Outstanding Issues with Babylon 10 Ver 1.8 - … · Outstanding Issues with Babylon 10 and with Babylon the Company Yuval Goldstein Page 3 of 11 1. Product Positioning 1.1. Put a

Outstanding Issues with Babylon 10 and with Babylon the

Company

By Yuval Goldstein ©2013. All Rights Reserved

Outstanding Issues with Babylon 10 and with Babylon the Company Yuval Goldstein

Page 2 of 11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. PRODUCT POSITIONING ............................................................................................ 3

2. MARKETING MATERIALS .......................................................................................... 4

3. INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ................................................................................. 4

4. INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING .............................................................................. 4

5. ISSUES FOR FUTURE RELEASES ............................................................................... 4

6. BUGS IN BABYLON 10 (R15) 10.0.1 (MANUAL QA) ............................................ 5

7. INSTALLATION ISSUES ............................................................................................... 7

8. WEBSITE CONTENT .................................................................................................... 9

9. WEB CONTENT ............................................................................................................. 9

10. TECHNICAL SUPPORT ................................................................................................ 9


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1. Product Positioning

1.1. Put a Greater Emphasis on the Reference Part

I think you should put a greater emphasis on the reference part of Babylon. My

advice is to add reference works to the Basic package to English speaking

markets at no extra cost. People tend to buy the Basic version of most

downloadable products.

This will be possible if you license the following which I have located: 4

premium encyclopedias, 3 premium thesauri, 3 premium dictionaries and a

UK almanac (all English or English to English), all at the end of their

commercial lifecycle (full versions, fully functional, NOT trial releases,

distributed on a CD/DVD ROM with PC magazines, which means you can

license them for a very modest cost if not for free, and there is a good chance

that they are in the public domain). All of the above are not featured either in the premium content shop or in the free reference works section. Further details

available upon request.

1.2. Slogan

Accordingly, you should change the slogans to one of the following:

• One Click to Translate and Learn

• Translate and Learn at a Click

In your home page, I suggest one of the following::

• Babylon 10. Translation, Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Get Smarter by

a Click.

• Babylon 10. Translation, Dictionaries and Reference Works. Get Smarter

by a Click.


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2. Marketing Materials

I propose that you prepare short video clips like the one here, for your main markets,

demonstrating how Babylon works, and add it to your homepage.

3. International Marketing

3.1. Egghead did a fine job with a software product (a high-end Paintbox with 3D

solid modeling and 3D texture mapping) which a company I had founded has

developed; Egghaed was bought by Amazon. Click here to learn more.

3.2. There are a couple of very negative user reviews of Babylon 8 in Amazon.com:

One is 1 out of 5 stars, the second is 2 out of 5. Click here to see the reviews).

3.3. UK PC magazines tend to offer a free disc with the magazine with full products

with a 3 to 6 months full license. I suggest that you configure the most basic

package you can (but one that includes a premium dictionary and thesaurus as suggested in chapter 1.1) and offer this with a 3 months license to UK

magazines.

4. International Advertising

4.1. Specific Advertising

Writer’s Digest is the world best and most comprehensive resource for people

who want to publish their work. www.writersdigestshop.com . I suggest you

specifically advertise there, and even going as far as trying to sell Babylon

through their website.

5. Issues for future releases

5.1. Add Context Analysis to the Morphological Engine

This is the most important addition to Babylon for the near future. Preferably,

you should consider licensing the engine that is used by "מילוני מיכל", which

incorporates context analysis of a sentence to offer the right inflection.


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5.2. Improve the OCR Engine

Earliest (very early) versions of Babylon did a better job than the current engine.

I suggest you license a very fine engine that was released as a full program with

unlimited license, included with a UK PC magazine, the product and company

to be disclosed upon request.

5.3. Speech Recognition

Adding a speech recognition engine to Babylon will enhance ease of use and

provide an alternative way of operating the software (and will also bypass the

cases where Babylon can’t recognize the clicked word). The world’s best speech

recognition software is Nuance Communications’ Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Watch the video clip Here.

6. Bugs in Babylon 10 (r15) 10.0.1 (Manual QA)

Environment • OS:

o Vista Home Basic SP2 Fully updated with Windows Update

• Applications:

o Word 2010 version

o Browser: Chrome version

• Recent Babylon Version before Upgrade:

o 9.0.5

• Platform

o Asus K50NI laptop, 4GB RAM, Intel Duo T6600 processor, native screen resolution

1366x768

Bug

Designator

Description of bugs and reproduction instructions Critical/Major

/Minor

Comments

YG1 Doesn’t recognize the right word where the cursor is.

Instead, recognizes 1-3 words before or after. Click Here

and then click on the word “Michael” at the beginning

of the 3rd line.

Critical

YG1 Word 2010 crashes when clicking on the “Translate Document”

icon added to the toolbar, with certain documents.

Major

YG2 After several translations using the Word icon, clicking the icon

doesn’t work (nothing happens when clicking the icon).

Major

YG3 In the ...הכנס רשיון option from the menu, the name of the license

code field is “סיסמה” instead of “קוד רשיון”. Major

YG4 In the enter license window, it is impossible to paste the license

code

Major Couldn’t reproduce

YG5 Translating text (תרגום טקסט בתפריט), “יובל גולדשטיין” is translated

to “Yuval Baruch Goldstein”

Minor

YG6 When translating a Hebrew document to English using the Word

icon, and then clicking the icon again, Babylon suggest translating

from English to Ukraine instead of to Hebrew.

Minor


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YG7 Clicking on a word, then on the speaker icon next to it, then

clicking the second time on the speaker icon, a “Buy the Babylon

Human Voice” (not verbatim) suggestion window appears. This is

a slight harassment of the user.

Minor

YG8 CTRL+right click on a hyperlink in Word 2010


YG9 There is no horizontal scroll bar when the content is wider than the

window’s width

Major

YG10 Major Couldn’t

reproduce

YG11



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7. Installation Issues

7.1. The installation instructions given in the email sent after purchasing an upgrade are

confusing. Please see below:

What am I supposed to do, click the “להתקנת הרשיון, לחץ כאן” or “ התקנת הגרסה המעודכנת

?.(לחץ כאן ,שיותר של בבילון

Further down in the email, there are Installation Instructions. Here is a partial screen

capture:


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Therefore, again what am I supposed to do? Click the

Button, or the link, or follow the Installation

instructions further down the email:

This is very confusing. There are 3 alternative ways for a user to choose from.

7.2. Uninstalling and Re-installation

At some point, running Babylon gave an error message (not verbatim): Couldn’t

find Babylon DLL. Your tech support rep sent me an email with instructions to uninstall and reinstall. This is a chapter from the email:

Babylon-Pro 9?

7.3. Misleading Text Field Name

In the window for entering the user name and license code, the license code field

is misnamed “סיסמה”.


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8. Website Content

8.1. Babylon Site

Here is a snippet from you website:

Again, a reference is made to version 9 instead of 10.

8.2. Add to the site a “What is New in Babylon 10” section.

9. Web Content

9.1. On the LinkedIn Company’s details page, a reference is made to version 9

instead of 10.

9.2. In Google Finance, again a reference is made to version 9 instead of 10.

10. Technical Support

10.1. When I asked about whether there are automatic updates, the rep said he didn’t

know, since a newer version of 10 is not yet available. This is not a professional

answer.


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10.2. When asked why the program doesn’t work in certain web pages, the rep told me

that there are some types of web pages that the software is unable to work in

(using CTRL+right click). When I suggested that he pass the information to the

R&D dept., he said they (the company) don’t work this way, and that there is no

connection between tech support and R&D. This is strange, to say the least.

Your users are your best source of QA, why not pass bugs that users discover

to the R&D team?


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Yuval Goldstein Home Address: 14 Zamarot St. Herzlia Phone: 09-9568289 Mobile: 0506-434211 Fax: 09-9568195 Email: [email protected]

To contact:

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Outstanding Issues with Babylon 10 Ver 1.8 - … · Outstanding Issues with Babylon 10 and with Babylon the Company Yuval Goldstein Page 3 of 11 1. Product Positioning 1.1. Put a