France Launches Multi-Lingual Tourist Website. It Goes Down And Stays Down.

Far be it from me to criticize the French . But yesterday France launched France.fr with a middling amount of press attention. But the site went down almost immediately after launching. This morning we gave it a pass, but tonight it’s still down. And we’re not sure anyone is working very hard to get it back up – it is just an information website, after all. From The Connexion on the launch: A NEW official website providing information about France in English has been launched by the French government. France.fr went live this morning to coincide with the fête nationale and is available in French, English, German, Italian and Spanish. The site aims to promote the country to tourists but also to provide residents with practical information about all elements of life in France – including studying, working, setting up a business and day-to-day living. The prime minister’s office, which is managing the new online project, said the site would grow in the coming months and it will contain some 12,000 links to other online resources including Météo France and tourist offices. And France’s senior government official overseeing the Internet, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet , even took the time to tweet “Lancement aujourd’hui du portail officiel de la France dans le monde” (“Today’s launch of official website of France in the world” ). A French friend says of the site (when it was live) “It just does not work, full of bugs, and the english translation is hilariously bad.” He won’t let me attribute his quote though, saying he’d like to remain in good standing with the French community. For now France.fr has a landing page saying the site is unavailable in a variety of languages. In French it goes into more detail, noting that the site is a victim of its own success. There’s the joke about how the only people France can beat at anything are the French themselves, usually noting the French Revolution. But I won’t repeat that here. Instead I’ll just say – Vive la France!

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France Launches Multi-Lingual Tourist Website. It Goes Down And Stays Down.

Work For Us Turns Facebook Fan Pages Into A Recruiting Tool

Facebook is great for keeping up with friends. And of course brands are using it as marketing tool by creating Fan pages. But it can also be used by companies as a recruiting tool. I’ve written before anecdotally about how Citysearch uses Facebook ads for recruiting by targeting the ads at the hiring manager’s friends. Well, now there is a full-fledged Facebook app for that called Work For Us Work For Us creates a tab on a company’s Fan page which turns it into a mini-job board. You can see an example here for BuildASign or SPG Creative Marketing. People can apply for the job right inside Facebook, or Like a job and therefore spread it to their friends as a social referral. Recruiters can also create a Facebook ad for any job and target it accordingly. The company behind Work For Us is Work4Labs , a startup funded by French angel investors Stephane Le Viet and Gautier Machelon. Already, 2,000 companies have added the Work For Us tab to their Facebook Fan page, including State Street and the French divisions of Accenture and Grant Thorton. The app is free for the first 30 days, then Work4Labs scharges, with plans starting at $9 a month (5 job postings) and going up to $500 a month (for unlimited job postings). More details at AppBistro . CrunchBase Information Work for Us Information provided by CrunchBase

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Work For Us Turns Facebook Fan Pages Into A Recruiting Tool

Google Translates “Call Us For Free” To “Skype” In Italian

While incredibly useful, Google Translate is also known for its occasional snafus. For example, an English to French translation of “videos on Vimeo” previously resulted in “des videos sur YouTube.” Another example of a wonky translation took place when Kai-Fu Lee, president of the search giant’s China operations, left the company. Today’s questionable result comes from an English to Italian translation of “call us for free.” The phrase returns in Italian as “Telefonare gratis con Skype.” The reverse translation results in ‘call us for free.’ This doesn’t seem to work in other languages, so it could just be a glitch in the system. Or it could be a result of a crowdsourced effort to change the translation. We’ve contacted Google for comment. Regardless, it provides for a little lighthearted humor on a Tuesday afternoon. CrunchBase Information Google Translate Information provided by CrunchBase

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Google Translates “Call Us For Free” To “Skype” In Italian

Might Threaded Conversations Be Coming To Twitter?

There’s no question that Twitter’s web experience has been improving pretty rapidly over the past several months. However, one area that’s still lacking is a good way to view conversations. Clicking on the “in reply to” links is tedious for long conversations. Several third-party apps (including Twitter’s own native iPhone app — which they bought) are much better at doing this. One of those is an app called Twitoaster . And its creator just got hired by Twitter. Twitoaster is the work of French developer Arnaud Meunier. As he tweeted and blogged today, he’s going to work for Twitter after getting to know some of the team following the Chirp conference in April. Of note, Twitoaster’s speciality was the threaded conversation view it gave to tweets. So does that mean this is coming to Twitter? Not necessarily — Twitoaster eventually added a number of other features — such as analytics — that could point to how Twitter could use Meunier’s skills as well. But given the direction Twitter has been going with its web product, I would be surprised if some sort of better conversation view wasn’t added to the site relatively soon. Another key focus of Twitoaster is tweet archiving. That’s another feature Twitter could definitely improve upon. Currently, thanks to Twitter’s search limitations, once a tweet is a couple of months old, it’s basically lost in the Twitter.com ether. If Twitter had a better archiving mechanism for old tweets, it could extend the life of them, and make them much more useful. All of this, of course, is some fun late Friday afternoon speculation. But Twitter was clearly impressed with what Meunier built, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they use his skills in a similar fashion on their core product. Meanwhile, Twitoaster will live on, but Meunier says not to expect any new features as he’ll be focused on his new job. [thanks Richard ] CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase

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Might Threaded Conversations Be Coming To Twitter?

Whiteboard Interview – Google’s Matt Cutts on Redirects, Trust + More

Posted by great scott! We’ve got a very special bonus video for you today. Our buddy-and the Googliest spam cop to ever walk the webz – Matt Cutts stopped by to do a quick interview in front of ye olde whiteboard.

Google Switches On Maps Navigation, Voice Search For More Countries

Google Maps Navigation for Android now works outside the US or UK as the free turn-by-turn navigation system has been switched on for users in Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium ( update: and Portugal ). In addition, Google Search by voice is now available for French, German, Italian, and Spanish speakers. English, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese were already supported. Google also detailed how it goes about adding new languages for Voice Search: Our goal is to bring Google Search by voice to speakers of all languages. We follow a rigorous process to add each new language or dialect. Working directly with native speakers in each country, we spend weeks collecting spoken utterances to create the specific models which power the service. Our helpers are asked to read popular queries in their native tongue, in a variety of acoustic conditions such as in restaurants, out on busy streets, and inside cars. We also construct, for each language, a vocabulary of over one million recognizable words. It’s no small feat, but we love doing it. A side-effect of this approach, Google says, is that if you’re a Spanish speaker in Mexico you may find that the service doesn’t work as advertised because of the difference in accents. Voice Search works on the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia S60 devices. Obviously, it also works on Android devices, although you best check the blog post announcing the addition of the newly supported languages to know how you can active it. Also, the application is only available in the Android Markets for France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Google Maps Navigation is available in version 4.2 of Google Maps, on Android devices 1.6 and higher. CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase

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Google Switches On Maps Navigation, Voice Search For More Countries

Exalead, The ‘French Google’, Is Acquired For $162 million

Exalead , the search engine that (no kidding) underlies Friendster and has been behind French government attempts to build a platform to rival Google (yes), has been acquired by Dassault Systèmes, a leader in 3D software for big company processes for about €135 million ($161.5m). Exalead was also key member of Quaero , a technology consortium with a five-year budget of €199 million, funded by the French government to develop multimedia search tools. Where is Quaero now?

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Exalead, The ‘French Google’, Is Acquired For $162 million

Stenciled White Trenches – Actor Gaspard Ulliel for 'Say it in …

Actor Gaspard Ulliel for ‘Say it in French’ in T Style Magazine (GALLERY): French actor Gaspard Ulliel’s editorial ‘Say It In French’ in T Style, New York Times – say it in french in t.

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Stenciled White Trenches – Actor Gaspard Ulliel for 'Say it in …

France Gets Startup Fever As New Fund Launches With €24 million

In previous years it’s fair to say that France has not exactly been a hotbed of entrepreneurship, despite actually coming up with the word entrepreneur. There is a general anti-business culture and talking about business or money is seen as beneath mainstream society. For instance, there are 65,000 psychology students in France – that is a quarter of the European total for that subject. However, to think this is still the case is to completely miss the sea-change that is happening right now. Our recent TechCrunch Paris event was buzzing with entrepreneurs, and TechCrunch France has relaunched with a bang. So it’s fascinating to see that ISAI , billed as the French internet entrepreneurs’ fund, has announced the first closing of its “ISAI Developpement” fund, dedicated to early stage internet investments. It will have €24m under management and brings together about 60 internet and software entrepreneurs under one umbrella.

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France Gets Startup Fever As New Fund Launches With €24 million