lingro - marvellous translation/learning service

There are tons of translation services out there but Lingro, I think, is a little slice of genius. You paste a url into it’s search bar - as below:

It then opens the page with all the text (including the hyperlinks) clickable for translation - so if there’s a word you don’t recognise - click on it and you get a pop-up (quickly too) with a translation into the language you’ve chosen, and an audio snippet of the word in it’s native tongue. This is what it looks like:

The little slice of genius comes because it remembers what words you’ve clicked on - so as you work through a document/page it’s automatically building a wordlist of the words you didn’t know. You can review them in that browser session without having to sign up - and you can sign up in 20 secs without even giving an email address. Once you’ve signed up you can save your wordlists - organise them into groups and test yourself with a flash-card game. You get a quick flash of the full definitions - then you can test yourself with cards that flip between word and definition.

It’s only available for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish at the moment (though they are adding languages) and it was a bit wobbly on a couple of sites I tried it with (mainly because they had a very cluttered structure), but all in all I’d say it’s just about a perfect Web2.0 service - light-touch, does one thing well, doesn’t make you jump through hoops: and you can upload txt, docs or pdf’s to it if you want help with something not on the web. Bravo Lingro!

Africa’s Web 2.0 Sites

Excellent clickable photo of Web2.0 start-ups based in Africa put up by a group Blog called Black Looks - highly recommended. As is the way when something like this gets widely blogged some of the sites may have been knocked off-line by the attention, but I’d expect them to be back up again by Monday :)

(picture will open in Flickr - where it *is* clickable)

via Read/WriteWeb

imran khan - hiding in plain sight

Imran Khan calls for civil disobedience and mass action against Pervez Musharraf through youtube:

via opendemocracy.net

what are you *twittering* about?

Google have just bought Jaiku - so I think you can be fairly certain that micro-blogging (or lifestreaming) is going to continue it’s growth.  Seems as good a time as any to try it out.  A lot of the people who’s blogs I’m following seem to think it has value, particularly in a mobile context - so if you want to know what I’m twittering about, I’m s0apy.

reCAPTCHA

You know those funny squiggly words that some sites use when you sign up with them, to confirm that you’re human? Well I didn’t realise that they’re not just there to protect sites against spam-bots - they’re also being used to help Computers learn how to read Old Books.

Zamzar - file conversion

Zamzar is an online service that converts a humongous number of different file formats - it’s worth trying out if someone sends you an attachment that you can’t open - or you need to convert between different office/av/audio/multimedia formats.

The caveat is that it shouldn’t be used to convert confidential files/documents, as the converted file is left on their servers on a publicly accessible page for a day (it’d be pretty unlikely that anyone would find it, but still.)

vocalfruits - testing, testing, testing

Vocalfruits is a site that promises to take an RSS feed and turn it into a Voice feed (it’s tagline is “Compose your vocal information system”). I’ve only just signed up for it and don’t really get how it works yet - but as a test I’ve registered my first feed (this page) and I’m supposed to get a voice called KATE to read it back to me.

If I’m being a bit vague it’s because the site isn’t massively clear - translated from French I would guess and without much of a tour - it’s a partner to a site called xFruits that offers a variety of widgets for mashing RSS feeds and/or converting them to post/mobile/mail formats - but it made me go “Wow!” when I saw it and Web2.0 is a lot about the wow. So I’ve stuck some code in a text widget at the top of the page - lets see what it does.

older people are sticky

Interesting article in the New York Times about social networking sites for the baby boomer generation. Lists a whole slieu of sites pitching at the over 40’s (gulp - that’s me!) which I’d never heard of. I’m not sure I’m that impressed with their titles though, Eons - Multiply -TeeBeeDee?

via TheGuardian

10 steps to Web2 loveliness

1 - Think up a new password.

You’re going to need it. You can’t do Web2 without signing up to a ton of stuff and it helps if you’ve got a password where you can think - “Web2! - thats….. b2telishus” or whatever. Not the same as work. Trust me - in 18 months time you’ll be glad you made the distinction.

2 - Get a Google account.

Now. Go here and sign up. If you don’t have one already jettison the feeling that it’s all moving too fast and just get on the wave - it takes about 60 seconds. (and once you’re on the wave….things look different).

3 - Get a blog.

Now. Go here, or here or here. If you don’t have one already…. whatever, I said that already, but you get my drift. At some point when you’re signing up it will ask you if you want your blog to be “public” or “private”. Check “private”. (This means you can play in peace - no-one goes live from Day1).

4 - Get a reader.

Now. Go here or here or here. If you don’t have one already jettison….repeating myself again. Just do it. Now.

5 - Pause.

You’ve done all the easy bits - now it’s time to think about content/purpose. This is the good bit, because once you’ve got all the tools sorted out you can start thinking about what you really want to say, (and what you really want to learn).

6 - Say what you want.

There are 2 clear rules in blogging:

1. Talk about what you know - what you’re passionate about.
2. Be your own authority (My blog - my rules)

7 - Find the Motherlode.

Whatever field you are expert in, someone has already blogged it - which means there are exemplars on-line now, who have already gone through steps 1-6 above. Find them.

8 - Don’t be afraid to share.

No-one expects a blog to be full of unique/original content, it’s not that egoistic. Even if 150,000 people have already blogged a presentation/post/service it’s ony boring to post it if your friends have already been there.

9 - Read your peers.

It’s not a one way thing - that’s why you need to get a reader.

10 - This page intentionally left blank.

jisc report quotes jello biafra shock

Skimming through a JISC report on web2.0 - “What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education” [pdf] - I come across a quote from Jello Biafra, erstwhile leader of the Dead Kennedys:

‘We don’t hate the media, we become the media’

The report looks worthwhile - I’ve only had time to skim it as it’s 60 pages long, but it comes across as a surprisingly thorough overview of not just the technology but the foundational principles (wisdom of crowds, data on an epic scale, folksonomies etc.) and has some good links in it. Who ‘d have thought they had it in them.