steveridout

The in-line translations come from Google Translate. People often dismiss Google Translate but it's very good between English and the other major European languages. The quality isn't as good for less popular languages, or if one of your languages isn't English.

If you aren't satisfied with the translation, you can refer to another dictionary in the reader sidebar (or a popup window in the Chrome extension). The default for Spanish-English is WordReference, but users can customize this if they have another favorite (http://blog.readlang.com/2013/11/07/custom-dictionaries.html).

On top of that, you can edit all the words you translate, and if in future you click the same word, you'll get your personally edited version instead of Google Translate. So you're effectively building up your own large translation dictionary. One idea for the future is to use all these edits to crowd source better translations, but there's plenty of lower hanging fruit to get through first!

> What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import translations from Google Translate into my flashcard app.

You might like to try my webapp for reading and learning a language:

http://readlang.com

It allows you to read shared texts or upload your own (.txt or .epub) or read any web page with a Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-reade...)

You can click or drag across any word or phrase to get an instant translation.

Every translation is converted into a flashcard, along with the context sentence.

You can practice with Readlang's own spaced repetition flashcards or export to Anki if you prefer.

Hope you find it useful!

(I've been bootstrapping this for the past 2.5 years)

I'm curious what "fix the medium resolution" means?

I think that the map screen should probably be responsive and adjust height to fit the screen, is it this or something else entirely?

A handful of people have said the same about my website which uses a darker shade of green. Perhaps with enough users someone will complain whatever the colour is but I'm wondering - is there something about green specifically that elicits this strong negative response in certain people?

or just add ?share=1 to the URL

I love novels as a language learning tool, so much in fact that I've created a web-app with a reading interface to help people who enjoy learning in this way:

http://readlang.com

It allows you to:

1. upload an entire novel

2. translate the words and phrases you don't know

3. review them later with spaced-repetition flashcards containing the original context sentence

Curious to know why this was downvoted?

1. True, that makes sense.

2. But isn't Germany's position at the moment infinitely preferable to Greece's? Obviously the situation would be better if no bail outs were required, but if they are, I would much rather be the country with the surplus.

3. Good idea, I've watched a few already but should continue.

I'm still woefully ignorant about world economics. Could someone do me a favour and answer a few basic questions about this:

1. Is the trade surplus mainly affected by private enterprise? If that's the case, what control does the German government have over it if the businessmen running the companies would rather save than spend? (Interest rates are already incredibly low.)

2. I'm personally conservative with money, and never like to get into debt, so from a this naive point of view, I would be very happy to know my country has a large buffer to weather out any oncoming storms. Assuming that Germany's position (saving) is bad for the world economy, but good for Germany, what would make the Germans change their behaviour?

3. What books would you recommend for a complete newcomer to learn about macro economics?

Unless things have changed recently, before getting accepted to one of the top universities in the UK you'll be expected to do an in-person interview.

(I remember having to choose one lecture to study beforehand and I chose Feynman's introduction to Special Relativity. I didn't even know who Feynman was at the time but really enjoyed his book of lectures, and a couple of years later he became one of my heroes after reading "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman")

You can see the host's response rate and typical response time on the accommodation page.

And some accommodation will have a "lightning" symbol which means you can book instantly without any waiting for communication required.

Wow, that's surprising, I've been an AirBnB guest about 10 times and generally had a very good experience. I've had 100% response rate and only once had a problem - which was that the host had a problem with the utilities in the flat and had to cancel my booking a few days before. Annoying, but understandable and well communicated.

Perhaps it's worth looking at your photo and description to see if they can be improved, and also filtering your choices based on the host's reputation and description.

Size of code could be a good reason:

This appears to be just 43kb: https://github.com/Matt-Esch/virtual-dom/blob/master/dist/vi...

Whereas Facebook react 0.13.1 (without addons) weighs in at 599kb, or 121kb minified.

Note that I know almost nothing about this project. It may do less than React, be slower, etc... But if it does a half decent job with far less code then it's very compelling.

Momentum | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfkn...

This displays a beautiful photograph on your "New Tab" page instead of a list of your most visited sites, which if you're anything like me is procrastination central. It serves as a reminder for me to slow down, stay focussed, and not obsessively check news, Hacker News, etc... (yep, it's not exactly working at the moment ;-)

It also allows you to specify a main task for the day to keep you focussed but I only occasionally use that.

Apologies for the shameless plug, but I've made a Chrome extension which should be useful for anyone learning a foreign language:

Readlang | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-reade...

It allows you to read web-pages in your target language, translate the words and phrases you don't know, and review them all later with flashcards which include some context from the original source.

The Onyx Boox T68 6.8 inch e-reader runs Android 4.0: http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/onyx-boox-t68.html

I was a fairly light Photoshop user - occasional retouching, compositing, and web UI stuff. Last year I switched to Pixelmator due to cost and found it relatively painless, the UI is similar enough to Photoshop that it's easy to switch and IMO more attractive than Photoshop CS3 which I used to use.

I tried Gimp once a few years ago and had a far worse experience, it slowed me down a lot compared to Photoshop. This may just be because I didn't devote enough time to get used to it.

SEEKING WORK - London UK, Madrid Spain, or Remote

- Backbone web-apps - Node.js

I have over 10 years experience in software development, including desktop software with C++ and Qt, and currently focussed on web development.

Examples of work here: http://steveridout.com/about/

I'm currently bootstrapping a webapp for language learning http://readlang.com and am looking to split my time between this and freelance work.

Contact: steveridout@gmail.com

You're fighting a losing battle, getting exposure is valuable for a startup and free is often a good route to get initial users.

This really makes me want to start sketching out an adventure game design!

Looking at those charts/graphs brought back the feeling of playing those classic Lucasarts adventures. Of discovery as the multiple puzzle threads open up, followed by satisfying resolution as they converge at the end of each act.

Completely agree, especially since Chrome now offers to translate web-pages in other languages when the user opens them. It's far better to leave the decision to use machine-translation to the end user.

Hey, it sounds like you might be interested in my webapp for reading to learn foreign languages: http://readlang.com

It lets you:

- Upload texts to read, even entire novels, or read any webpage using a bookmarklet.

- Click on words or drag across phrases to translate them.

- Every word or phrase you translate is stored to your account, along with the context sentence, to learn with flashcards.

- Flashcards are prioritised using word frequency lists so you learn the most useful words first, they also use a SRS similar to Anki to schedule future appearances of a word.

Please give it a try, and if you are interested it could be cool to share some ideas.

I don't see how the second table makes Alice look like the better pilot. She's better than Bob in the night, but worse than Bob in the day, and overall worse. Could someone explain?

I don't think you're doing a fair comparison, which would mean comparing the cheapest meat with the cheapest non-meat foods.

Of course mince meat is cheaper per calorie than lettuce, it's probably cheaper than tomatoes, but it's not cheaper than rice or lentils.

BTW - I live in Europe too.

Is this true? I was always under the impression that meat was considerably more expensive than basic vegetarian food. I know some vegetables can be expensive but I'm pretty sure cereals and pulses are cheaper than any meat.

Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because:

- The people working six hour days have been told that this may improve productivity so the excitement of being part of the experiment may indeed encourage them to be more effective in the short term

- They have a strong incentive to work harder because if the experiment concludes that six hour days are more effective, they will likely get to keep working six hour days.

I did look into Wikitionary briefly but it looked horrible to use since the data isn't stored in a structured format. It seemed I'd need to parse the wiki markup and the formatting conventions were different for the different languages, which would make it a tricky job to support all the languages that Readlang does.

It made me wish for an alternative open bilingual dictionary project which is structured and machine readable.

Thanks!

For the inline translations I use the Google Translate API, which is surprisingly good for words and short phrases. Unfortunately the API doesn't provide multiple translations, even though they show them on their own web site. Grrr.

Users are encouraged to edit translations before learning them, and I often think it would be awesome to crowd source appropriate translations for given contexts using this data. I'm getting ahead of myself though, I'd need orders of magnitude more active users and development time for that to work.

If anyone is interested in using spaced repetition for language learning, you might like to give http://readlang.com a shot (disclaimer - my site). It generates a flashcard every time you come across an unknown word or phrase while reading a book or website, and each flashcard includes the context sentence. You can also export to other software like Anki.

Thanks. I often wish I'd had a cofounder from the start, right now it's difficult to give away a big enough stake away to someone else to make it worth their while. For now I'm still hoping that sometime this year I'll be able to grow revenues to a point where i can make a living, and that would open the possibility to start hiring contractors to do some extra work, e.g. Design, marketing, support.

Well done for continuing your project for so long, I'm sure you must have learned a lot.