Traveling This Summer? Learn The Local Language First.
For much of the surf world, summer is the best time to travel to a foreign country in search of swell. You’ll want to bring some good boards, warm water wax and an ipod, but you’ll also need some knowledge of the native language to find the best eateries, haggle with street vendors and to generally grease the wheels of travel.
If you genuinely want to learn enough of the local language to get by, but never seem to find the time to study, you might like my new web app. It’s called Popling and it’s designed for people who lack the motivation to study and are online for much of their day.
Here’s how it works:
You sign up for an account and install the desktop application. You then subscribe to flash card sets which contain vocabulary or phrases in your topic of choice. Every few minutes Popling will display a small notification with a question from the flash card sets you subscribed to. If you aren’t too busy, click the notification to reveal the flash card, review it, then return to what you were doing. In just a few seconds you’ve learned a new word or phrase.
After a few days you’ll find you’ve learned quite a bit, without setting aside time to study.
Click the tiny notification window to see a card, ignore and it’ll go away.
Retention mode requires you to type the last card you learned.
Popling is just getting started. To help me get it ready for the prime time, I’m looking for some very vocal beta testers who want to learn, will report bugs and provide opinions on what could make Popling better. There are currently Poplings for basic Spanish, Indonesian, German and French with more to come.
If you are interested, go sign up for an account using the invite code: “seventy“. Be quick though, invites are limited. For more information, including a screencast of Popling in action, check out Popling.net.
Thanks, I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
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May 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
i learned more in a shorter amount of time. than i ever thought i would..es muy bueno!
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm
yeah, but you just might be a little biased. :*
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:34 am
Sweet Idea. I’ll be sure to sign up as soon as I’m the ‘regular’ PC.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I’m waiting for the rest of the world to speak english under George Bush’s plan of global gentrification.
May 25th, 2008 at 3:17 am
Signed up on a few days ago but no confirmation e-mail yet. not even in the junk.
May 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Seamouse, check your mail.
JP, good plan. It’ll happen soon.
May 26th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Hi! I *REALLY* love this idea, and I’m trying to make it work. I am registered and installed. However, every time I try to “Get Poplings” or “Subscribe to Poplings” I get reverted back to the registration/login page. I login again, but the browser absolutely will not remember my login information. Basically, can’t make this work. :( Would love your help! Thanks so much!
May 26th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
hi there. Thanks for reporting this, something I hosed up in a recent change. Should be fixed now.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Finally a pop-up that I don’t want to block!
I installed Popling and have been popping away for the past week or so and am happy to report that I have improved my Spanish if for no other reason than I am prompted to think in Spanish.
Great idea.
Cheers,
Daniel
May 29th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Awesome Daniel, exactly the response I was hoping for.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:50 pm
This rocks!
I have been trying to learn spanish using a book, but my eyes just glaze over when I start reading lists of verbs.
This is perfect for me – I have had it just half a day and am already a huge fan of this program.
Install and verification went quickly and easily.
Thank you, thank you.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Blue, that rocks my world. So glad you are getting good usage out of it. Please don’t hesitate to post or email any problems you have.
–rob