!. The first product of its kind to serve the audience of a daily newspaper, this browser add-on is designed to strengthen relationships and enhance loyalty between The Columbus Dispatch and its readers and subscribers.

The Dispatch Boom, available at http://www.dispatch.com, customizes the user’s Internet experience by enabling seamless and fast access to Dispatch news stories and content. Users will find links to key sections in the paper, a newsreader and a sidebar with news summaries for the Buckeyes and Blue Jackets plus tools for reaching The Dispatch and managing subscriptions. It also features the Surf Canyon search enhancement to help users find Dispatch coverage of news and events. Any search for news terms, regardless of the search service being used, will return Dispatch stories at the top of the results page helping users to quickly find their paper’s coverage of a story. The Boom! offers two distinct looks: one with a view of the Columbus skyline and the other with a look into the ‘Shoe, Ohio State University’s football stadium.

“There’s strong appeal to reading the morning paper and there’s an equally strong desire for the immediacy of news over the Internet,” said Phil Pikelny, Vice President for Dispatch Digital & Chief Marketing Officer at The Dispatch Printing Company. “A Brand Thunder custom browser is a great way for our readers to stay informed when online.”

“The browser offers several ways to get breaking news to users, which makes it ideal for a newspaper and its readers,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder, noting that Dispatch.com is the No. 1 local Web site in the Columbus market. “We’re happy to serve our hometown paper which we hope will be only the first among many newspapers to offer this exciting software to their readers and subscribers.”

Brand Thunder’s browser Booms! are free, lightweight, active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences. Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

“The benefits of using this tool over Google alone are numerous… You… get Search Cloudlet’s sorting technology, which lets you filter results by domain or keyword from its word cloud. You also get Surf Canyon’s related results feature, which can recommend results from pages that appear deeper in a search. In my quick go, this was pulling up results from as deep as 25 pages (or 250 results from the top result) into a search.”

Charles Knight at AltSearchEngines also reported the launch. The press release is below.

Surf Canyon and Search Cloudlet Combine Their Technologies For Search

Mountain View, CA – June 09, 2009 – Surf Canyon and Search Cloudlet today announced, at Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 (http://launchsiliconvalley.org), the release of a new search engine, available at http://cloudlet.surfcanyon.com, which combines both of their technologies to offer users a fast and innovative method for finding information on the internet.

Surf Canyon develops technology for real-time implicit search personalization which assists users in finding relevant information buried within the often overwhelming quantity of search results. The software figures out what the user wants and then automatically recommends more relevant search results. By observing the user’s behavior as the search is taking place, Surf Canyon’s technology builds a real-time model of inferred intent, which is then used to calculate the “instantaneous relevancies” of documents in the result set. The instantaneous relevancies are then used to immediately move forward the most pertinent documents while pushing back those that are less relevant.

INTSPEI Search Cloudlet creates tag clouds for your search results, suggesting which keywords you should add to the search to narrow it in the most powerful way. Unlike existing cloud-based search tools, the Search Cloudlet offers context-sensitive navigation clouds: for web search, it provides tag-cloud, server-cloud and net-cloud search refinement tools. There are two main ways that Search Cloudlet helps users improve their search experience. First, it helps them efficiently narrow the search: a user should simply click on a cloud item (tag, server, etc.) to add it to (or remove from) the query. Second, it helps to provide a summary of all search results without even reviewing them – the cloud is located on the top of the page, so users do not even need to scroll down to learn what the resulting pages are about.

Surf Canyon and Search Cloudlet were initially offered as browser extensions. Now, however, both of these technologies are combined into an online search engine which does not require any downloads or installation in order to benefit from the combined technologies. Click http://cloudlet.surfcanyon.com and try the integrated Surf Canyon plus Search Cloudlet engine.

About Surf Canyon

Surf Canyon develops real-time implicit personalization technology for internet search. Its patent-pending Discovery Engine for Search™ transforms result pages from lists of static links into dynamic knowledge resources, enabling users to more quickly and easily find pertinent information buried among all the irrelevant results, significantly accelerating the search process. The company is headquartered in Oakland, CA and was founded in 2006. For more information please visit www.SurfCanyon.com.

About INTSPEI

The International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute (INTSPEI, http://www.intspei.com) is a research organization with main office in Kiev (Ukraine). INTSPEI incubates, develops and distributes advanced productivity and software engineering tools based on the original award-winning research conducted by its founders since 2001.

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Update (6/10/2009) – Both CenterNetworks and Free Technology for Teachers wrote about the launch.

Here is OneRiot’s press release:

 WebMynd and Surf Canyon Introduce Realtime Search Powered by OneRiot

Browser Add-Ons Customize Google with Results from Realtime Web

BOULDER, Colo./ SAN FRANCISCO – May 22, 2009 – OneRiot, the realtime web search engine, today announced a partnership with both WebMynd and Surf Canyon to customize Google, Yahoo! and Live Search with realtime web results powered by OneRiot.

WebMynd and Surf Canyon are browser extensions that allow users to personalize traditional search pages.  WebMynd and Surf Canyon are among a growing list of companies to recently join the OneRiot Realtime Search Partner Program which offers developers access to the company’s search API.

WebMynd for Firefox helps users visualize their browsing history while also enhancing Google searches with customized results from sources like Wikipedia, YouTube and now OneRiot.  Surf Canyon for Firefox and Internet Explorer finds relevant information that’s buried within pages of search results in Google Yahoo!, MSN Live Search, Lexis Web and Craigslist.

“We are laser focused on improving traditional web search by delivering the most relevant results possible and our partnership with OneRiot is key to that strategy,” said Mark Cramer, CEO of Surf Canyon. “We develop realtime personalization by re-ranking search results ‘on the fly’ and OneRiot’s realtime web results naturally enhance our ability to transform static search pages into dynamic portals of information.”

Download WebMynd or Surf Canyon for free from the OneRiot App Gallery: http://www.oneriot.com/product/addons

About OneRiot API and Realtime Search Partner Program
The OneRiot Realtime Search Partner Program is for developers of browser add-ons, desktop applications, social websites and other services looking to enhance their user experience with realtime web search powered by OneRiot. The OneRiot API is free and available by request. For more information about partnering with OneRiot, please contact Jayson Ayers at jayers@oneriot.com.

About OneRiot
Launched in November 2008, OneRiot is a realtime search engine. Users search with OneRiot to find the news, videos and blogs that are people are buzzing about right now on the social web. Uniquely, OneRiot delivers search results as they emerge, ordered to reflect current social relevance. OneRiot is a privately held company headquartered in Boulder, Colo. with offices in San Francisco. For more info, please follow OneRiot at http://www.oneriot.com  // http://twitter.com/OneRiot // http://blog.oneriot.com.

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COLUMBUS, OH (May 19, 2009) – Surf Canyon Incorporated and Brand Thunder LLC announced today an agreement to integrate Surf Canyon’s highly praised personalized search application into Brand Thunder’s custom browser Booms!.  Given the complementary nature of the two products, the partnership will focus on improving the search experience for users of Brand Thunder’s Booms!.

Surf Canyon enhances major search engines by improving relevancy and accelerating discovery of appropriate search results.  The improved relevancy comes from the connection between Surf Canyon and the Brand Thunder Boom!.  For example, a query for “King James” from a Cleveland Cavaliers Boom! could favor results for LeBron James over results for the 16th Century’s King James VI & I.  Additionally, Surf Canyon uses clicks within the search results page to quickly refine suggestions and speed the time it takes a user to find the desired results.

“This is the first bundling partnership for Surf Canyon,” said Mark Cramer, CEO of Surf Canyon.  “We’re excited about working with Brand Thunder as they offer an excellent showcase of how much better search can be when an audience’s interests are factored into their search queries.”

“Search is so core to a user’s Internet experience,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder. “Surf Canyon has received such a positive response, we felt it was a natural extension to our goal of providing a better and more personal browsing experience.”

Brand Thunder’s browser Booms! are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Booms!, or change from a full Boom! view to a small Boom! (toolbar only), all without restarting the browser.

About Surf Canyon:
Surf Canyon develops real-time implicit personalization technology for Internet search. Its patent-pending Discovery Engine for Search™ transforms result pages from lists of static links into dynamic knowledge resources, enabling users to more quickly and easily find pertinent information buried among all the irrelevant results, significantly accelerating the search process. The company is headquartered in Oakland, CA and was founded in 2006. For more information please visit www.SurfCanyon.com.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences.  Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue.  Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site.  The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

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The press release was also posted on Brand Thunder’s blog.

WOT ratings come from their community of users and are designed to keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites by warning you before you interact with a risky website. With the latest version of Surf Canyon, along with the WOT add-on for Firefox, security icons will appear next to all of the search results, including search recommendations and subsequent pages of results.

We’d like to offer a special thanks to the team at WOT for helping us with this solution.

Additionally, the Internet Explorer version of Surf Canyon is now compatible with IE8.

Update (4/6/2009) – WOT has also announced the collaboration on its blog.

Back in December, ReadWriteWeb start talking about how Twitter, a very popular micro-blogging service, could deliver search results “in real time.” Search engines typically have to index a page before it can be searched, which requires time. Searching Twitter, however, enables access to real-time information as there is no built in latency. As soon as someone Tweets it, you can search it.

OneRiot, a new social search engine that find the “pulse” of the web, also delivers real-time information. They keep a running record of the contents of the Internet, however, unlike other search engines, they prioritize that information based on its current (i.e. real-time) popularity. That makes OneRiot’s search results, as they say, “relevant, fresh, friendly and pulsing with the real-time energy of the web.”

Now with Surf Canyon you can have all these real-time results inserted directly onto the search pages of your favorite search engines. Go to my.SurfCanyon.com and check the boxes for Twitter and OneRiot. The next time you search on Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft Live, should real-time results be available and relevant then they’ll automatically be inserted onto the page.

We are honored to have the privilege of working with such an esteemed university and are enthusiastic about continuing the collaboration in this exciting area of information retrieval.

• Over 500 thousand people benefited from our search technology
• Over 80 million queries on Google, Yahoo!, Live Search and Craigslist were enhanced using our real-time re-ranking
• Over 350 million search results were “recommended”
• We shared the Mossberg Solution column in the WSJ with Google and were very well received
• ReadWriteWeb selected us as one of the Top 100 Products and Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008
• Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, added us to their list of “Recommended” add-ons

As such, we are today officially removing the “Beta” label from our website and application.

The path for most every start-up is long and difficult and we continue to have a considerable amount of road before us. While we will inevitably face many new challenges, we’d like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to some of the people who’ve helped us to get this far:

• Mozilla for facilitating the development of add-ons as well as providing tremendous feedback and invaluable assistance in distributing the application
• Microsoft for prominently including our application in the IE Gallery and for SilkRoad
• Yahoo! for BOSS
• All of the companies who’ve built amazing search engines upon which we build
• Our investors for putting their confidence in our vision
• All of the journalists and bloggers who took the time and made the effort to evaluate our software
• All of the people who’ve downloaded our application and the thousands of people who’ve generously offered their encouragement, feedback, praise, criticisms, comments and advice

While it’s fun to look back at our accomplishments, we’re now focused on the year ahead and are very excited about the future.