I'm actually disappointed for seeing this on techcrunch. I have a lot of friends that worked on Duolingo and some of my research with Luis went into that project.<p>To write about a project that isn't finished and just has a landing page, however, is pretty disappointing. I don't know if I really would call it "news."
Since we're in the spirit of talking about pre-launch startups, I might as well tell you about <a href="http://www.TripLingo.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.TripLingo.com</a> (re-plug as Pahalial mentioned <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434057" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434057</a> ).<p>This sounds interesting for a certain segment. As a former-and-future traveler and language-learner, I enjoyed learning the local slang and culture (e.g. "I'm about to explode" vs. "Excuse me sir, could you please direct me to the nearest restroom."). Fun for interacting with locals while also learning to talk like them.<p>That said, I think this is a great concept for re-vamping CAPTCHAs to make them interesting. I'm tired of typing " g4g3e2 re46ts2ae o4ll5eh" every time I want to sign up for an email list.
There's an existing day-old post about this still on the front page, albeit with a less descriptive title: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434057" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434057</a>