This is a traveler’s dream come true. Speak a sentence in English, and Jibbigo recognizes the words, translates it into the foreign language, and reads it aloud. The other person can then reply, and it will come out in English. It’s featured in Apple’s latest iPhone app demo advertisement, Backpacker.

The app is completely self-contained and doesn’t require an internet connection. Mandarin, Japanese, and Spanish are the three languages available right now, with more to come. It’s priced a little high by App Store standards ($25USD to $28USD), but I would pay that just as a means of practicing and improving my own language skills, say with the Chinese app, for example.

Looking at these 15 examples of futuristic architecture on display at the Shanghai World Expo, I’m actually wishing I could be there to jostle and fight for portaloo access with the millions of Chinese and foreign visitors. Just incredible. Check out the UK pavilion with its “needles” that undulate in the wind.

This is remarkable customer service/damage control from an airline I routinely hear complaints about. English travelers trapped in Japan (for potentially nine days) were rewarded with free hotel stays, a flight to New York, where they were put up for a few days in 4-star hotels and given money for food, and then flown back to Glasgow via Dublin.

So instead of sleeping in airports like most other people, they had a free holiday on the side, complete with champagne and leopard-print bathrobes.

I found this last night while going through some old files on my harddrive. Someone at my old job had forwarded it to me as an example of humor in Thai advertising. As always, it’s all about the twist.

(In case the translation doesn’t make it sufficiently clear, the sporty tires gave him away.)

Buzzfeed collects a bunch of YouTubers doing creative Lady Gaga covers. I’m currently on the second video, where a guy called “Beatbox Hitman” is absolutely killing it.

Edit: Probably only #2 and #4 are worth seeing. #5 if you have time.

By which they really mean: freelancers and people who loaf about the home in their pajamas, take naps in the afternoon, and tweet incessantly.

Hilarious stuff from the NYT; find out how much you can deduct for pointing out grammatical errors in a sign or poster (oh boy, this really cuts too close to home for me).

Good piece from Kontra (counternotions.com) summarizing the empire Apple has managed to build over the last decade, and what developers angry at the App Store model will lose by walking away. And to where?

In order to become a better garden for developers, it’s not enough for other vendors to offer something that iPhone or iPad doesn’t. They have to match and better Apple’s current iPhone OS driven devices across all fronts. webOS had multitasking but no content. Nokia has market share but no direction or excitement. RIM caters to enterprise but not much else. Motorola still thinks it’s enough to manufacture handsets and leave everything else to ‘partners’ that turn around and stab you in the back.