If you can't get enough of the English-language Weblogs, Inc. blogs, you can always check out some of the ones we serve up in other languages -- Autoblog Chinese or Engadget Spanish, for example. What? You don't know any other languages? Well, it's time you learned.
Babbel is a well-designed Web site designed to teach you a foreign language. It's part instruction, part wiki, and part social (isn't everything these days? What's next? A social network for wood stork enthusiasts? But we digress). Babbel incorporates a few different methods to facilitate learning one of the five languages they offer: Spanish, French, Italian, English, and German.
Oh the heady days when everything cool on the internet came from one of the 50 states. Those days are gone, but the U.S. has managed to maintain dominance among the ruling class of the Internet nevertheless, however, those days may be fading as well.
Within a few years, China's population of Internet users will outnumber those in the U.S., changing the dominant language and, according to the Pew Internet Trust and American Life project, could cause significant tensions in "cyberspace".
LiveScience reports on the potential changes, "The difference between Chinese and Western approaches to the Internet could create additional sore points over human rights and problems with restrictions on non-Chinese companies." Citing the significant difference between monitoring and policing of content between U.S. and Chinese authorities, the report paints a picture of possible doom and gloom.
All hope isn't lost however. Skeptics point out that a combined English speaking force of North American and European users is likely to trump the Chinese presence for some time to come.
Could Mister Wong hold the fortune cookie you've been waiting for in social bookmarking? European users think so.
Mister Wong is a social bookmarking site from Germany that's up against the strong del.icio.us, Furl, Sphere and Ma.gnolia. They have a lot of traffic hitting their European specific sites, but what could their recently launched English specific site offer that differentiates them from others currently on the market? Mister Wong has all of the things you would expect from an online bookmarking tool including a Firefox toolbar where bookmarks can be checked and submitted. They also have some interesting features like the ability to make bookmarks private, groups, buddymatching bookmarks, and private messaging. Mister Wong is also accessible on mobile devices.
Mister Wong was hitting more than 2 million visitors in Europe alone, that tops what Furl and Blinklist currently have so it's growing, just not into del.ici.ous territory as of yet. That could change as Wong users can choose to import their bookmarks from del.icio.us. Mister Wong's English site is currently in closed beta, you can sign up on their site to be notified when it's open.
After years of successful topics and entries that everyone has had the ability to contribe to, the online free encyclopedia is finally going offline.
Ok, so it's not going offline in the traditional sense of shutting down, Wikipedia has created a DVD version of Wikipedia, with close to 2,000 hand picked articles from a group of academics and Wikipedia staff.
The CD is selling for $13.99, which seems like a rather high price for something that can be accessed for free online. But hey, if you don't have internet access this is the next best option. The Wikipedia Foundation DVD is first available in English format, with a French format as well as other launguages in development.
I like ninjas. That being said, I don't really associate ninjas with dictionaries. However, Ninjawords aims to change that. Or something. Ninjawords is a simple Ajax dictionary that aspires to be like a ninja: smart, accurate, and really fast. Type in your word, smack the enter key, and you definition pops up. That's it! Yes, a very simple tool, and a pretty obvious use of Ajax at that, but I enjoy Ninjawords' clean, uncluttered interface. It also has a couple extra features, like the ability to look up multiple words at once (just separate them with commas) and easy URL-based lookup (just type ninjawords.com/yourwordhere). It will also make spelling suggestions. While I still love the venerable Dictionary.com, Ninjawords is a great alternative, though I wouldn't want to meet it in a dark alley.
Despite widespread panic among parents and English teachers, it turns out that instant messaging isn't actually causing teens' grammar to deteriorate. A study by the University of Toronto that monitored the speech and IM habits of 70 teenagers found that "instant messaging language does mirror patterns in speech, but that teens, surprisingly, are actually using a fusion of different levels of diction." Online the teens use both informal patterns that English teachers would disapprove of as well as "formal writing phrasing that, if used in speech, would likely be considered 'uncool.'" Toronto linguist Sali Tagliamonte says IMing teens "actually show an extremely lucid command of the language," and English pedants shouldn't worry.
