Digitizing books and learning languages for free. Technology Rocks!

I recently discovered Duolingo after a friend offered invites and encouraged watching this video of Luis Von Ahn's TED talk.

First off, I did not know that we were helping to digitize books with reCaptcha. That's awesome. Second, I love the idea of leveling the playing field so that anybody can learn another language. Not only can anybody with access to the Internet learn another language, but in the process of learning, we're making the Internet available to more people. This is awesome. I had to do it.

I decided to start with German because I took two years of German in high school when I lived in Germany. Duolingo allows you to test out of levels, so if you do have previous exposure, you're not stuck going through all of the lessons. Herr Dowling would not be thrilled with how few I have manged to test out of, but I'm glad that I haven't lost it all. It has, after all, been 20 years or so.

The lessons are really straight forward, there's some explanation, an area for questions and insights, and then the exercises. They're made up of pictures and sentences that you translate back and forth from English to German and vice versa. There are multiple choice questions and free text. It even has audio so you can hear the language and practice speaking it. But you don't have to. I turned off the speaker and the mic because I have a hard enough time understanding what people say in English.
I'm able to start translating stuff from the web right away, which is really cool, because I'm able to use some of the conversational German that I remember, and the stuff that I don't.... well... You know those instruction manuals that sound like they were translated from Japanese to Swahili to English? Well I get to do that translation! It's kind of fun, and then I'll see the other translations and find out how it's really said. So I learn. Bonus.

Oh and it works great with my ADD. I don't have to pay attention- I can just kind of go through it while I'm talking with the fam in the evening or watching TV. In fact, I'm finding that's better. (I don't know if that's because I've already been exposed to the language I'm "learning"). I'm not trying to do a 1:1 translation, I'm just learning it through repetition. This is working for me. And since I can translate little pieces from the web not only am I helping out, but I'm learning the language and interesting tidbits as I go.
It's still in Beta and people with accounts only had 3 invites- mine are all gone. The first went to my 10 year old son, who is even doing great with it and mastering levels like crazy (he's doing Spanish).
If you know someone with invites, ask for one! If not, go to the site, sign up and wait, it will be worth it. Unless you'd rather pay $500 or more per language.

UPDATE: I got 3 more invites today, because the 3 I invited signed up, so I'm glad there's not a 3 invite limit!

Frank Warren is stuck in my head

I recently did a short presentation on PostSecret, and in researching that, watched a lot of PostSecret videos.
Frank Warren is the guy who started it all, and he really does a good job talking about how the secrets offer a glimpse into the true human condition. I honestly don't know how Frank does it- I only check the site weekly at best and there are secrets I've seen that still haunt me years later, he sees massive amounts more, and I'm sure some that are nearly unbearable.

So one of the things that Frank says is that he believes that secrets come in many forms; secrets we keep from others and secrets we keep from ourselves. And then his (apparently) famous "free your secrets and become who you are." This is what I can't get out of my head. I know the secrets I keep from others (well, mostly), but what secrets am I keeping from myself?
and what are those secrets keeping me from becoming?

I dunno. I guess maybe I'm really good at keeping secrets from myself. But now I'm thinking about it. All the time. I've never sent in a secret, but if I did, what would I send? What secret would I share with strangers, anonymously, that I have shared with no one else? Do I just not have the need to share in that way, is that why I can't think of anything, or am I not that deep? Am I avoiding the real questions I need to be asking myself?

What secrets am I keeping?

Email. Why bother? Because I don't know what else to do.

I love collaborating with others and working in teams when everyone (or most everyone) is engaged in the project. I find it energizing and inspiring, and a lot of fun.
Of course, that's once everyone gets together. The issue I'm running into more and more lately is getting everyone together. Not just physically, but even virtually. And I'll admit, I'm just as bad- if not the worst- about this as anyone else.

At one time, email was the way to go. Yahoo and Google groups worked fantastically to organize groups of emails and store and archive of messages, and everyone on the list could easily communicate to everyone else quickly. But recently something odd has begun to happen.

Emails get sent, but not replied to. In my own inbox, despite the priority flagging that Gmail has been nice enough to do for me, I ignore emails. In fact, I go days without checking my email. I don't think I'm the only one- I've sent emails to groups asking for even a response saying that the email was received (knowing of course that each person had to confirm their email to join the group) and been greeted with silence in return. This is a problem when trying to collaborate with multiple people who have very different work and sleep schedules.

So what are other options? I've tried Google docs, texting, Facebook groups, Facebook messages and wall posts, email + text, instant messaging... all with limited to no success. I'm having this issue in my personal life- I can't even imagine how anyone handles this in a remote office situation where you can't just get up and walk to someone's desk! Obviously there are some awesome paid collaboration tools out there, but if I can't reach my co-collaborators where they hang out anyway, I'm not holding out much hope for them making a purposeful trip to a separate tool.

So I'm stuck. Individually, Facebook, Twitter, and texting work great for me and easily beat out email as the best way to share information with me. One of my friends has figured out if there's a lot of info to go ahead with an email, then text me that she sent it. But the abundance of choice in communication has given us just that- an abundance of choice. This means that we will continue to face increasing challenges when it comes to collaboration, and it will be increasingly important to define the channels of communication at the beginning of a project. And I don't just mean get everyone to nod and say "ok yeah, we'll email about that", I mean get everyone to commit to the method and agree to respond or post or whatever- leaving it open will leave you open for frustration and possible failure and nobody wants that.

Sad Business Card is Sad

Lately I've been updating my professional contacts and sites like LinkedIn and refreshing my resume, getting back in touch with colleagues, becoming active in professional discussions again, that kind of thing- you know, the stuff you do when you require income. I'm not printing my resume out. I've not had a need for it yet at all, and when I think about it, I haven't needed one for the past 2 jobs I've had, and that covers more than a decade easily. So then the question surfaced for me:

Do I need a business card? 

In my last position, I had business cards, but that was because they were purchased for me. I honestly rarely gave them out. 

I don't own a Rolodex. I have an iPhone and manage my contacts through my email client. When someone gives me their card, I enter the information as quickly as possible into my contacts. I've recently started using CardMunch to capture the information in my phone quickly so I can ditch the paper.

The last time I needed information from someone, it was quicker to hand them my phone and have them enter their contact information, than to dig for a card, or try to find something to write down contact information on.

So then I read this article, talking about how perhaps we ought to stop using each other as pawns in a chess game and maybe treat each other like people. Stop just "networking" and build relationships. To me this is common sense, and one of the keys to success in life, but apparently it's not how everyone thinks. 

I started thinking about the connections that I have made at different professional events and conferences. Some of them have been lasting connections, and I don't think that a single one of those had a business card hand-off.

On a break at the HDI Annual Conference last year, I asked a fellow attendee for his card. He didn't have one. What he did have was a QR code on his phone that I was able to scan, which entered all of his contact information, including  his Twitter handle, into my contacts. I LOVED THIS!!!! I've not found an iOS app for free that will create a code, but once I decide which mobile OS I'm going with for the next few years, it will certainly be worth a purchase. This interaction did not take a lot longer than a business card exchange, but made a much stronger connection.

This certainly wouldn't work for those vendor drawings at the conferences, but really, are the coffee mug and pen worth the deluge of emails and sales calls you'll get for the next several years?

I've thought about perhaps a paper business card is still relevant, it's just time to change the information on it. And this may be true- QR codes, websites, social media profiles- business cards for many have become wallet-sized resumes. And I can totally see where there are professions in which leaving your card is absolutely the best thing to do.

But for networking and job-seeking, I think for now I'm going to stick with the apps on my phone. I'd like to find one that's as quick as possible to pull up and transfer, and that will not cause issues or confusion for the receivers of my information. For now it's going to be iOS, and free. I'm really on the fence about staying with iOS or going over to Android- I really, really, hate iTunes... More on that later. 

Sorry paper business cards.