Here's a gadget for your iGoogle page. With Google Translate, you can swap words and phrases between more than 40 languages. Did some critical page turn up on a Web search, but you don't know what language it's in? Translate's pull-down menu also features a “Detect Language” option. If there's additional information about the word, such as applicability in other languages or dictionary definitions, Translate will display a More >> link. Clicking this will show the extra knowledge in a new browser window.

Google Translate is an amazing tool, but so far it seems inexplicably unavailable for Google Sidebar. The Translate tool is now available as a Web page plug-in, toolbar item, or even a mouse-over script, apparently making the Sidebar an un-needed afterthought. Alas, poor Sidebar.