"Gina Bianchini is the co-founder and CEO of Ning, the "do-it-yourself" social networking site. Gina is no ivory-tower entrepreneur--she is an active participant herself in several Ning networks, and she demonstrates her passion (and her hands-on style) in this fun interview. We talk about the original vision for Ning, some of the ways that Ning is being used by different groups, and what features are coming down the road. It's the future features Gina describes that will get current Ning users excited.
The power and scope of Ning is truly amazing. Let's just say that I got off the call and immediately created a group for my kids drama troupe, and thought of several others."
"Babelfish 101
(also appliable to the Google translator)
Babelfish is not
a little polyglot genius lurking in your computer or in cyberspace
Babelfish is
A computer program made of
lists of words and phrases in different languages
complex, but not all-covering, rules applied to these lists in order to produce translations
Babelfish will not
give you a publishable or even editable version of your text in another language
analyse and render correctly complex sentence structures
always choose the meaning you had it mind if two or more words have the same spelling
confuse two words due to approximate memory
Babelfish will
produce apparent gibberish
give you a rough idea of what someone else's original text is about
Therefore, when dealing with Babelfish, you must
use commonsense
Don't use Babelfish to produce a translation into another language, especially if you don't know that language
If you know others will use Babelfish to read you, use simple sentence structure and avoid terms that can have several meanings
If you read something absurd or outrageous in a Babelfish translation, don't immediately attribute the absurdity or outrage to the author.
Try to guess from the context what the author might have meant
Compare what the author might have meant with what you know of Babelfish's limitations, to see if these limitations are the likely cause of the apparent absurdity or outrage
be wary of commonsense
The author may indeed have expressed something that would baffle you even if you both used the same language:
because your cultural references are different,
because s/he is using irony
because (make your own list)
ask when in doubt
;-)"
Avevo scritto questo post su un blog del Digital Divide Network (DDN) che non c'è più. Questa è la copia salvata sull'Internet Archive il 13 agosto 2007