If there ever was a perfect time to start an online book club, this is it. Everyone is looking for inspiration, distraction, anything to feel like life as we know it continues. We finally have the time to tackle books we “always wanted to read”, so no more excuses! Why not read a book together…
Hacks & Tutorials
How To Create ANKI Flashcards From Your Kindle Vocabulary Builder
The Vocabulary Builder on Kindle Paperwhite (and Oasis, Voyager) is a powerful feature for language learners if used right. It collects all the words that you look up, including their definition and context. You can then use a rudimentary flashcard system and group them into “learning” and “mastered”. However, for serious spaced repetition practice, the Kindle…
German
Behind The Pages: The Making Of A Talking Book (Café in Berlin EPUB3)
As an author of stories for language learners it’s always important to me to create materials that are both fun and useful on a day-today basis. So perhaps it will not come as much of a surprise that many of these works are based on my own experiences (and frustrations) of learning languages myself. A couple of weeks…
German
How To Use A German-English Dictionary with Kindle Cloud Reader
As a language instructor and author of language learning textbooks, I’ve always found the Kindle’s built-in dictionary a great tool to make reading foreign language texts more fluid and frictionless. Whether it’s on your Kindle ereader, on your iPhone or iPad Kindle app, or Kindle Android app (see links for detailed instructions), custom dictionaries can be…
German
Add a German-English Dictionary To Your Android Kindle App
After writing a tutorial on how to enable a German-English dictionary on the Kindle app for iPad and iPhone, today I’d like to share with you how to enable the same functionality on your Android Kindle app. On your iPhone or iPad Kindle app, you can just purchase a dictionary from the Kindle store and…
Hacks & Tutorials
Best Ebook Reader Apps With Word Translation For iPad and iPhone (iOS)
As an author of German language learning stories I always recommend to turn on instant translation features on tablets or ebook readers so that students can learn new words without leaving the text. Simply tap/click a word and read on! What sounds like such a simple feature, can often be curiously hard to find on even…
Discover Dino lernt Deutsch: the German story series for beginners that will help you learn German in no time.
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How To Become A Better Writer By Finding Creativity Within Constraints
Lately, an interesting writing app has been making the rounds. It’s called Hemingway, and it promises to “make your writing bold and clear”. The way it works is that you type or paste in a few paragraphs, and then the app will try to highlight long and complicated sentences, unnecessary adverbs and overgenerous use of…
Hacks & Tutorials
3 Ways To Start Learning How To Code
Knowing how to code is becoming an increasingly important skill for many different fields of expertise. Software is everywhere: in our cars, telephones, books and even refrigerators. While learning to code is not a magic bullet to land the perfect job, it can nevertheless be an great asset in many different situations. Especially for people…
Hacks & Tutorials
How To Create Custom Shortlinks With Bit.ly
Shortlinks have been with us for a number of years now. Whether it’s bit.ly, tinyurl, or another service, URL shortening has risen in popularity together with Twitter, where every character counts and the only good link is a short link. But besides shortening, another reason for using short links is to beautify long and ugly URLs….
Hacks & Tutorials
Create Your Own Flashcards For Kindle
Flashcards are a time-tested tool of memorizing almost anything, from new vocabulary and technical terms to copious amounts of trivia facts. And nowadays we don’t even need to waste paper for creating them. There are many apps that allow you to create your own flashcards. If you own the new Kindle Paperwhite, there’s even an…
Hacks & Tutorials
Introduction to Regular Expressions For Indie Publishers (Open Office)
One of the perks of being an indie publisher is that you can do everything your way, from manuscript formatting to cover design and marketing approach. But it’s also one of the downsides of being an indie publisher. Perhaps you can afford to hire an intern, but chances are that you’ll have to keep your…
