Thursday, April 12, 2007

World Wide Lexicon: Help Make This Blog Multi-Lingual!

We're proud to announce that we are one of the first sites to join the Worldwide Lexicon (www.worldwidelexicon.org). It's a new service that will enable us to publish in dozens of languages. WWL is based on a simple idea that websites like ours have bilingual readers without knowing it. WWL enables you to contribute and edit translations to any languages you speak. WWL is free, and is open source, and if you're into language, it's a lot of fun.

To contribute, just go to http://demo.worldwidelexicon.org. Look for Plugs and Cars. Beneath the title, you'll see a list of 2 or 3 letter language codes (for example, ES = spanish). Click on the code for the language you speak. You'll be asked to translate the site's title first, then you'll see a list of articles to be translated. Click on an article, and then you will go to a page or form to view or edit the article's title, description (synopsis) and full text. If you want to use a machine translation service and then edit that text, you can click on CHEAT to go to Google Translate to cut and paste.

The goal of the worldwide lexicon project is ambitious, to eliminate the language barrier by making it possible, and easy, for people like you to contribute translations about whatever websites you like and want to share with people in other countries. We think this is the beginning of a big thing, and we're proud to be one of the first testers.

Gasoline, Ethanol, Crude Oil Up in Price

AP reports:
Gasoline futures rose 3.31 cents to settle at $2.1918 per gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Meanwhile, alternative fuel ethanol hit a 7-month high, corresponding to an overall rise in gas prices since last August.

Ethanol futures rose 4.3 cents to settle at $2.280 on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose $1.84 to close at $63.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for May rose 88 cents to $68.72 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.