Best Online Language Tools for Word Nerds

Life­hack­er is run­ning a good piece today that high­lights a series of web-based lan­guage tools for any­one look­ing to fig­ure out a word’s def­i­n­i­tion, trans­la­tion, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, syn­onym, or antonym. Word nerds, this could be your lucky day…

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World’s First Robot Rock Band

Per­haps this is a lit­tle off top­ic, I know. But it’s fair­ly wild. And it’s the start of sum­mer.

(For more good robot videos click here and here, and for more sub­stan­tive musi­cal pod­casts, click here.)

via Matthew Ygle­sias

J.K. Rowling Tells Harvard Grads Why Success Begins with Failure

Here’s J.K. Rowl­ing speak­ing with elo­quence at Har­vard’s grad­u­a­tion, 2008. You’ll find a lit­tle wit (although far dif­fer­ent than the kind on dis­play when Sacha Baron Cohen — a.k.a. Ali G & Borat — spoke at Har­vard grad­u­a­tion fes­tiv­i­ties in 2004). And then there’s the sage advice that she dis­pens­es. Some good thoughts on why suc­cess is ulti­mate­ly pred­i­cat­ed on fail­ure (thoughts that call to mind Steve Jobs’ now famous talk at Stan­ford), and why we need to exer­cise the pow­er of imag­i­na­tion — and empa­thy — in the broad­est sense. We have oth­er fine grad­u­a­tion speech­es post­ed below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Bono Tells Grad­u­ates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

Stephen Col­bert Dish­es Out Wis­dom & Laughs at North­west­ern

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Puppets Deconstruct Orwell’s 1984


Since we high­light­ed a free audio book of George Orwell’s 1984 ear­li­er in the week, it seemed worth post­ing this bit from Boing­Bo­ing TV — a nice pup­pet decon­struc­tion of Orwell’s clas­sic. What a way to start the week­end.

Learn a Language Online

MSN-Sym­pa­ti­co has been run­ning a piece that cov­ers the ins-and-outs of learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage online. The piece high­lights free resources that you can access on the web, includ­ing our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts, but also many oth­er worth­while mate­ri­als. Free lan­guage dic­tio­nar­ies, flash cards, inter­ac­tive games, lan­guage learn­ing com­mu­ni­ties, inter­na­tion­al news and radio shows, for­mal uni­ver­si­ty cours­es — they’re all list­ed here.

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Magnetic Fields Made Visible

What do nat­ur­al mag­net­ic fields look like? This extra­or­di­nary footage from NASA’s Space Sci­ences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (UC Berke­ley) gives you a glimpse and reveals their “chaot­ic, ever-chang­ing geome­tries.”

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How Not to Get Caught Reading at Work

This is a clever web site cre­at­ed by the folks at the New Zealand Book Coun­cil. The site cre­ates a repli­ca of a PC desk­top envi­ron­ment, and, with­in the fold­ers, you’ll find texts that can be read on the sly.

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Learn the Art of Photography: The Nikon Way

The advent of dig­i­tal cam­eras has changed pho­tog­ra­phy as we know it. It has dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­ered the cost of pho­tog­ra­phy, and we’re now snap­ping more pho­tos than ever before. But we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly tak­ing bet­ter pic­tures.

This is where Nikon steps in. Their cam­eras make casu­al pho­tog­ra­phers immense­ly bet­ter than they actu­al­ly are. (Trust me, I know.) And Nikon has now set up a free Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Cen­ter that offers tuto­ri­als and tips for tak­ing a range of dif­fer­ent pic­tures — por­traits, trav­el pho­tos, nature pho­tog­ra­phy, etc. Ques­tions that get tack­led here include, but are not lim­it­ed, to: “How can I take bet­ter por­traits?” “How can I take pho­tos at dusk with­out hav­ing them look com­plete­ly dark?” “How do I get true-to-life skin tones?” “How can I get the mov­ing fig­ures in my pho­tos to look like they’re in motion and not frozen?” “My por­traits have red eyes. How can I pre­vent this?” Give a tour of the Learn­ing Cen­ter here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

  • If you’d like to learn about dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy using pod­casts, check out Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips from the Top Floor (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And, for that mat­ter, if you need to learn how to use a pod­cast, spend some time with our Pod­cast Primer here.
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