Babbel Courses
Babbel investor Kizoo: “In business, at the end of the day, you have to trust each other”
Babbel Blog’s Interview with Frank Schüler und Matthias Hornberger of Kizoo, a Babbel investor. Schüler is Kizoo’s president and was managing director of subsidiaries of Web.de; Hornberger is Kizoo’s CFO and responsible for Finance, Controlling, Investor Relations & Corporate Affairs. (For the original German version click here) When did you first hear about the “internet”? [...]
Have the users think what you’re doing is great: Simon Murdoch on online services today
Babbel.com, our humble sponsor, recently acquired and joined forces with the online social networking site Friendsabroad.com. We caught up with Friendsabroad founder Simon Murdoch to talk a bit about this phenomenon of online language learning and the internet biz in the wake of the crunch. Babbel Blog: Please talk about Doyouspeak.com and Friendsabroad.com. What are [...]
Jason Lutes: “Making the leap from cold history to something that feels more alive”
The recently published “Berlin – City of Smoke”, playing in 1929/30, is the second book in an eventual graphic-novel triology. Its creator, Jason Lutes, talks about diving into German history without speaking German. You hadn’t been to Berlin before you started the comic – How did you make a picture for yourself? I did about [...]
Using the globe as a learning tool
Did you know that there are about 30 endagered languages on the westcoast of the US alone? Take Hupa or Hoopa, which nowadays is spoken by less than 10 people, according to the Rosetta Stone Project. It provides several layers for the online-globe Google Earth: Besides an archive of endangered languages you can find, for [...]
Opening up your ears and letting it make sense: Interview with Berlin novelist Anna Winger
Anna Winger, novelist, photographer, mother and all-around Berlin renaissance woman, talked to Babbel Blog about her recent novel “This Must be the Place”, writing between languages, multi-lingual motherhood, and her new US National Public Radio series “Berlin Stories”. She will be doing a live reading at 9:30 pm on November 26th at Kaffee Burger in [...]
When words go fractalicious: An interactive dictionary that branches out
There you go, web magic at its best: Visuwords gives you an interactive dictionary, letting you dynamically examine the connections and relationships betweens words – it’s a blast, and a bit mind-bending, to toy around with. Just have a look at the short video above to get an idea. The flash-based service incorporates WordNet, a [...]
We found new friends abroad
Big things are afoot at the Babbel language platform these days: Besides reaching the 100,000 user mark, Babbel announced today acquiring the British language community FriendsAbroad.com. This makes Babbel one of the largest players in the online language learning market. To incorporate the huge community of language learners from FriendsAbroad.com, Babbel is integrating new features, [...]
The machines are taking over… YouTube incorporates subtitle translations
YouTube just recently added automatic subtitle translations, though like most everything out of the Google universe, it’s still in “beta”. Subtitles and annotations were added as recently as the end of August to the videosharing service. The interpreter robot seems to work pretty well, at least in the example video where I tried Italian to [...]
¡Sube, sube! Or rather, baja!: Zune to become Univisión’s exclusive digital music provider
Zune, microsoft’s candy-colored answer to the ipod and itunes, has recently put their cards on the US Latin music industry by signing a pact with Univisión to become their exclusive online music download provider. Univisión is a New York based Spanish-language TV station broadcasting in the US and Puerto Rico, with one of the more [...]
Voting from Spanish to Yup’ik: Rights for language minorities in the US presidential elections
Bryan Sells, an attorney with the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) spoke to Babbel Blog about the legal provisions made to facilitate voting for non- or limited- English speakers in United States, especially in light of the upcoming US presidential election . Click here to hear the interview with Bryan [...]