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LearnItLists - Learn 10 words a day, get better at a foreign language

LeanItListsSome linguists say that most of the time people speaking any language only use about 1000 words. If you believe that, then you might also think that if you learned those 1000 common words, you would have a basic degree of fluency. If the idea of rote memorization and vocabulary building in this manner strikes your fancy, LearnItLists is there to help.

LearnItLists is essentially a web gadget that quizzes/flashcards you with 10 words a day in the language you would like to learn. You sign up for an account, pick your language, add it to your Google homepage (optional), and get busy memorizing. In a hundred days, doing 10 a day, you'll have your 1000 words, and be ready to rock with the best of them. Or close to it. Currently, the gadget supports about 16 languages, with more on the way (such as simplified Chinese).

The interface is clean, easy to use, and is intuitive in the way flash cards and vocab sheets are. So if you have been running from building your linguistic skills, give LearnItLists a look.

[via MakeUseOf]

Friendly reminder from Google: we don't want to be just anyone's verb

Friendly reminder from Google: we don't want to be just anyone's verbThis summer, Google was both blessed and cursed with becoming a verb in the Oxford and Merriam-Webster english dictionaries. When it happened, Google thumped the trademark drum pretty hard, reminding people that "Sure, I'll google that" is fine when in reference to using their search engine, while "Oh! I googled that on Yahoo! and couldn't believe what I found!" will land you on their naughty list.

Interestingly, the search company just reviewed these intended uses of their name and trademark on their blog, reminding us which scenarios turn their lawyers' frowns upside down. While a lot of this might seem like the company is splitting hairs - after all, everyone in this day and age knows who Google is, right? - the original CNET article I linked contains trademark horror stories from the likes of Aspirin, Xerox and even more recently: Rollerblade. All suffered trademark woes because their names became common verbs that referred to their particular industries, instead of their specific products.

Could Google go the way of kleenex? Time will only tell, but let's hope not. The company has done a lot for search and the internets as we know them, and I would hate to see their contribution reduced to a lowercase 'g.'

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