Tag: Languages

More online communities 2

I’m very interested in learning new languages and practicising the ones I already know (to some extent). Over the years I’ve been a member of a couple of different ones. The one I’ve liked best is LiveMocha. It works like this: if you’re studying a language, you can get help from native speakers. Or you can help someone studying your language. Many people ask me for help with Swedish language exercises and once someone even asked me for help with one in French. It wasn’t hard, fortunately, something like what I did when I first began to study French at the age of 13.

Since I’m a major booklover, I’ve joined three (four if you count a Swedish one) book sites.

LibraryThing
GoodReads
Shelfari

You can post all your books (or as in my case, the titles I can remember – long story), read reviews or post reviews. There are more features but those are the ones I’ve used. You can post a LibraryThing author tag cloud in the sidebar of your WordPress blog or in some other places too, if you want them to show up on your blog. There are other widgets that you can post too.

Second Life is a community, but it’s a bit different from many others. It’s in 3D. You get an avatar (not quite like in the movie) that can move around and interact with other avatars. You can customize that avatar pretty much any way you like, add virtual pets, change hairdos and go on shopping sprees with it. If you’re interested in building/creating things in a 3D environment, you can, but you’ll need to pay a little to upload your ‘textures’. You can ‘buy’ or rent ‘land’ and all kinds of things. And you can chat. Voicechat or text chat, whatever you like.

I’m not entirely happy about SL. You hardly ever run into so many nutcases as you do there. Some can be very annoying. Many people have ‘sexual’ relations in there. Cartoon sex. Pretend sex. LOL. (I didn’t make this up, but it’s too funny not to share it: Second Life – where men are men, and so are the women, and the children are FBI.)  It’s also very much about money, though you can experience SL without paying for anything other than your computer, software and internet connection. There are an almost limilless number of ‘sims’ – regions – that can be beautiful and intricate and fascinating. And you can go ‘shopping’ in huge stores. Strangely enough, it’s very relaxing. I’m not really into shopping in real life, but in SL I love to browse those stores, even though most of the clothes in there are slutty, to put it bluntly. My sister and I have had to learn to design our own, but that’s another story.

There are real businesses in SL and some universities teach courses in the 3D environment, so it’s not all ‘fake’. I’ve heard companies have staff meetings in SL and I know real famous singers have concerts there. The trouble is I always get to hear about it too late. Apparently, you can also ‘watch tv/movies’ too, but I’ve never tried that. You can also display your photos or art work. It’s a bit difficult to learn to move around in there, but I’m living proof you can learn how to do it. I even made a good friend in there, which was totally unexpected.

Social networks

I thought I’d continue my computer/internet “school”. This time I’d like to get into social networks, the ones I like best.

Since I’m a vegan, animal and human rights advocate and so on, Care2 is one of my favorite sites. It’s a social network for people who ‘care’. Features include free email, messaging, free e cards that help save rainforest and free donations. There are also groups that you can create and/or join. There’s even an instant messaging service. You also get a personal profile page that you can customize, where you can add photos, movies etc.

There are several veggie related communities – CrueltyFree, Vegan World, VegSpace. They’re all nice, but don’t feel very active. Maybe I haven’t really gotten to know them well enough yet. You get a profile page, messaging etc.

For other specialized interests I can mention LiveJournal and Vox. LiveJournal is a community that evolves around blogging/journal writing. Vox is quite similar to LJ, but here you get to upload media – photos, movies, music etc.

Speaking of media – Zooomr is a very cool photo site. You get unlimited storage space and hotlinking is allowed – that means you can store your photos, then link to them on your blog, profile page, home page etc.

If you’re into animals there are several different networking sites intended for animal lovers. Petster is for people with all kinds of pets. Catster is for cat lovers and Dogster is for dog lovers. There are others – BunSpace is another example, but the basic level doesn’t really allow you to do anything, so I can’t tell you much about it.

For those of us who are passionate about our writing, there are online archives where you can post your stories and poems and hopefully get comments. Naturally, you can also look for things to read.

FanFiction.net is probably the main site for fan fiction enthusiasts, but there are others – FanWorks is another I can mention. There you can also upload artwork.
FictionPress is for original fiction.

Finally, I’d like to mention a language learning network – LiveMocha. I’ve only started using the site so I can’t tell you all that much, but so far it looks impressive. You can learn new languages or practice one you already know and get help from native speakers.