Bullet Train Timetables Now Viewable in Google Maps
December 4th, 2009
Posted by
Iwasaki Naoki / Software Engineer
Suzuki Issei / Software Engineer

As we enter December and the end of the year approaches, people have started making plans to travel home.

Up until now, Google Maps has provided train transfer information. But what if you've decided on your destination and desired train line but haven't yet decided on a departure time? Haven't there been times when you've wanted to see timetables?

Google Maps has now added bullet train timetables. Let's give it a try.

First, enter the name of a station in the search box and click search. Let's try Tokyo Station (東京駅).

Clicking "more info" (詳細) next to the station name on the left of the screen or one of the train line names in the pop-up bubble will display the line's timetable. I'm planning to visit Okayama at the end of the year so I will click "Toukaidou Bullet Train" (東海道新幹線).

There are a lot of bullet trains running so it doesn't look like I have to worry. Uh-oh, what about the end of the year timetable? In cases like this, you can click "choose a date" (日付の選択) and a calendar will display. Please choose your departure date. My departure date is the 30th. I wonder if it will display?

Looks like it does. Google Maps displays the timetable of the date selected. Also, you can rest assured knowing that schedule changes and special train times are reflected in the timetable.

I'm worried about the end of the year rush. Looks like "Hikari" has more seats available than "Nozomi". Try clicking "Hikari" in the timetable legend. You can highlight Hikari's departure times.

With this, you can look for a train matching your criteria more easily than before.

So, what do you think? Please give the new timetables added to Google Maps a try next time you are making vacation plans or plans to visit home.

Oh yeah, and don't forget a souvenir.

Japanese Input The Way You Meant It - Google Japanese Input (Google 日本語入力)
12/03/2009
Posted by
Kudo Taku / Software Engineer
Komatsu Hiroyuki / Software Engineer
Oikawa Takuya / Senior Engineering Manager

Today, Google Japanese Input (beta) was released.

Google Japanese Input, available for Windows (32 bit only) as well as Mac, is a Japanese text input software program (input method). Through a wealth of vocabulary combined with a powerful suggest feature, it supports Japanese input the way you meant it.

Google Japanese Input possesses a powerful vocabulary in a league of its own. From the web mechanically and automatically a dictionary is created recording terms not possible to cover by hand such as modern language, specialty and technical terms, celebrity names, etc. In order to realize high conversion precision, large quantities of data gathered from the web are used to construct a statistical language model and generate a conversion engine. You might call it an input method reflective of the modern day Web (the creation of this dictionary and statistical language model make use of Google's large scale distributed processing system "Map Reduce", comprised of computers scaled in the thousands). Furthermore the powerful suggest feature's massive vocabulary can be accessed entering a small number of input keys.

Google Japanese Input was originally started by Google engineers Kudo and Komatsu during their 20% project time. As many of you know, Google's 20% rule states that 20% of employee working hours can be spent working on personal projects.

At that time, Kudo was in charge of Google's "did you mean" feature. The team was developing a "did you mean" system that was highly accurately correcting a large number of spelling mistakes caused by input method misconversion, convincing them that Google Japanese Input was not only possible, but happening right before their eyes.

At that same time Komatsu, an author of open source Japanese input system software, was working on another team. He had joined Google in hopes of developing input methods and was warming to the idea of using the web's massive amount of data combined with Google's suggest feature to provide an input method only possible at Google.

It was in this way that Kudo and Komatsu started the project. Initially it was just the two of them but gradually others started contributing in various forms as part of their 20% project time. Among them were engineers who had participated in the development of various Japanese input and text processing systems such as Anthy, WinAnthy, scim-skk, skkime, AjaxIME, PRIME and MeCab as well as an engineer who had development experience with Windows TSF and engineers with various operating system development experience. Google Japanese Input is the result of the combined know-how and collaboration of these natural language processing and platform system developers.

Google Japanese Input is still in beta with many features yet to be implemented. You may experience application compatibility issues and misconversions. Many improvements remain to be made. We look forward to your bug reports and feedback.

＜Postscript＞
We had a lot of inquiries so we are adding this postscript.

• Google Japanese Input is not connected to the network. It operates offline.
• The property "Secret Mode" allows you to temporarily turn off suggestions based on auto learning, input history and user dictionaries.
• We are currently working very hard on a Windows 64 bit version.

For more information about Google Japanese Input, please refer to the help center. There is also a help forum available.

9:53 AM

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Labels: Engineering, IME, Japanese Input