Archive for the ‘New Technology’ Category

Elite Clubs – Do They Make Sense?

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

When I was a kid, I always wondered why rich people would pay SO MUCH money to play golf at a private golf course.  It didn’t seem to make any sense to me.  Ok, sure, they are rich, I know that.  But even most rich people don’t like throwing money into the garbage for no reason at all.  A lot of them are surprisingly careful with their money.

In Canada, you can play golf at a VERY nice golf course for under $200 per time.  Sometimes it’s much less than $100.  And I’m talking about really beautiful golf courses, not just average ones.

So why then, would any reasonable person pay $100 000 per year for a membership?  It made no sense to me before.  Now it makes perfect sense.

These guys aren’t paying for how nice the golf course is.  That is only part of it.  It’s a small part actually.  What they are really paying for is the community.  Think about the other people who go to those courses.  Most of them are also successful business people.  They pay for status and ability to meet these people.  They talk and do business together.  They make friends and get their children in this rich group of successful people.  In some ways, the whole thing makes me sick.  I wish the world were a more fair place.  But the reality is that it’s not.  It does make sense for these people to stay together, meet each other, and network together.

It’s MUCH more likely that you will meet someone worth doing business with on one of these super expensive golf courses than if you were to try to meet these types of people at other places where “regular” people can go.

I was thinking about this because I was thinking about a social networking website for English learning.  These aren’t the exact same thing, but you’ll see what I mean in a minute…

People who speak English as a second language and are actually serious about improving their English, their business, their lives, etc, don’t have anywhere to go to meet each other online.  There are a lot of garbage websites that allow anyone on there.  If you want to speak with someone to “practice your English”, you can absolutely find a partner on a million free sites.

But the problem with this is HUGE.  These sites that allow anyone to join, attract people who aren’t really serious about learning English or really serious about anything at all.  Why?  Because most people in the world are not serious about anything they are doing.

If you want to meet a partner to speak English with, share ideas, share stories, share culture, you will want to meet someone who is at or above your level.  You want someone who can challenge you and you can learn from.  It’s not easy to find these people, but they exist.

Imagine for a second that you wrote on your Facebook page, “I am looking for someone to learn from, talk about business and life, and really challenge each other to improve our English skills”.  I can’t imagine you will find anyone.  Maybe, if you are lucky, someone will say “Yes” to your offer, but they probably won’t be the type of person you are hoping for.

As you probably know, Add and I have been making a new free video EVERY DAY at www.LearnEnglish232.com  

We are hoping to get people to get in the habit of going there every day for the new lessons.  We want to grow that site to 50 000 visitors per day.

But many of the people who find this site or that site aren’t super serious about learning English.  We also want to find the SUPER SERIOUS people and provide an opportunity for amazing English, business, and life learning that does not exist anywhere else on the internet.  That’s our goal.

The people who are not serious will not pay a small monthly fee to join the membership part.  And that’s great.  Our plan is to build a membership site for serious learners.  Everyone will have a great profile with an awesome photo, bio, linkedIn page, Skype number, where they are from…  A lot of stuff.  Then these people will be able to search through the other serious members and we can all have a really high level and private conversation.  Also, the members will be able to contact each other and set up high level language exchanges and other things.  It will be a real community.  I’ll be on there providing reading material, movie talk, technology stuff, and a bunch of interesting and high level topics for group discussion.  We’ll all push ourselves to get better and better in not only English, but in life too.

I want to have a lot of great free English learning content for everyone to enjoy, and a high level SUPER VIP program that is connected to this one and also adds a lot more.  We’re still talking about how we want the site to be.  And since some of you guys who are reading this right now will be interested in joining it, it would be great to hear your ideas now.  We are building it for you and other high level people like you.

What do you think of this idea?  What would you like to see in that program?

Help us design it with your ideas and then it will be much better that way!

And by the way, don’t worry, it won’t be expensive like an elite golf course!  It doesn’t need to be.  The only reason I used that example was to try to make a point.

Love to hear your thoughts guys.  By the way, does anyone here already have the great habit of going to www.LearnEnglish232.com everyday yet?  What do you think?  Have you shared it with your friends, students, or teachers?  What do they think?  We’re still in the beginning stages of developing this, and we’re sure this will be the best yet!

It will be connected in some way with China232.com VIP membership, so don’t worry about that.  We’ll take care of you guys and make it kick ass!  There will be tons of amazing free stuff for everyone and an insanely awesome high level private English learning VIP club.

Sounds like a win/win to me!  What are your thoughts on this whole topic?  Even the part about rich people paying so much for golf.  Does it make sense to you too?

Your comments are always appreciated.  You guys have been great lately with that.  Keep it up.  I read EVERY one!!

China232 on Stitcher Radio

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

Hey guys,

For anyone who doesn’t already know, China232 is now on the Stitcher podcast app.  The free Stitcher radio podcast app is the best and most popular app to organize all the world’s best free podcasts.  You can listen to all the free china232.com podcasts there.

Just download the free App and search on the App for “Fun English Lessons”.  It’s an awesome App and it’s what I use to listen to podcasts on my Iphone and my Ipad.  It’s what Add uses for his Samsung android phone.

Here is the direct link to our show on Stitcher:  China232 Podcast on Stitcher

China232.com Fun English Lesson on Stitcher

China232 now on Stitcher Radio for ipad, iphone, ipod touch, android, blackberry.

I hope you guys love this!  I’ll be making awesome videos soon.   If you have any problems with downloading this or figuring it out, let me know and I’ll help you out!  Thanks!

Website for Dating Texts?

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Ok,

This is about a website that I certainly won’t be using, but then again, I’m not a chick.

I found out about HeTexted.com when I was reading some tech blogs. The site is pretty hilarious really.

Tons of girls go onto the site and write down some situation they are having with a guy and write in the EXACT text conversations they are having. This isn’t fake. This is real life.

So be careful guys! Some girl can post your texts online and get opinions from thousands of other girls on what your motives are. Ie. Are you interested in her “romantically” or not.

The site won’t let you put people’s actual names on there, but it will let you put the REAL messages. I’m 100% sure that some guys are going to get in trouble with this.

I guess the basic idea is that many girls have a hard time knowing whether or not some guy likes them. I’m not sure if guys have this problem or not. I think some do but it’s not as common.

In my experience, if a girl doesn’t like a guy, she just won’t respond to any text messages, or will just say some really short answer and will never ask a question. This is a big generalization, but that is based on my experience and from the stories of my guy friends.

I went on the site because I wanted to make a podcast about it. Add and I just made our latest one today about this. You can check it out HERE if you are a VIP member. I think you’ll like it!

Anyway, I hope you guys check out www.HeTexted.com and let me know what you think.

Do you think this would be useful for girls to understand guys?

Do you think it’s making private things too public?

Do you like the idea of this type of website?

What do you think about what I said above? Do you think in a “dating context” girls are more direct than guys with texting, in general of course? What are your “texting habits” when you like a guy or a girl? Do you let them know? Do you “hint” at it? Do you make them wait and “play the game”?

I’d love to hear your opinions. I don’t want to say too much more because we talk A LOT about it on the podcast.

It would be awesome to hear your thoughts after you check it out. You might even learn some slang English on there. If you have any questions of slang from real native texts, please ask in the comments section below.

By the way, thanks for all the comments on the last blog post. That was awesome! I hope you keep it up!

English Learning Android App is HERE, Apple coming soon…

Friday, August 10th, 2012

Hey guys,

I’m gonna make this short and sweet. For anyone who doesn’t yet know the good news, our Android App is good to go! It’s free to download and it a great and easy way to use the lessons. If you feel like being nice and giving us a 5 star rating on the Google Play store, we’ll love you even more, if that’s at all possible. (We already love you guys a lot!)

Sorry Apple fans, you’ll have to wait another week or so. It’s coming though! It will be worth the wait. (It’s really not our fault, i-tunes is even slower than me!)

Weird On Many Levels

Monday, August 8th, 2011

I’ve gotta admit, I was pretty surprised when I saw this piece of news…

I want to get some of your opinions on this. Basically, there is a Japanese Pop Group where one of the singers is actually a “fake” face. Some impressive video editors took the “prettiest” facial features from 6 different girls and somehow made a new girl. She looks pretty real to me. I’ll post 2 Youtube videos about this. The reason I picked 2 videos is that the youtube videos are made from some very strange news people. I think it’s really terrible how they make Japan look and they think they are being funny but they are not. This whole thing is quite strange. If you have a few minutes, take a look at the videos and practice some writing about your thoughts.

Note: To any Japanese people, I know these people doing the news are CRAZY. I’m just sharing because the whole thing is an “interesting” story and I want to hear the “world’s” thoughts about this. I know this is not a normal thing for your culture and I think it’s so stupid to watch western media trying to comment on other cultures when they have no idea about what they are talking about. It’s also important to note that this isn’t normal western media. They are just strange people on Youtube. No wonder there are so many misunderstandings in this world.

Here are the 2 videos. Check em out and comment below:

Andy