busuu receives six-figure funding from Austrian Business Angel

Exciting day for the guys at busuu. They just announced that busuu received a six-figure funding from an Austrian business angel who will also join the company as advisor.

But that’s not all. busuu also announced to finally launch Brazilian Portugese as sixth language to learn.

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TeachStreet launches Decision Engine for GMAT and GRE Test Takers

Although I have not written about TeachStreet on this blog yet,  it is one of my favourite services since I have first heard of them in early 2009. The reason why I did not mention TeachStreet up to now was that they were only available in the US.

But that might change soon and hence you will read more about this company from Seattle from now on over here.

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KWestions for Björn Lasse Herrmann of StartUpSchool

You might know Björn Lasse from my EDUKWEST interview with him and Steli Efti of SuperCool School already. But Björn Lasse is also the Principal of his own online school called StartUpSchool.

It’s an online community hosted on the SuperCool School platform that is about 1150 people strong. Amongst those start up founders, entrepreneurs and investors.

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Myngle partners with Lancelot School to Train and Certify its Teachers

The language learning platform Myngle recently partnered with online language teacher training organization Lancelot School. Besides the regular Lancelot training and certification the school will offer a special Myngle certificate for teachers of the platform.

I interviewed Heike Philp, Managing Director of Lancelot School on this partnership.

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Were the Mayans right? Is 2012 the End of the Internet?

The latest episode of This Week in Startups was as always packed with interesting callers, two pitches (this time online education start ups Babbleflix and ThereNow) and a great guest.

James Segil, Co-Founder and President of EdgeCast a content delivery network gave great insides about the internet and on how video streaming could lead us to a breaking point.

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KWestions for Daniel Donet – Initiator of HaitiReact.org

This is my new series interview series called KWestions. The aim is to give you some quick, first hand information directly from the source accompanied by a small blog post.

My first guest is Daniel Donet, Initiator and Coordinator of HaitiReact.org – Haiti Recovery Accelerator.

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VocabSushi – Bitesize Learning

I love Sushi. For me it’s one of the most perfect food creations of mankind. Pure, elegant, tasty. Everything you need.

VocabSushi transfers those features into a vocabulary learning tool. You see, I am already excited about this product and yes, I admit it impressed me right from the start. Like last year, when I discovered Mingoville (watch also the EDUKWEST interview with Stephan Stephensen). So what is VocabSushi all about?

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Sparkeo helps Educators to Monetize on their Videos

Yesterday I read about a very interesting start up in online education on TechCrunch Europe called Sparkeo. As TC was offering 100 beta invites I grabbed one immediately and signed up for it.

As video streaming is growing and growing on the internet it is great to have a targeted service for educators. So let’s have a first look on Sparkeo.

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What is the difference between Twitter and Emails or SMS anyway?

A new “menace” for Twitter goes around. According to the NYT, TechCrunch and WSJ Google wants to add “social features” to its email service GMail.

Will this be the “Twitter Killer”? Didn’t Facebook try the same?

But what makes Twitter so special anyway?

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Google changes Communication – Star Trek Style

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Do you remember watching Star Trek? Wasn’t it amazing that all the crew members could understand each other and communicate regardless of which country or even planet they came from? This was possible because they had this little universal translator built into the communicator.

Science Fiction you say? Well, they said this about the communicator before Martin Cooper turned the idea into the mobile phone. And now it seems as if Google is building the universal translator device. Beam me up, Scotty.

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