Finalists in Microsoft Imagine Cup show off ideas to Gates

Seattle PI | at | by Mike

Social networking sites are already popular places to share information, connect with other people and communicate online. So why not use a social networking tool to learn a language?

That's the concept behind a site created by a group of North American college students as their entry in an international Microsoft software development competition. Their project, Omni, connects people who are learning languages, using a social approach to translation.

The basic idea is to tap into "the excitement surrounding social networks" to help people learn languages, said team member Brian Thomas, 21, of Tacoma, a computer science major at Western Washington University.