Just stumbled across a website called admongo.gov. It’s an American intiative helping kids understand what ads really mean. As ads are part of our everday life (in fact when I look around my computer right now I can see three different ads) it is important for children to understand the ad lingo. So teaching them how advertising works, what advertising is trying you to do etc. will help them make better judgements. They have quite a cool flash-based game that goes through ads (where they are placed, what they try …

I just came back from a couple of days of air travel. Every time I have the same problem: Overweight. I dread the check-in counter as my suitcase feels overweight but I am not entirely sure. I have oftetimes tried to weigh my suitcase on a pair of scales but either I can’t see the weight display or half the suitcase touches the ground. And yes, I have had to repack in front of a super long line-up. Nice to let people see your underwear. So, before you have to …

While half of Europe is covered in ashes (OK, it is just a big ash cloud but nonetheless) air traffic has basically broken down. Apparently airplanes shouldn’t fly through the ashes as the engines might get destroyed. That got me curious of how the engineers know this. As (almost) always, it’s a proven fact: One of the most famous flights through volcano ashes was British Airways flight 9. Within minutes, all four engines stopped working, forcing the pilot to start a gliding flight. While he was trying to restart …

Just stumbled across a book review of a book called Globish which will be released in the next few days. It states that English has become the world language. Let me cogitate that (ha, I do use my new favorite word from time to time). After a little bit of deep thinking I have to agree. Much of the way we communicate today or what we use on a regular basis is dominated by “English-speaking” companies, products, services or similar. Let’s take the computer for example: Windows’ market share is …

As I have talked about the Google Translate functionalities a few times already I didn’t want you to miss out on the latest addition: Google Translate for Animals.
Quite a cool achievement, I would say. Now Google just needs to take over a few content databases so that it actually works out with the animal translation. How about this one? Actually, once Google is done with its street view project it could just reuse the cars to catch animal sounds. Anyway, here’s the video:

Nice idea, only that it is April Fool’s …