Tag: germany

Mapping Germany

GoYellow Munich

The screenshot above is from GoYellow maps, a german yellow pages publisher. they are the first customer of my new startup and went live a couple days ago. it is an online map for germany with hybrid satellite/airplane and vector views. GoYellow allows you to overlay this map with yellow pages data, so it’s easy to look for wifi hotspots in berlin or radar traps across germany. of course, it also has the standard issue restaurants, atms, public transport, you name it.

bernhard has more. as noted elsewhere, the image quality is one of the distinguishing features of this application. together with our partner endoxon, we beat the quality you see at the GYM (Google Yahoo Microsoft).

speaking of the GYM, i get asked a lot how you can compete against them. besides kicking their ass in quality, there are quite a few companies that are afraid of going to the GYM, and are looking for partners. we are one such partner workout buddy. (ok, i will shut up about the GYM jokes now).

so what’s next for us? besides settling on a name (heh), there will be more coverage at that crunchy sub-meter resolution, goodies for the mashup crowd and more help for innovative users like this guy who is doing a competitive analysis of his cafe with data from the map. and more.

English

Germish, also referred to as Denglisch, Engleutsch, Genglish or Ginglish is a jumble of English terms embedded within a grammatically German sentence (or vice versa). It is spoken in all German-speaking countries and owes its existence in part to the cultural predominance of English language pop music and international computer slang.

How can you not love a free encyclopedia?
2008-04-19: Nerdic catches on

~100 new words are added to the language of technology, dubbed ‘Nerdic‘, every year – 3x as many as make it into the Oxford English Dictionary.

2008-09-14: France learning English

I’ve had enough of hearing that the French do not learn English. It’s a big disadvantage for international competition. Yet in the globalized, internet age, the French seem to realize that the losers from a refusal to learn English are themselves—and that speaking it need not make them less French.

2009-05-30: Wow. 1000s of Chinese school kids shouting english in a stadium, to learn.

2010-03-30: The world language is coming, globish

More than a lingua franca, the rapid adoption of ‘decaffeinated English’ makes it the world’s most widely spoken language.

2014-02-04: Other languages may exist

The Coca-Cola Company ignited a firestorm of controversy on Sunday with a Super Bowl ad that appeared to make the inflammatory claim that other languages besides English exist. “Last night, Coke assaulted millions of Americans with its misguided and inappropriate view that other languages exist. In the future, we strongly hope that Coke will keep its crazy theories to itself.”

2015-07-19: Everything is becoming english. Many languages borrow not just words but grammar from english.

GERMANS joke about their bad English. In Berlin, you can buy fridge magnets with German expressions over-literally translated into English, like “It is me sausage”—a word-for-word rendering of Es ist mir Wurst, or “it’s all the same to me”. “German Quatsch” on Twitter has many more. But educated Germans usually speak English quite well. The reality is that, to a deeper extent than commonly realized, German is changing under constant influence from English.

2017-01-07: Many countries would benefit from this. I’m always embarrassed for companies that can’t communicate.

Japan continues to work inside a linguistic bubble – not least because many firms in Japan are oriented towards the domestic market and pay little heed to global trends. But this approach is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Switching to English makes Japanese firms more competitive, while opening employees’ eyes to the outside world. There is another benefit to using English in business: The language has few power markers. Its use can therefore help to break down the hierarchical, bureaucratic barriers that are entrenched in Japanese society and reflected in Japanese conversation, which could boost efficiency.

Also, Education Ministry to begin using English. Reminds me of the lonely guy in the us government who has been responsible for metrication since 1970.

the Japanese Ministry of Education will soon begin conducting their meetings in the language. As using English in meetings is highly unusual in the country, the ministry will start implementing it slowly, beginning with high-level officials in their department.

2023-05-04: LLMs will accelerate the winner takes all dynamics. The proposed countermeasures are ineffective and weak.

A tool like ChatGPT has yet to be trained on a massive amount of high-quality, diverse and representative Arabic written data. Its lack of data makes the tool’s results in Arabic unable to distinguish the nuances, accuracy and depth needed to generate quality content. Arabic-speaking users of AI tools face profound consequences of the language divide. At the top of the list is the limited access to information, as the vast majority of references and big data these tools scan to generate their results are mainly available in English.

This discrepancy hinders the ability of Arabic-speaking users to leverage AI for professional and personal growth and perpetuates a digital divide with long-lasting repercussions.