Wednesday 10 August 2011

verBLING!!

The first thing that impressed me about Verbling (www.verbling.com) was how easy it was to sign up and get started.
The site checked my WebCam and microphone and, within minutes, I had a ringtone, indicating that I was about to start my first intercambio.
Firstly, I'll correct an error in my previous post, you actually begin by speaking Spanish then, after 5 minutes, a flashing bar across the screen announces 'Speak English now'
I was greeted with a cheerful 'Hola, David', which surprised me a little, as there was no indication of who I was speaking to, but they could obviously see my username.
My chat partner was a very nice lady, from Mexico City, whose name, I found out, was Lucia.
The sound quality was pretty good, although because I could hear my voice repeating from her speakers, I could tell there was a significant lag (up to 2 secs) which did make it rather too easy to talk over each other.

The beauty of Verbling is that the person you are talking to is also learning to speak a foreign language and understands, and shares the problems you might be having, with vocabulary, verb conjugations and confidence.

According to Lucia, although she is taking English classes, there are very few opportunities for her to actually practise conversation so there are, potentially, a lot of eager Spanish speakers just waiting for your call.

10 minutes passed surprisingly quickly, so much so that we exchanged Skype names, and switched to Skype to chat for another half-hour, mixing English and Spanish in fairly equal measure. I have to say that the sound quality, and lack of lag are much better on Skype.

Another small quibble I have with Verbling is that my call with Lucia had no sooner ended than there was half a second of ringtone, and a new face appeared in the Verbling window (Lucia had not had a webcam connected, so I had no video feed during her call) As I was about to initiate a Skype call with Lucia, I quickly closed the window. Apologies to the unknown student of English, it was nothing personal.
At the end of each call you are prompted to give the call a rating. Presumably this will allow Verbling classify users and perhaps create a list of 'preferred connections' or drop users who consistently upset others?

As far as doing what it sets out to do, Verbling is a success. It's the speed dating of intercambios. 10 minutes and you're done, unless you decide to exchange details and continue the chat elsewhere. I was just lucky ;¬)
As a no-commitment,anonymous and secure, way to have a quick chat with a new face, who understands that you are still learning too, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

1 comment:

  1. Happy you liked Verbling!
    I'm Jake, one of its co-founders.
    Verbling is a very young site but we already have thousands of Spanish native speakers waiting to be connected around the clock. Make sure to check back and write a follow-up in a week or so, as you'll see the big updates we're about to launch.
    And by the way, we only reconnect you to a new person if there's a long line of people waiting to be connected, to make sure they get to talk. If everybody's paired up in a conversation, you can keep talking with the same person!
    Oh, and for best quality we recommend using headphones and a fast internet connection.
    Best,
    Jake
    jake@verbling.com
    www.verbling.com

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