Google Unveils Message For Japan | Hacker News Reader

Google Unveils Message For Japan

messagesforjapan.com

54 pointsmeadhikari25 comments

The japanese I know don't need auto-translated moral support, they need petrol. Or, if north of tokyo, they need petrol and electricity. Or, if even further northeast, they need a time machine so they can go back and tell their past selves not to live anywhere near the damn sea.

I don't know, maybe I'm just cynical, but .. what is the point. This is the equivalent of the school dance committee deciding on a "save the environment" theme. A PR exercise that you can't criticise because how dare you disrespect the dead/the whales/whatever. I just hate this kind of thing.

    Feeling charitable?
            |
           yes
            |
        care about
        visibility?
            |
            |
     |---------------|
    yes              no
     |               |
  make this    buy TB vaccines
   webpage    and mosquito nets
               work to reduce
                  poverty

Yes, terribly cynical. There are prominently displayed donation links. Perhaps they can also use donations?

I was in grad school at Virginia Tech when the shootings happened almost four years (in fact, almost to the day). There was an outpouring of emotional support. Some of it bothered me, some of it was touching. Days after the shootings, I wandered through the student center on campus and it was filled with posters people at elementary, middle, high schools and colleges from around the world had sent to us. And by "filled" I mean nearly every wall and surface on the student center had these posters. The number and diversity was overwhelming.

So, yes, do whatever practical thing you can. But it's a false dichotomy to see it as one-or-the-other. A few years prior, I probably would have felt equally as cynical about sending a poster. I do not know if this webpage makes anyone in Japan feel better, you'd have to ask them. But I know that I was personally touched by similar gestures.

Pretty, but seriously, what's the point?

Drawing attention to the massive problems in Japan, showing that people care around the globe, and of course financial support through the donation options. What's so difficult to understand?

I don't know if this was the point of the post you responded to, and I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but apart from the donations I'll admit that I don't really understand the point. Maybe it's just cynicism on my part, but it seems like a contrivance to let people feel good about themselves for spending a few seconds writing a friendly message that will likely never be read instead of using the time to do something potentially more useful, like contacting their government representatives to voice their support for continued relief efforts. I suppose if the interactiveness actually ends up driving more donations that would be beneficial.

Although, if this is to be believed even the donations may not be as beneficial to Japan as I would have thought:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16charity.html

Do you know that feeling that a song is specifically about you and what you're going through? It's not, of course. The composer doesn't give a damn about you, but isn't it great to feel good about it?

Not all benefits necessarily have to be quantifiable. We humans happen to be emotional creatures. Emotion counts, too. It moves us. Even if it's gimmicky, even if it's tacky. Even if it's for profit. Even if it is a PR stunt.

That's fine, but at least be honest about who you're benefiting. If you want to write a message because it makes you feel good, go for it and be happy. If you are doing so because you think it's helping someone else on the other hand, it's seem like good odds that it's mostly just self-deception.

My point was that, as innocuous as it may seem, a message of support can make a few of the people in distress feel better. Maybe they've been materially taken care of, but there's still something amiss. That's where I believe emotion counts. If you can also donate something, well, even better.

And there is no dichotomy, I think. I'm glad we can both help and feel good about it.

http://xkcd.com/871/

"I usually respond to someone else doing something good by figuring out a reason that they're not really as good as they seem. But I've been realizing lately that there's an easier way to handle these situations, and it involves zero internet arguments."

Hard to know what zyb09 really meant by his/her comment. It's the sort of comment that I don't like to see on HN, since it states a vague opinion without offering rational. If zyb09 had provided reasons as you did, it would have been a different story.

Google has hosted many humanitarian services. The focus previously was on providing urgent information (Victorian Bush Fires[1]) or re-uniting dislocated people (Google Person Finder[2]) during these disasters.

Messages for Japan instead shows the sorrow and compassion evoked from around the world. Many have lost all that they've ever known or loved; to know you remain connected in this world is so utterly important.

[1] http://www.google.com.au/landing/bushfires/

[2] http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=en

Collect more n-grams.

Some of these translations seem surprisingly good for autotranslate. This one in particular caught my eye: http://www.messagesforjapan.com/messages/1194/

So I went to translate.google.com and tried the original English: "After rain the sun is rising, Croatian people are whit you!" and got back different Japanese: "雨の後に太陽が上昇している、クロアチアの人々が聖霊降臨祭のです！"

I tried another one and it matched, so some (most?) are through Google Translate, but it looks like it may have had a helping hand.

google translate's always had a strong confidence in its EN -> JP translation abilities. http://translationparty.com/

Not too unlike old times:

http://translationparty.com/#9156110

http://translationparty.com/#9156121

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#Machine_translation_a...

Isn't using automatic translation for this kind of information... a bit risky?

UPD. They say in terms that ‘translation errors may be manually corrected,’ so maybe a human is checking each message.

More likely they have a way to say how comfortable they are with the translation in the algorithm, and a person is checking those with a low "comfort" value.

A+ for effort and thoughtfulness.

C- for the most distracting/annoying UI I've seen in awhile, both front page and the map.

I'm also seeing some questionable stuff in the realtime message display.

It looks like it was designed/created by the same guys that designed the HTC Sense UI: http://www.f-i.com/

Great design, superb execution.

Kudos to everyone involved.

a bit off topic, but how come this UI is amazing and all the other google services have such "boring" UI's...

Because Google didn't build it themselves, the about page [1] says it was built by Fi [2].

They outsource quite a lot of work like this, a friend runs a development agency and has a number of projects on the go at the moment for Google.

[1] - http://www.messagesforjapan.com/about/

[2] - http://www.f-i.com/

You can thank Marissa Mayer for all the boring UIs Google puts out. Engineers making design decisions, you know. (I'm an engineer myself, btw.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html

Why google made stuff never have a share on google buzz things?

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