19 February 2008
For anyone who hasn’t yet embraced the wonders of reading RSS feeds via dedicated online feed readers such as Bloglines and Google Reader, a service called RSSFWD sends updates directly from one or more selected RSS feeds into your inbox.
The system is very easy to set up - you tell it your RSS feed address and your e-mail address (ideally a throwaway one, though RSSFWD is at pains to reassure users that their details will not be passed on to spammers) and then any new posts to that feed are e-mailed to you. We tried it with our dedicated feed for the SLA blog and it seems to be working well, though updates often come through up to twelve hours after the blog is published (possibly a time zone issue), so it may not be ideal for feeds with fast breaking news.
If you haven’t yet got into RSS feeds, there is a quick guide here and the Commoncraft Show provides a chatty online training video in plain (American) English.
18 February 2008
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Robert Burns, To a Louse
A useful way of changing the size of the browser window on-the-fly, and thus seeing your site as other users (those with lower screen resolutions) see it:
Go to your website by typing its address (e.g. http://www.intexta.com/) in the address bar of your browser and pressing Enter.
Then type (all on one line, with no spaces) javascript:resizeTo(800,600) in the address bar and press Enter.
Your screen should be resized to the dimensions you have chosen (in this case 800 by 600 pixels, the generally-accepted minimum resolution for browsing the web using a desktop computer). Other common resolutions include 1024 by 768 and 1280 by 1024.
To return your browser to its “normal” state, click the Restore button (far top right of the window, the middle button, between Minimise and Close) then click the Maximise button. On a Macintosh, just drag the window back to the size you want using the drag bar at the bottom right hand corner of the window.
14 October 2007
We have today, at long last, launched the new Intexta website.
http://www.intexta.com/
Coming soon to the site are a fully hierarchical menu structure, which will make the home page less text-heavy, and a configurable domain name availability checker. Watch this space (or this space!) for details.
As promised when this blog was launched, the blog will gradually adopt the look and feel of the main website and will eventually be merged into it.
26 September 2007
A game for European Day of Languages: match the “Talk to me” sticker to the country using a basic Flash interface.
Nice combination of thinking skills, attention to detail, and geographical knowledge. Maybe next year they will do an audio-based one!
26 September 2007
To mark European Day of Languages today, a quick look at some Web 2.0-style sites to support language learning.
Mango recently launched its beta service, with an impressive range of 11 languages containing 100 lessons in each. Educationally the approach is instructional, with traditional dialogues and testing making good use of Flash-based interaction. Linguistically the coverage is almost purely geared towards everyday conversational phrases and vocabulary learning, with useful matters such as grammar quietly sidestepped.
Livemocha takes a different approach, presenting itself as an online language-learning community and clearly trying to take advantage of the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook. The design looks good, and the use of the concept of “adding friends” to your network updates the penfriend concept very effectively for the modern world. Members can “tutor” others by correcting their mistakes, though of course this is a peer-based system - no trained, experienced language teachers are apparently needed. The idea that members can upload work (written or spoken) and have others comment on it, free of charge, may be an enticing one, but the uploaded spoken work I listened to was badly recorded and hard to make out.
Longer established sites include SpanishSense and ChinesePod (the subject of this article in the Economist), both making innovative use of podcasting and the iPod to deliver both audio and text-based lessons.
All these sites (and similar ones) seem to be based on the conception that if only we could memorise a large phrasebook and have plenty of flashcards to hand, we could master any language of our choice, with no need for such annoying stuff as grammar, semantic subtlety or Sprachgefühl. Where they do shine is in their use of lots of audio and interactive content - and in the opportunities offered to communicate with real native speakers.
18 September 2007
For anyone who hasn’t yet fully embraced the Web 2.0 phenomenon and feels that their grasp of such topics as RSS, wikis and social networking is a little shaky, the CommonCraft Show provides a series of short explanatory online videos in plain (American) English. Using an innovative paper-pen-whiteboard technique they call Paperworks, videos are currently available on RSS feeds, social bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us), wikis, social networking and Google Docs. Some subtitled versions in other languages are available via the innovative dotSUB subtitling service (on which more another time).
7 August 2007
English | Cymraeg
A new leaflet has been published by dotCYM, the non-profit organisation campaigning for a .cym top-level domain in recognition of the Welsh linguistic and cultural internet community.
Although Welsh is spoken by around 611000 people in Wales (making up 21% of the country’s population), there is no internet domain for Wales (or for the Welsh-speaking community). More people speak Welsh than speak the languages of a number of other European countries which have their own domains (e.g. Icelandic, 290000 speakers, and Faeroese, 70000 speakers). In 2006 the puntCAT campaign for a top-level .cat domain name for the Catalan linguistic and cultural community was successful.
A .cym domain would be of interest to anyone who has a Welsh-language or bilingual website and would answer calls from the Welsh business community for a clear link between their products and services and the Welsh community.At time of writing more than 5900 people have signed the petition supporting the campaign.
Other campaigns for linguistic/cultural top-level domains:
English | Cymraeg
Mae dotCYM, sydd yn ymgyrchu dros barth rhyngrwyd .cym a fydd yn cydnabod y gymuned ieithyddol a diwylliannol Gymreig ar y we, wedi cyhoeddi taflen wybodaeth newydd.
Er bod yr iaith Gymraeg yn cael ei siarad gan ryw 611000 o bobl yng Nghymru (sef 21% o boblogaeth y wlad), does dim parth rhyngrwyd ar gyfer Cymru (neu ar gyfer y gymuned Gymraeg). Mae mwy o bobl yn siarad Cymraeg nag ieithoedd nifer o wledydd Ewropeiadd eraill sydd â pharth rynghrwyd (e.e. Islandeg, 290000 o siaradwyr a Ffoareg (70000 o siaradwyr). Yn 2006 llwyddodd cais puntCAT am barth lefel uchaf .cat ar gyfer y gymuned ieithyddol a didylliannol Gatalanaidd.
Byddai parth rhyngrwyd .cym o ddiddordeb i bawb sydd â gwefan Gymraeg neu ddwyieithog a byddai’n ateb galwad nifer o bobl yn y gymuned fusnes yng Nhgymru, sydd am gysylltiad clir rhwng eu cynnyrch a’u gwasanaethau a’r gymuned Gymreig a Chymreig.Ar hyn o bryd, mae mwy na 5900 o bobl wedi llofnodi’r deiseb i gefnogi’r cais.
Ymgyrchiadau eraill dros barthau rhyngrwyd ieithyddol/diwylliannol:
25 July 2007
One of the most useful features of social networking news blog Mashable is its regular commented hotlists of web-related tools and resources. Recent lists have included toolboxes related to tagging, wikis and PDF creation.
The PDF toolbox includes PDFCreator, our recommended PDF creation software for Windows users who don’t want to shell out for the commercial Adobe Acrobat software (currently £288 for the standard version). Apple Mac users can create and save PDFs from the Print menu of any program.
The standard software to read PDF files, Adobe Reader, is still of course free of charge.
23 July 2007
Interesting presentation of the different types of learning style (often shortened to VAK) including an online questionnaire to determine what type of learning style best suits you. Devised by teaching staff at Diablo Valley College, California, the presentation and questionnaire are in US English but apart from the use of “review” instead of “revise” could be useful in a UK context.
22 July 2007
A fascinating tube/métro-style map (based originally on the Tokyo underground) of current web trends, showing the 200 most successful sites on the web, sorted by “category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective” has been published by Information Architects Japan. A small number of European companies are included, and IA say they are working on more international sites for the next release in December 2007.
