What do you think of the new website? Yes, yes, it’s very similar to the old website www.englishpod.com. However, there are going to be many big changes over the coming weeks.
We want your input on these changes. What do you like, and what don’t you like? Tell us about everything, from the colors and pictures to the learning tools and level difficulty. All of it is open for you to comment on.
We’re currently working to distinguish the website as Englishpod - updating all of the logos, links and email addresses. If you experience a problem, or notice something wrong, don’t hesitate to send an email to info@ondemand-english.com.
With this new website, we want to add to the experience of our users. One way is to make it easier to find what you want. If you’d like to study telephone English, go to the Podcast Archive, where all of the lessons are located and search tools make it simple to get your lessons ‘on demand.’ Got more suggestions? - send us an email or comment on this blog.
Looking through the business news at www.cnn.com this morning I found a great article on how Google can help or hurt businesses.
The article uses the example of a small business that does pretty well and has a good search ranking so customers can find it online. Then, to their shock, Google changes its calculations of web rankings (even a small change can have a great impact) and “poof”, the small business finds itself well down the list for its search terms. Just like that, people using the typical search terms can’t find this particular small business - they find other companies instead.
Knowing SEO (search engine optimization) is vital these days. You want your website to be #1 or at least on the first page when people search using words related to your business. According to the article, about 500,000 businesses rely on unpaid (natural) Google searches, while another 500,000 use paid search advertising with Google. That’s one million businesses from around the world.
More on SEO to come in future posts. For now, check out www.seochat.com.
Anyone out there have SEO tips?
Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to send out the word - our Rollover is now functional after a lot of blood, sweat and tears! (That’s just an expression, we didn’t really cry, though there were paper cuts.)
What is a “rollover”? It’s when you roll your mouse/cursor over a word, and up pops some more information. EnglishPod’s rollover is for Premium Users only, in the Learning Center in the Dialogue and Expansion sections.
Our rollover for Business English includes the word itself, the phonetic pronunciation, and a brief definition. The beauty of the rollover is that if you click on the word, you can save it in your personal WordBank. Any words you don’t understand or are unsure of can be easily explained by using the rollover. I use it myself when studying Chinese on www.chinesepod.com, EnglishPod’s big brother. Any words unfamiliar to me I click on and save in my WordBank to learn and review later.
Some users my experience some problems at first when using this feature - the screen flashes white or the computer is slower. Let us know what problems you have and we’ll try to fix them as soon as possible.
Just another feature to help you in your goal of learning English.
Kris
We’ve had some requests for the old lessons, or as I like to call them, “classic EnglishPod”. If you want to get all the old mp3s and pdfs, here’s what you do:
1) Get BitTorrent. You can follow this link to the site to download it for free and install it. (Note, lots of websites will try to get you to pay for BitTorrent… if you have any trouble, try the link again or type in the url. http://www.bittorrent.com/download.myt
2) Go to the podcast archive at Englishpod.com
3) Click on the mp3 or pdf and BitTorrent will ask where you want it and download it for you and put all the files nicely into a folder. (Note, there are lots of lessons, so this could take awhile - maybe do it over night.) The mp3 names are just our file numbers, but if you right click and look at the properties, you’ll find the topic name.
4) Smile, relax, and go over the old lessons as much as you like.
5) Any questions? Leave a comment here, or email us at englishpod@gmail.com
Kris/Team EnglishPod
P.S. If I can do it, so can you.
Hi everyone,
Just to let you know, as of June 2 we will still send out the email telling you about new lessons (if you selected this option when you signed-up). However, in the interests of not cluttering up your email inboxes, we’ve decided not to send the pdf attachment, but rather a link to the pdf. We hope that this provides the convenience of easy access to the pdf, but not the annoyance of too many pdf files filling up your inboxes.
Thanks for learning with EnglishPod. If you have any questions about the pdf or other services, please leave a comment or email us at englishpod@gmail.com.
Kris/Team EnglishPod
