Nowadays reading an information in a foreign language is no longer the privilege of a polyglot. With Internet, one can translate a web page in a blink of a click. Of course, purists will say that the translation is not reliable and can be interpreted the opposite way. (Good for cooking recipes cf : the recipe of the tarte Tatin). In any case, the automatic translation is a thousand times better than nothing. For instant web page translation, there are two small bookmarklets tools that can greatly simplify your “life” at least they simplify my life as a web editor .  (A bookmarklet is a piece of code that you install in your...

One of my passion is learning languages. Today we have the chance to have lots of online learning materials and one of my favourite ways to practice languages is listening to podcasts. As I am learning Italian, I wanted to share with you a list of geek Italian podcast that I am listening regurlarly and  I never miss the first two weekly podcast of this list. In fact this list is exhaustive, I did not find any other Italian techno podcast until now, so I guess I can say that they are the 5 best Italian technology podcast Radio24.ilsole24ore.com You can access directly to the xml podcast feed to 2024.   Retetre.rtsi.ch You can access directly...

Graphwords.com  is a sort of synonym dictionary (thesaurus) but it is visual. Just enter a word and a constellation of words will pop up. Click on any word of the constellation to generate another constellation and so on. If you find an interesting constellation you can save it in an image format. Small intermediate points give you a definition that refers to the word (s) found at the edge of the constellation. What is it for? Well, it’s more fun than flipping through the pages of a dictionary and it’s a different approach to internet surfing. For me, this is just another way to study English vocabulary.  Anyway, I am not going...

 T he Quebecers are the greatest defenders of the French language. They are the first to find a French word  to replace words that come to us in English. I always mention the verb “flirter” as an example. This verb that comes from the English language “to flirt” but was imported from the French through the verb “conter fleurette”. So why bother! Anyway sometimes, it really sucks to hear some English words in the French language, not because it is English, but because some people like to spread English words all over the place to show off that they are very “branché” which means “plugged...

Since I blog in English (well I try) I actually subscribed to bonpatron; an online grammar and spellchecker service which has also an English version pro.spellcheckplus.com. The English version is not as good as the French one, but it is OK for a quick and almost good ”sanity check”. If you do not want to invest in a tool, you can try a free online proofreading service called gingersoftware.com. I guess there are some limitations in terms of use for the free version, but for a sporadic use, it is fair enough. In terms of correction, it is not revolutionary, it corrects the most important points of grammar and spelling but not...