Friday 17 January 2014

Immersive Immersion for Duolingo

Duolingo is a popular free online tool to help learn a language. It's won multiple awards (including best education start-up in 2013 by techcrunch).

It's effectiveness is often brought into question- people are naturally inquisitive by "free" end "educational" in the same sentence. But the awards, and over 20 million users must put Rosetta Stone in an awkward position.

Immersive immersion is an experimental script written to help users who find hearing a language particularly useful for retention and comprehension. Let us be clear, this is in no way associated with Duolingo and any bugs, error are fault of the developer of the script and not Duolingo.

Duolingo is a beautifully smooth online language learning application. Users learn by progressing through lesson units which gradually progress to more complex language constructs.

Additionally, Duolingo offers an 'Immersion' section where users can translate real-world website articles written in the language they're learning. This is fantastic for reading comprehension, however there is no option for audio playback of the sentences.

Installation of the script: (instructions can be found here, Spanish translation, German translation). Will allow the playback of sentences being translated as demonstrated in the video.

  • The script supports all languages which Duolingo supports
  • It is not perfect and therefore only recommended for interested parties for experimentation
  • It helps make the translation of articles a much more fun, immersive learning experience. 

Wednesday 15 January 2014

Mobile accounting software for free

Calculate mobile expenses the easy & free way. 
Storing receipts on your mobile- keeping track of expensive is important for the annual tax return. You know how it all adds up; one ream of paper here, pens, postage and the printer ink needs replacing. Here's our requirements for a free, mobile accounting app:

It must:
  • Be free
  • Track both expenses and credits
  • Work alongside (integrate) with a robust account system(s)
  • Easy to use
The recommended app fulfills all these points:-
 For keeping record about purchases, mobile expenses,  which need to be tracked. Taking a photo of the receipt is easy at the time- but clumsy later.

Which expenses app is best?

We all know there are many apps available for this purpose, but we found that a combination of GnuCash on the Desktop / Laptop followed by GnuCash Mobile app on the phone. Why? Because we often found that by using other apps we were often making a sacrifice between a good app over our existing fully fledged accountancy package (whether that be QuickBooks, Sage, or GnuCash).

There's simply no need to totally remove your existing accounting solution. Just sync your mobile expenses with your existing accountancy package.

With GnuCash, you can import your existing accounts, and then have the app automatically email you your accounts at the end of the day so they can be imported to your full accountancy package.

Don't sacrifice a your existing accountancy package for the sake of an good app

GnuCash Mobile Edition is practical & free.
Additionally, by using GnuCash mobile app- you don't have to be locked into using a certain accountancy package. Often other 'free' apps will make their money by offering an online service, or additional accountancy package to use your app with when you get home.

You save yourself this vendor lockdown (and a few pounds) by using GnuCash mobile which supports accountancy formats OFX & QIF which both QuickBooks, Sage and GnuCash support.

GnuCash for mobile, which is currently only available for Android devices can be found from the Google Play Store for GnuCash.

It is highly recommended to explore the benefit of pairing this app with GnuCash- a free, reliable accountancy package for small businesses. See our full review of GnuCash to see if it's right for your needs.