I'm a big fan of many of the technologies that Microsoft have been producing these last few years. Once .NET Framework 3.0 came out it seemed like Redmond was on fire with new ideas, from Workflow Foundation to Microsoft Surface.

That said, there's another organisation who keep impressing me with their innovations - Google. I find myself using their products often as a web user, though not yet so much when producing solutions for clients. If they keep pumping out the good stuff though it's only a matter of time before they get embedded in my custom solutions.

 Found a good example today. This is an unannounced feature of Google Translation that allows you to submit a querystring argument and get an MP3 of the result. Currently it's only English and the querystring argument can't be greater than 100 characters (or you get nothing back!). It's not quite useful yet, but it definitely shows promise.

 Try out this link, and your machine will either download the generated MP3 or play it automatically dependant on your settings;

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=Sharepoint+Nirvana+Attaining+a+state+of+bliss+through+Sharepoint+Design+Development+Configuration