Smiley's Tropical Escape

Mango Language Learning

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 12:49:15 +0900

Mango is a new web 2.0 service designed to help people study languages. The user interface is clean and easy-to-use and signup is free for the moment.

There are several languages, including my favorites, Spanish and Japanese, available to study. The website breaks lessons down into slides (sometimes over 100 per lesson) that have a given phrase or conversation in the studied language with an English translation as well as an attached audio file that has the spoken pronunciation.

From the Japanese lessons I've tried, it sounds as though they have tried very hard to have native speakers voice the audio recordings, giving correct pronunciation and intonation.

The lessons are well designed, however, even at the basic level, the system expects one to have a working knowledge of the written forms of the studied language. At least, in my case, even the beginning slides were presented with the Japanese written in kana, which while no problem for me, could potentially be discouraging to absolute beginners.

In general though, Mango looks like it could be a valuable new service for anyone wanting to study a new language or brush up on a familiar one. Recommended.

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eMusic Audiobooks

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 12:29:43 +0900

eMusic

My favorite, and highly recommended, legal music download service, eMusic, has just added Audiobooks to their service.

eMusic works on a subscription basis. I pay a monthly fee of around $20 USD and am able to download 90 tracks per month. The tracks can be from any album, from any genre, from any artist I choose, provided they have licensed their music to eMusic.

And now, for an addtional $10 USD per month, subscribers can choose an audiobook to download as well.

The selection is modest at the moment, although several well-known and popular authors are represented, as well as a good selection of the classics, and eMusic promises to add more authors and books on a regular basis.

I decided to try out my membership with William Gibson's Spook Country and Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet. The downloads were quick and easy, and, unlike, Audible, eMusic breaks each book into hundreds of tracks to make listening workable on any device. The files are good quality mp3s, just like the music, and will play on any music player.

$10 may seem like a lot for a single audiobook, but, considering that the same books often run $50 or $60 on CD, the price suddenly seems much more reasonable.

For someone like me - I have an hour long commute to work - this is a welcome addition to a service I already loved and I am looking forward to being able to get many, many books this way.

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More Social Media

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:40:21 +0900

Two relatively new social sites I'm playing with: Goodreads and Wordie.

Goodreads is, simply, a place to catalogue and briefly rate the books you have read. It's very simple and easy to use, although advanced features are available for those who want to take the time.

Wordie advertises themselves as being "like Flickr, but without the photos". It's a pretty good description. Wordie allows you to find and catalog your favorite words in any kind of list you choose. For language geeks, it can be a pretty fun place to hang out.

If either of these sound appealing, drop by and add me in to your contacts. Smiley on Wordie, Smiley on Goodreads.

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QotD: Collector's Item

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 08:55:15 +0900

What do you collect?

Sometimes I feel like I collect websites. At last count, I had 12 sites available to me, including blogs that I do not use, like MySpace and LiveJournal, where I have accounts mainly so that I can read other friends' blogs, and blogs I do use like, well, Vox and Blogger. It also includes sites and places like Google Pages and Yahoo 360, which, I guess, are not technically blogs, but still provide a place to write down the miscellany that spews forth from my brain. Add in the not-quite-forum, not-quite-blog sites like 43 Places and 43 Things and the occasional wiki from JotSpot and, yeah, I collect websites.

Partly, I think, it is because I love trying out the new gadgets and apps that all the web 2.0 developers keep throwing out there, and partly because I really enjoy some of the more narrowly focused sites, like the aforementioned 43 Places. It does get to be a bit of a challenge to keep up and use them all to their utmost though.

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