These days, learning a foreign language is considered a useful thing. The advantages are many: from travelling to foreign countries to getting a preferential treatment in the ethnic restaurants of your own to keeping the dementia away.
This was not always a case though, at least for China. Until 1844, it was illegal for a foreigner to learn Chinese. That changed for America, when Caleb Cushing had negotiated the Treaty of Wanghia, which made it possible for Americans - and Americans only - to learn Chenese.
Is Podcasting revolution over before it began? BusinessWeek seems to think so and quotes Pew Internet & American Life Project’s statistics. The topic is also generating some buzz in the blogosphere, with BusinessWeek’s interpretation being gleefully accepted by some and thoughtfully rejected by others.
I believe into podcasting’s future because it is here already for me. I have a 40 minute walk to work each day, so I have over six hours of content a week I can consume.
Wendy Seltzer’s plain-english explanation of the Microsoft Windows Vista’s EULA was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. There will be no Windows Vista on my next computer. I am sick and tired of worrying about computer viruses and misbehaving software; having the operating system that decides to remove functionalities or sabotage my work otherwise, is just beyond bearable.
It barely matters what Operating System I run anyway. My primary applications are Firefox, Open Office, Gmail, WordPress and various Java applications.
What would I do, if I had 3 more hours a day free? I would learn 3D modelling and animation.
This used to be the skill that only a limited number of people needed and the tools were difficult and expensive. With computer power not that long ago, even having the skills was not very useful as those skills could only be applied for high-end imaging, movie and computer game making.
David Rothman of the TeleRead fame has written a good background article on the e-books for the Innovate - journal of online education (free registration required).
While David’s articles at his blog are frequent and in-depth, any one of them is too tactical for a good overview. The article at the Innovate is a good summary and is rather more strategic. It also utilises the online nature of the journal to provide a comprehensive set of relevant hyperlinks.