Contributors

As a kid, I’ve had this fascination with languages of the world around me.

I once tried to take basic Spanish and French classes in the same year — I was in third grade. That act alone showed me an appreciation for people who have command of more than one language, because that year showed me how hard it is to learn a language solely by hearing it OR seeing it.

While checking my email accounts (goodness, I have many of them), I stumbled across a link where one can, for Free: Learn English with audio.
Given that English is my native language, I was inclined to toy around with the site, to see just how well it was done.

The home page is essentially bare, save for one Google AdWords box, and the flash object containing the flash cards (no pun intended), which I find to be a very good idea. Nothing says “Learn English” better than a gigantic flash ad for Verizon High Speed FiOS, right?

The Flash box on the page has five labels. Four languages are supported on a path to learn English: Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew. There is a standalone label that gives only the English, with no transliterations or translations of words to English, as well as the aforementioned language labels, whose contents come complete with a transliteration of the way the word sounds, as well as the audible enunciation of the words.

For example, I chose French.
For appliances, I see what we call a Stereo in English:
Stereo, sti’(r)io, chaîne stéréo
The first is the English spelling. The second is a transliteration of how we say it in English, and the last is the (familiar) French way of saying the same object. If I clicked on it, I’d hear the “sti’(r)io” as the enunciation.

It’s a pretty healthy way to teach the basics of words, though I admit, I don’t miss conjugating verbs with these cards (simply because I hated conjugating être in my French classes).

I can see how having a free resource to begin learning English as a Second Language from would be so useful.

[tags]ESL, English as a Second Language, Polyglot, Linguistics, Learn English, Contributors[/tags]

(Of course you won’t throw your phone. You spent hundreds of dollars for it, and it also doubles as something you can communicate with, when you’re not using it as an alarm clock, right? :D)

Since I don’t have an alarm clock, save for my phone, I needed something that would be effective when I need a one-time, or a recurring alarm, and it had to be something to make me wake up enough.

I found out about a service called Snoozester, which basically does this for me.

I can be at work, and find out that I need to be at an appointment on a certain day. This is easily handled by simply logging in to Snoozester (since I’m online at work all day), setting up a reminder call with the time and date, and a short message that is read back to me when I do receive the call from the service.
This is all easily achieved, too, since the interface is very light, and very to the point, while making sense.

I can be anywhere, as long as I have my phone, and get this alert, because my phone will start ringing and vibrating, until I answer it.

I’ll get this casual notice from Snoozester, which will read back to me what I left as the short message. This helps out, since an alarm clock is generally tethered to home, and digging through 5 menus just to set up one alarm is not all that fun.

Now, there is a price for this kind of progress, but the price is staggeringly inexpensive.
If you’re like me, and just want a wake up call for each work day, you can easily get by on buying 30 call credits for $5.
If you’re a traveler, and need something a little more elaborate, such as support for a few phone numbers, and more call credits per month, then there are very, very inexpensive monthly plans starting at about $4.

Okay, so I’m all about saving what money I can, given my circumstances.
I also have friends all around the world (Wales, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Australia, and yet more places than I could really name at the moment), and a very special person who happens to stay in Canada that I’d love to talk with on the phone more often.

The only problem is, for me to call Canada on my cellphone, I’d pay 35 cents per minute if I dialed him directly! This is where the guys at Pingo enter the picture.
They offer low calling rates all over the world (including cheap phone calling cards for Vietnam and other countries in Asia, which is important for a lot of people I’ve met recently) with an easy to use service. In fact, Canada’s only 1.8 cents per minute.

Right now, it only costs me my regular airtime to call Canada, thanks to my Pingo calling card.
That’s a huge savings for me!
Now, if only I could time it better to actually stay on the phone with my friend for more than a couple of minutes…

[tags]Pingo, International Calling Card[/tags]

There are plenty of different cellular plans out there, and it’s not the most expedient idea to drive to each location, just to find out what plans are available in your area. In the online age, there should be an easy way to check out various cellular plans online, and preferably in just one spot.

Certainly, one could go from website to website for each carrier, dig their way through the navigation, and search hard just to find out the rates for each carrier, but why bother? I like the convenience of going to one spot to check rates, just like I like having one application to check for instant messages, and one spot to go to check my email. Sites like Wirefly make this much easier on users, by giving them this convenience.

On Wirefly, one can check for individual plans for the various carriers, compare the differences (for example, Cingular may offer the ability to roll over unused minutes, but Sprint does not), be made aware of special offers, and even sign up, all from one convenient location.

Check it out.

A couple of days ago, I decided that I needed a way to offer a subscription to my blog’s content for the non-RSS, non-LiveJournal crowd.

I had heard mention of an email marketing tool called Zookoda, which is a free tool that hails from the Great Down Under (that being, Australia). It’s an interesting tool that allows one to set up a mail list that can mail daily, weekly, or monthly updates of your weblog’s content in a fairly easy manner.

You’ll notice that on my sidebar, I now hold a subscribe box, as well as a chicklet to show how many subscriptions there are to my content on Zookoda. My feeding it will be slow for the next few weeks, as I start work, but it was remarkably easy to set up.

There are a few things that drive me a bit nuts, including the prolific usage of stuff we don’t really use in XHTML (<b> for example), and some code missing things that are important (alt attribute on images :)), but other than that, it’s really not bad at all. In a month’s time with Zookoda, I hope to be satisfied with the way it works, get many people interested in subscribing to my list there, and have everything the way I’d like it.

I’ve always had this thing for crafts done by hand, beyond someone smearing colors on a piece of canvas, or someone else with an unbelievably expensive camera snapping images.

When I was very young, one of my older aunts (now deceased, sadly) had, instead of photos or paintings on her walls, wrought iron wall art. I would sit in a chair in her living room, just eying these pieces, letting my eyes follow the intricate shapes that the bent metal bore, because they were just interesting in their own right.

Wrought Iron goes very well on solid colored walls, to break up the monotony of that wall’s appearance. It also stands to be a conversation piece of its own right, as people — family, friends, and guests alike — might ask you where you found such beautiful craftsmanship.

I hope to have something like the Salinas Wrought Iron Candle Holder, once I get an apartment of my own. It would go great with my habit of using aromatic candles, thus bringing a little functionality into an otherwise purely artistic wall hanging.

[tags]Wrought Iron, Wall Art, Metal Crafting, Home Decoration[/tags]

Lately, thanks to numerous changes to the PayPerPost system, I’ve seen more opportunities that pay a hefty reward to the lucky user(s) that get to take the opportunities. There are fewer of the four dollar opportunities in the system as a result, and many more well-paying posts to go on many blogs now.

I was a little frustrated with the system just a couple of months ago, because there was such a heavy flood of payday loan and mortgage assistance opportunities, which I have no experience that applies to either one. They just wouldn’t fit in with this blog, and thus, I couldn’t take them.

Now that posties (that is, we, the bloggers of the PayPerPost system) are required to disclose their relationships (something they should’ve been doing a long time ago, like I have been doing ;)), and now that there are more businesses with opportunities that I (and perhaps many others) can feel comfortable with, there are more rewards in the system that we do not have to fight with our conscience over. I can feel clean in taking opportunities once more.

I just can’t seem to write about things I’m not happy with, or have no knowledge about, so why should I waste someone’s time in glossing over a possible entry?

[tags]PayPerPost, Big Money, Quality Posts[/tags]