Actually, you could even call it a “social teaching” site. Busuu.com (website) taps into an international community of language-learning enthusiasts — of English, Spanish, French, and German for now at least — and incorporates easy-to-use language learning methods much like its offline software brethren such as Rosetta Stone. But it doesn’t stop there. Busuu sets its users up to connect with and correct each other via “editing” of other users’ written responses in the form of comments and ratings (pictured below) and live chat. You basically have a network of a several personal language tutors at your fingertips, 24 hours and 7 days a week.

It works because it takes advantage of the fact that every person is already an expert in at least one language — their own — and when armed with an eagerness to learn new languages, this makes for a dedicated community of users who are more than willing to share their own expertise in exchange for the expertise of others. Combined with its interactive lessons, pick-your-own topics, news feed of when others have “edited” or commented on your writing exercises, and even little animated trees that grow as you grow your language skills, Busuu is well on its way to fulfilling the dreams of its co-founders in maintaining the diversity of languages around the world.

The inspiration for the website’s name “Busuu”? A language from Cameroon that is only spoken by eight people in the world.

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At Molecular, we’re always looking for new Web 2.0 ways to celebrate and have fun. In trying to figure out how to celebrate birthdays across our three offices, I had a thought. Wouldn’t it be super cool if we could have e-cards that can be signed by multiple people from anywhere? And in fact, it’s SO cool an idea that a simple GoodSearch search on “group cards” revealed to me this ingenious site: www.groupcard.com.

In celebration of fellow Molecule’s birthday today, by name of Paul Irish, I started a GroupCard for him (screenshot above) and had such a great experience that I immediately found other Molecules to rant and rave to about it — and thus, also wanted to give a hoot and holler with this blog post.

Features of GroupCard:

• Can’t think of something fun to say? Use their “Witty Comment” generator for silly messages such as “So many candles… so little cake.”
• Pick your own “From” and handwriting font. “Smell ya later,” “TTFN,” and “LYLAS,” in scripty or funky fonts, for example.
• Click and drag to position your message on the card. You can also (slightly) angle your text clockwise or counter-clockwise.
• Add an image. Pick from their set of “stickers”, upload your own, or use their Flickr/Google images search. You can position the image where you want, too.
• Include a group gift. You can pool everyone’s money through GroupCard and the lucky birthday girl/boy can redeem it as an Amazon.com gift card. (Alas, Paul was not so lucky.)
• Print it out. For some $$$, you can also print the card as a poster and/or an album as a keepsake.

This is the perfect idea for coordinating birthday wishes from a group of people in all different locations with the added benefit of allowing for personal touches such as incorporating photographs in a scrapbook-like fashion. Now if only it could also capture the surprise, tears of joy, and emotions of the person receiving the card for all of us signing to see and collectively sing “Happy Birthday” together… I’ll try pinging the search engine again in, say, another five years to see whodunnit again ;)