BTBurke

We do a lot of on the fly translations. In meetings, we may have to translate for an Ambassador or senior official that doesn't speak the language. Depending on the topic, it may not be appropriate to bring a professional translator, so we do the best we can.

We also meet with a wide variety of people and take copious notes. I personally take notes in a mix of English and the local language, but mostly in English because I have my own shorthand to help me remember what is said. It's hard to develop that kind of shorthand in a foreign language without writing everything and that is too slow for a normal conversation.

Programming is now a hobby and I still do some open source stuff and push out various side projects for fun.

Eventually I'll have to retire and so I always hope some of my side projects will take off to supplement my retirement income.

I was an engineer, served in the military, and programming is now a hobby.

Not all diplomats are political science or economics majors. Policy touches so many sectors that it's useful to have people with backgrounds in many areas.

It's not uncommon to have prior software engineers, teachers, etc in the foreign service.

We have a foreign language institute outside Washington DC where they teach about 70 languages.

It's an organized class for 5 hours a day in small groups with a native speaker as the teacher.

There is usually an additional 2-5 hours of independent study/homework depending on the complexity of the language.

Professional fluency takes between 24 and 88 weeks depending on the difficulty of the language. Spanish is 24, Mandarin would be 88. "Hard" languages like Finnish and Estonian are in the middle at 44.

We test with native speakers at the end to determine our level on a 5 point scale. Each of our embassy jobs has an associated language requirement, usually 3/3, which means professionally fluent in speaking and reading.

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level.

When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months.

There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going for professional fluency, not just touring around the country where interactions are largely scripted and predictable):

* There is no substitute for production - you must speak the language with a native speaker (not an app) and talk about topics that are relevant to the kind of scenarios you anticipate. We spend the first several months discussing current events in target language - at first scripted, then later free form. This builds vocabulary and helps fluency. This is quickly expanded to discussing current events in depth and participating in mock debates.

* Give mini presentations - target 3-5 minutes of talking about a relevant topic with little prep time. The difference between intermediate and advanced is the ability to move from discussing only facts to making a coherent argument. Native speakers will often not be able to follow your train of thought without learning to connect cause and effect using structures appropriate for your language.

* Interview native speakers - prepare 2-3 questions about a particular topic and check your comprehension by translating their answers to English. This obviously helps build your comprehension, but also helps to learn to "automate" comprehension while you are thinking about something else. If you can take notes in English while a native speaker is talking at normal speed (and achieving 90%+ accuracy), it will make it easier for you to participate in normal speed conversations.

* Read target language news - this is critical for expanding vocabulary and learning colocations - knowing what verbs are used in particular contexts (e.g., do they say "I talked with X" or "I talked to X". Do they say country X shot, launched, or threw a rocket?)

Bottom line - language learning is not just about the number of hours you put in. The quality and type of practice you do matters a lot. You aren't going to be fluent via Duolingo alone. You need to put in the time using structured practice with native speakers to really learn anything.

Thanks to you both. I really appreciate you taking the time. Tons of good stuff to think about.

Works great, but when I tested it out as an anonymous user, then decided to sign up, it didn't import the gallery I just made.

It depends on what particular field within electrical engineering you're going to pursue. My specialty is signal processing and the general feeling in our field is that more math is always better. I haven't used topology or abstract algebra on the job. A solid understanding of the basics will take you pretty far. I'd choose depth in those fields before I worried about breadth.

Did any one of those 3000 spend the time to actually make a list? If not, maybe you should think about why they didn't.

-- This seems like a crowded space, how do you differentiate yourself? I was looking for an "About Us" section to tell me why you're different than 99 Designs, Logo Snap, etc.

-- The price point seems off compared to other options. For example, Logo Company offers logo, stationary and business cards at roughly the same cost. Do you offer better quality? Multiple designers? A more personalized experience?

-- Once you get off the ground, a few customer testimonials wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, the option to actually talk to a person about your logo design throughout the process is something attractive to those of us who would like to actually interact with a human being.

-- The site is fairly broken for me, but that is probably because I'm at work and we're forced to use IE7(!)

There are two tools that I really like -- Zotero does a great job of organizing references, keeping related things together, and has a decent search capability. The target audience is academia, but it works just as well for other kinds of use cases. I also keep a personal wiki running on my laptop to take down notes and organize my thoughts. I've tried a bunch of them and Confluence from Atlassian is my favorite. It has the ability to embed all kinds of different media and it's $10. Xwiki is pretty good too.

edit: bad grammar :)

If you're looking for something a little different, I'm working on low-power high performance computing for military and intelligence applications.

Place: Washington, DC (but virtual may be possible at first)

More details available to anyone who wants them.

bryan.t.burke [at] gmail.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanburke1

I spent a few minutes thinking about why I would want this service. It wasn't immediately clear to me what benefit it would provide over something like delicious or just standard bookmarking features in your browser -- then I got it... it indexes the page and lets me search for what I'm looking for later using the full content, rather than just the tags I assigned or information that can be found in the URL or page title. That's something you might want to make more obvious for users that only spend 30 sec on your landing page. Bring out the value proposition right away in simple language, rather than making them wonder what the difference is between filtering, crawling, indexing, recommending, etc.

I like it a lot also. I agree with getting it integrated with Google Apps. Let me get to it with one click from my gmail (without having to log in again) and I'm sold.

You can't write anything off unless you have income from that company coming in to offset against.

This site tilts heavily towards the devs, but there are definitely skills that you can develop to make yourself valuable for a startup without being a technical guy. #1 -- pick an industry you are passionate about and network, get a job in a major company in the space, learn the ins/outs of the industry, etc. Then you can either start your own biz or you'll be a valuable resource for a tech company looking to break in and needs domain knowledge and contacts.

I could see how you might be able to compete with Dropbox on price. Google storage is a lot cheaper than dropbox. Dropbox 50Gb is $120/yr (last I checked). Google will sell you 400Gb for $100/yr.

Who told you that you won't learn much in college? Don't kid yourself. Right now, you don't know what you don't know (as has been pointed out elsewhere.) Skipping college is hamstringing yourself for no good reason. Like it or not, having a degree is like building a personal brand. It says that you have some base knowledge and the ability to complete a long-term project. Unless you have something better lined up right now, I wouldn't skip it because it is difficult to go back in your late 20s when you realize you've made a mistake.

Depends on your use case. If you want to share documents and you don't mind google's version of the word/excel/ppt, it's a good way to go. For files in which the application is on your laptop or has complicated directory structures, dropbox is better. Google has cheaper storage -- 20Gb for $5/yr last time I checked. I think Dropbox is something like $10/month for 50Gb. Google Docs is good for simple documents, but the rest of the apps are pretty bad compared to MS Office. If you're a powerpoint ranger, you aren't going to want to use Google Apps, you're going to want to put your PPT files in dropbox and use Office.

I use encrypted LVM on linux which works great. I've used TrueCrypt in the past and that works too, although I had some stability problems with the software in Windows.

I'd hire a graphic artist to upgrade the logos. Also, I don't like the pricing strategy. You should pay for the content of the course, not month by month. If you want other ways to make money, try something like so many minutes on skype with a native speaker for practice, downloadable podcasts to listen on the go, side-by-side translations of news articles in both languages to practice reading and learn about the culture/current events at the same time.

Thanks Alex. The site looks great. I plan on playing around with that this weekend.

I have a 9 to 5 right now. It's a good job and I feel like it's important work, but I'm also starting something on the side. There's something about picking your own problem, finding your own solution, and building that into a business that just beats working for someone else.

So how long before we can buy our way to the top of the search term suggestions? What kind of analytics can you do about how streaming search changes the way people compose their keywords? It's an interesting new feature.

Well they do claim "sources" after all. They just don't name their sources or what they said exactly... does that mean that the conclusions aren't true?

Terrible name. Like the idea of photos, but when I click on them I want to see a recipe so I can make it. What about copyright? I see some of the recipes are taken from iphone apps or books. Are you liable if someone posts a recipe straight from a source that is legally protected?