Yesterday I used the internet to one of its fullest potentials. The marvels of Skype and Babelfish. I have used both of these services plenty of times before, but yesterday was them at their best.
I have used babelfish plenty of times to help me with my high school Spanish homework. Skype I have used to have free conversations, sometimes with webcams, with people I know around the world. I have also used Skype to make super cheap phonecalls to cell phones in places from Israel to Algeria.
parlez vous français?
Yesterday I had a conversation with someone that I will most likely be visiting in Paris. Extremely nice person, but he speaks no english. So he spoke to me in French and I did a semi rough translation using babelfish and then would translate my reply to French and respond to him. 10 years ago we may have had to write letters, or make an expensive phonecall with the help of a translator. This whole thing cost me nothing more than the price of electricity to power my laptop.
The internet has already helped me in other ways. Such as Kayak.com for comparing cheap flights with flexible travel dates and airports. Searching for places to sleep on Hostelworld.com or Couchsurfing.com. Trains and bus schedules and as I'm sure you all already know many many other services.
"A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring an idea... Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don't go right now, we're never going to do it. And we'll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely." - Tim Cahill, "Exotic places made me do it"
Monday, October 6, 2008
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1 comment:
That is cool. I wish Babel Fish did Norwegian to English so I could figure out my father-in-law's e-mails!
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