While you were sleeping 2/9/2010

Google’s announcing two new communication technologies. The first is live translation…

“Google already offers a tool that lets you translate text from one language to another and technology that can convert spoken language to text. Now it looks like Google is taking the next logical step and creating a Babel Fish which you can stick in your ear to instantly understand any spoken language.

…Only instead of a fish, Google’s version will be an app that runs on your smartphone. But you’ll still probably hold it up to your ear.” Source: Google working on real-time voice translation app for phones

The second? It appears that Google’s not taking Facebook’s email announcement sitting down…

“Gmail is set to become Google’s next major push into social media. According to The Wall Street Journal, the popular webmail service will soon launch a new feature for sharing content and status updates with friends. [Update: We think Google might announce these features on Tuesday]

As WSJ points out, Gmail (Gmail) users can already update their statuses — sort of — through Gmail’s chat feature. Currently, this feature is more akin to the traditional IM “away message.” However, with this new social push, Gmail will offer a timeline-view of your friends’ status updates, just like on Facebook and Twitter (Twitter).” Source: HUGE: Google Set to Make Gmail Social With Status Update Features

and…

“Google is working on something mysterious that has to do with Gmail and social networking, but the details are still under wraps. The new product will be unveiled tomorrow, and it could be anything from integrating Gmail status updates with Twitter and Facebook to launching a full-scale Twitter-like service of its own.” Source: Google Stream? Google will launch “huge” new social features tomorrow

Stay tuned…