It’s Summer, 2010! PW2 Web Blog
Integrating Media, Marketing, and Technology.
Regular features include S’M (Social Media) Tuesday, Thriv’Able Thursday, and S’Monday (Social Media) Tips.
Thriv’Able Thursday (I): Linguee Translation Tool
Contributed by Rick DeVan on September 9, 2010 at 7:00 am ET
Resource: Linguee — The Web as a Dictionary
With Linguee, you can search many millions of bilingual texts for words and expressions. Every expression is accompanied by useful additional information and suitable example sentences.
Translation tools such as Google Translate are very useful when translating well-written, non-emotional texts with good sentence structure. Articles in LeMonde translate almost perfectly to English.
Problems may arise, though, when translating common Web sites of ordinary people, Facebook posts of the functionally less-than-literate, and Twitter tweets of Laotian Justin Bieber fans (there must be a few of them).
Linguee may offer a solution. (There is no solution for Justin Bieber fans but that’s OK. The world needs teen idols and bodyguards need jobs.)
I translated one of my favorite expressions — For goodness sake! — into German and came up with: “Um Himmels willen!” or “For Heavens sake!” and “in Gottes Namen” (you can figure that one out).
Google Translate gave me “um Gottes willen!” or “for God’s sake!”, which is subtly closer to the meaning in the original English.
What makes Linguee different and very useful is that it provided a list of twenty or so alternate uses and translations in context and used in sentences.
Linguee is now in my bookmarks.
Achtung! Deutschsprachigen.
Resource via WebWorkerDaily.
Filed under Life, Work, and Society, Thrivability
Tags used: Technology —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
Thriv’Able Thursday (I): Fairs Are Not an Anachronism
Contributed by Rick DeVan on September 2, 2010 at 7:00 am ET
Resource: As Life Spins On, the Midway Beckons
Resource: The Great Geauga County Fair
In Ohio and many other places across the U.S., state and county fairs are not an anachronism. They are an important part of the way of life and a great way to build community.
Build community… you get the picture.
Filed under Life, Work, and Society, Local Aware, Thrivability
Tags used: Community —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
Thriv’Able Thursday (III): Kindle (3)
Contributed by Rick DeVan on August 26, 2010 at 7:10 am ET
Resource: New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Back
This week, Amazon unveiled what everyone (except Amazon) is calling the Kindle 3. You might call it Amazon’s iPad response. The Kindle 3 is ingeniously designed to be everything the iPad will never be: small, light and inexpensive.
The competition to produce new and better technology is a good thing for us, the consumers.
Filed under Life, Work, and Society, Technology, Thrivability
Tags used: Kindle —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
Thriv’Able Thursday (II): iPad Textbooks
Contributed by Rick DeVan on at 7:05 am ET
Resource: Replacing a Pile of Textbooks With an iPad
A new company called Inkling hopes to break the standard textbook model and help textbooks enter the interactive age by letting students share and comment on the texts and interact with fellow students.
A demonstration of Inkling for iPad is available at iTunes.
Inkling is a platform for interactive textbooks, built from the ground up for iPad. It turns paper-based textbooks into engaging, interactive learning experiences while staying compatible with the print book for classroom use.
Interactive textbooks for the iPad… a great use of technology.
Filed under Life, Work, and Society, Technology, Thrivability
Tags used: iPad —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.
Thriv’Able Thursday (I): E-Mail Classifier
Contributed by Rick DeVan on at 7:00 am ET
Resource: Reinventing E-Mail, One Message at a Time
Imagine you were to send an e-mail that said, “Hi Hilary, are you free to attend a dinner with Nick on Friday at 4Food in Midtown?” If Ms. Mason responds by saying “yes,” then anyone else who asks the same question with the words, Nick, dinner, Friday, 4Food or Midtown could automatically get a response that says, “Yes, I will be attending dinner on Friday.”
The E-Mail Classifier software for Gmail is scheduled to be released this fall.
Filed under Life, Work, and Society, Technology, Thrivability
Tags used: E-Mail —
Comments and discussion are welcome on the PW2 Web Facebook Page up to four weeks after publication date.