Meet Duolingo, Google’s Next Acquisition Target; Learn A Language, Help The Web

techcrunch.com

21 points·andre3k1··6 comments

I'm actually disappointed for seeing this on techcrunch. I have a lot of friends that worked on Duolingo and some of my research with Luis went into that project.

To write about a project that isn't finished and just has a landing page, however, is pretty disappointing. I don't know if I really would call it "news."

I thought it was interesting. TC writes about pre-launched startups a good amount, and given this guy's background and the interestingness of the project, seems like a good article.

They actually did get some inside scoop and prior to this link on HN I hadn't heard about it - so just because you contributed to it and it's not news to you, doesn't mean it's not news to us.

What do you think of a grammar checker that uses human computation in the style of the ESP Game?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1398

Since we're in the spirit of talking about pre-launch startups, I might as well tell you about http://www.TripLingo.com (re-plug as Pahalial mentioned http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434057 ).

This sounds interesting for a certain segment. As a former-and-future traveler and language-learner, I enjoyed learning the local slang and culture (e.g. "I'm about to explode" vs. "Excuse me sir, could you please direct me to the nearest restroom."). Fun for interacting with locals while also learning to talk like them.

That said, I think this is a great concept for re-vamping CAPTCHAs to make them interesting. I'm tired of typing " g4g3e2 re46ts2ae o4ll5eh" every time I want to sign up for an email list.

There's an existing day-old post about this still on the front page, albeit with a less descriptive title: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434057

Reply on news.ycombinator.com