Is English your mother tongue? If not, you know how difficult it can be to learn it. Or used to be, according to the companyOpen English, which is using the Internet to change the way Latin Americans study “the language of business”. Founded in 2006 and launched commercially in 2008 in Venezuela, its founders’ country of origin, Open English is an interesting example of a successful Latin American startup. Following its first expansion in 2010, it is now present in 15 Spanish-speaking countries, and plans to launch in Brazil in the second half of 2011 thanks to the new round of funding it closed earlier this month....

Since its introduction, theLike buttonhas provided as many difficulties as it has opportunities for brands. It seems to be largely responsible for the near-meaningless race to numbers we’re now experiencing, as it places a value or an indicator of success against every piece of content it’s installed against. Whether this is your site, a blog post, a piece of clothing, a classified listing – the Like button has become dangerous for brands, as many seem to view it almost as their complete social media strategy....

A lightning strike may have helped spark life on earth — here’s how Our study To do this, we needed to estimate three things: the number of fulgurites formed each year; how much phosphorus was in the rocks on early Earth; and how much of that phosphorus is turned into usable phosphorus, by the lightning strikes. Fulgurites form when lightning strikes the ground, so first, we needed to know how much lightning there was....

Apple’s CEOs We feared the day would come but today Apple co-founder Steve Jobsannounced he was to officially step downas Apple’s CEO, opening up the position for former company COO Tim Cook to lead the world’s biggest technology company forward (click here to see how it unfolded). Tim Cook becomes Apple’s sixth chief operating officer in the company’s twenty-forth year. Steve Jobs may have held his position for nearly fifteen of those years but the Cupertino-based company has seen former PepsiCo and Intel executives take the helm – and here they are....

In an interesting approach to socially integrated campaigns, Wrigley has invested in a hefty Twitter promotion to drive users to its livestream content of theCoachella Festivaltaking place this weekend in California. The Festival is sponsored by the Wrigley brand 5 Gum, with live content available through itscustomised Youtube channel. What’s innovative about this campaign is that Wrigley has invested so heavily in one social platform just to take people to a completely different social platform – with no attempt at referral site traffic or even data capture to build a communication base for future promotions....