Google Translate, and several other online service, are getting really good at breaking down the language barrier online. You can direct translate web pages, or just words and phrases. As they get better, those Translate buttons on blog posts will be less of a novelty and more of a too, at least potentially. read more

Happy Monday, folks! This week, we’ve got some new Movable Type plugins in the Plugins Directory. First, though, for those of you that want to keep up with the MT community, check out the excellent Twitter list assembled by Ken Edwards. Follow that list for constant updates from the MT crowd.

Now, for this week’s new plugins:

ooVoo Web Video Chat Room — The ooVoo service lets you video chat with up to six people at a time. This plugin makes it easy to embed an ooVoo chat room into any page of your site. It includes some basic settings for controlling the size and look of the chat.

Gravatar for Movable Type — Most people are familiar with the universal avatar service Gravatar — we use it here, in fact. This plugin, from Makoto Kawasaki, adds Gravatars to the comments on your blog.

Movable Type Farsi — This one is for the Farsi-speaking bloggers. Created by Pouya Salimi, the plugin expands MT’s support for right-to-left writing. It also adds a Farsi Calendar, Farsi tags, and a Farsi version of the Professional Pack Template Set.

That’s it for this week. Got some MT news for us? Let us know in the comments.