しあわせ » studyaid

Flashcards Deluxe 2.7

ロバート — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 13:23:15 +0000

Flashcards Deluxe is a standalone app for the iPhone, iPod or iPad. I’ve been using it to learn Japanese vocabulary and kanji since I first got my iPod Touch. I thoroughly recommend it.

Today sees an update to version 2.7

The most noticeable change is there is now some eyecandy in the form of themes for your cards. This makes it a bit more pleasant but isn’t really earth shattering. Although I’m very fond of the Deep Blue theme that is a graded background from Black to Dark Blue, which is more pleasant than the solid black I was using. More notable changes have been quietly made to the interface. The icons used are now more consistent with the iOS look and feel. There are extra options as to what information is displayed with a card and although I no longer have the previous version to compare it with I feel the preferences panes have been more consolidated. Also welcome are two modes in preferences so the advanced preferences are initially hidden from basic users.

The major change is the help files which have been vastly improved and are now also searchable. The help and documentation were some of the weaker points of this app previously. This is no longer the case, the contextual help is now quite comprehensive. I like that it is in the application itself and doesn’t require the user to go to a web site.
All my favourites are still in the app.

Spaced Repetition.
The ability to make and edit decks and cards on the iPod itself.
Editing and making decks on a desktop only requires a text editor or for slightly more convenience a spreadsheet.
A drawing area that is very useful when learning kanji.
 Although drawing with your figure ( or thumb if using it one handed) is not ideal it reinforces the kanji and also makes sure you are actually remembering all the strokes correctly.
Multiple sides to cards. Each having their own statistics.
Export of decks including statistics via a txt file.
Relatively simple and uncomplicated.
No computer needed.

The remaining weak point in the app is importing decks from your PC or Mac. At the moment it’s done through a server the developer keeps for this purpose or through connecting to a shared folder on your computer via Wi-Fi. I think it would be more straightforward if import and export via iTunes could be implemented. According to the developer he is working on Dropbox and GoogleDocs support which should probably go a long way to bridging this gap.

The developer, Ernie, seems very approachable, helpful and willing to listen to what users say about his app and how they use it. The overhaul of the help system and inclusion of a demo deck is testament to this. I’ve never seen a RTFM reply from him on the support forums. He keeps a forum for support and suggestions and the one time I emailed him a got a very prompt reply. He’s just one guy developing a tool based on his own needs. I hope he is making more than beer money from it on the App Store. (I’ve been put off by the apparent elitism of Anki. It’s ethos seems to be that it’s only for the truly dedicated, with the implication that if you don’t use it you’re not dedicated and only good enough for inferior simpler apps. Simplicity in application design is actually hard to achieve. If many users are reporting problems it’s time for some usability testing and interface design. No-one really reads manuals, and no-one wants to spend time learning a program to achieve a simple task.)

I’m toying with the idea of putting together a FileMaker solution to make deck creation and editing a bit easier. I already have the option to export wordlists from Kanji Sieve to Flashcards Deluxe via the developer’s servers.

Check out Flashcards Deluxe at the very reasonable price of $3.99 (£2.39) . If you want to try before you buy there is also a light version limited to 4 decks of 4 cards.

I’m looking forward to version 2.8 already.

さよなら Smart.fm

ロバート — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 11:07:49 +0000

Smart.fm, formally know as iKnow, is going back to its original name and going behind a paywall. Quite a steep paywall as well at 1000円 or $12 a month. And in the process finally abandoning the last of the community/social aspect of their business.
They have a lot of disgruntled users. (also complaints at koohii and tofugu) But I expect them to disappear as their user base shrinks by about 95% if newspaper paywalls are anything to go by.The (ex)users may well delete their vocab lists before they go which will lead to patchy results in the community lists search feature of iKnow. I’ve had a look at the new site. It feels very much a cut down version of the free community based site. Any subscription money you have would be better spent on a couple of good textbooks.I can understand the anger of users. Smart / iKnow set itself up as a free collaborative social space, with the hint of possible future premium features. It’s to become a subscription based online srs program. (with the possibility of mobile apps, not sure how this will work but based on their prior efforts not so good would be my guess). A very different proposition. They have also taken the user compiled lists and locked the compiler out. At the very least it’s very poor etiquette on Cerego’s behalf not to credit people. From a users perspective the inability to search for a compilers work makes for a poorer experience.

They’ve squandered a lot of goodwill and are now engaged in some damage limitation. (They have since deleted their blog, not that they read many comments judging by the spam they allowed to accrue.) Despite what Cerego say a substantial amount of content on the site was user generated, according to their own statistics yesterday over 1000 items were created and 120 lists (goals) compiled, and this during the swan song. Individuals have added thousands of words, sentences and translations, and hundreds of lists. Quality aside, just going by the index generated on custom lists I would guess there are circa 674,000 custom goals compared to under 100 of Cerego’s official goals.
I’m tempted to delete the lists I made but it’d be a bit churlish perhaps. I more or less knew I was providing free labour for Cerego, but saw it as part of the give and take of a sharing community. I certainly won’t be making any transition to the paid site.

Smart was good for a while. Eventually though, I became fed up with how laborious it was to create lists and how difficult it was to extract your content from the site. When I got an iPod touch I no longer wanted to study online and moved to using a flashcard application. I think that’s where the majority of iKnow / Smart’s users will go. I reckon under $30 would buy a desktop app of equal power or about $6 on an iPod.
I understand their need to charge fees. It can’t be cheap to run a site like that and as yet there wasn’t much evidence of a revenue stream from the site itself although they have raised $23million plus in funding to date. I wonder if the investors will be seeking a return. That’s about 160,000 user years of subscriptions. Unfortunately for Cerego the dominant pricing on the Internet is free. The pricing of apps on the Apple App Store is under $5 (as a one off payment) They are facing an uphill battle. I would have thought a freemium model would have worked better. Although maybe they hope the core market in japan is less likely to complain and more likely to pay. I’m not so sure. The Japanese I’ve met expect top quality service and products.

If you want an alternative to smart.fm online try wordchamp.com. It may not be as graphically stylish but it has some more features. It’s free but also has a premium rate at a very reasonable $10 a year. Or there’s quizlet. On the iPod I recommend flashcards deluxe ($4) Or for a dedicated (but less customisable) program with multiple tests and games and high quality material to study including audio by native speakers and example sentences I highly recommend Japanese Sensei ($16)
Actually I recommend an iPod over any online system or desktop system mainly because it’s so portable; you can find many spare moments to go through your flashcards.
Anki seems very popular. It’s free for pc and mac but relatively expensive on the iPod (mainly the developers idea is for the iPhone app to subsidise the work on the free desktop app). I don’t really like it. It requires a lot of initial effort to learn the program and it always seemed windows clunky in it’s interface and documentation.

(This is a cross-post from my microblog, I wonder what that does to my google juice)

Kanji Sieve 0.5 released

ロバート — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:17:10 +0000

Now with added Kanji Notebook.

New features in this iteration

option to turn off tooltips
click to display kanji information in statistics view
shift-click for options on some buttons
October 2010 standard Jyouyou kanji
User defined keywords
preferred language preference
Spanish keywords
French keywords
Spanish, French and German automatic lookup on wwwjdic
added Hispadic and Wadoku to list of online dictionaries
Chuta.jp queried for English and preferred language
sieve for custom list of kanji
searched word in waeijiten is highlighted (verbs and adjectives decline)
minor interface improvements
improved character count for more accurate overall statistics
Kanji Notebook (2010 Jyouyou, KKLD kanji, Kanji Oddysey)
phonetic data (work in progress – 75 groups at present)
Import images
Images and Audio copied to media folder
Image Editor from pixlr.com

The kanji in the statistics panes can be clicked to get basic information about the kanji, its keyword and the KKLD index. there is also a checkbox to mark it as known.
Kanji Notebook contains more data on 2537 kanji, covering the 2010 Jyouyou, KKLD kanji, and Kanji Odyssey lists. My motivation to build Kanji Notebook was to get a sort of dictionary that showed the data I wanted, and allowed me to add my own notes and importantly change the keyword. The dataset from EDRDG originally started with keywords from Heisig. These are still there as the first word and were driving me crazy. Jim Breen said he was going to clear up these entries way back in 1995 but I still want to scream when I see “old boy” for 君. The keywords from KKLD are better, or sometimes my own keyword. I haven’t included KKLD keywords but there is the option to add them yourself. The KKLD index from EDRDG‘s data is included to help with a look-up. (If you managed to get the iPhone app before it disappeared putting a ~ before the index number allows you to search for it)
The example words are from vocabulary extracted from records in Kanji Sieve. Therefore all vocabulary should be relevant to your interests.

There is automated look-up of Internet dictionaries for a kanji. I find it interesting to search google images to see if I can guess a clear meaning or see how it is being used. You can explore kanji using the browse tab, to get lists by grade, radical, phonetic, kakitorikun screen, or Kanji Odyssey group.
Kakitorikun is a great piece of software for the Nintendo DS. It’s main drawback is it’s completely in Japanese. With Kanji Notebook I can at least easily put an English keyword to kanji on a given screen.
Kanji Odyssey from Coscom is an excellent e-book based on the frequency of use of kanji. It has many examples and recordings of native speech. I recommend it. An added bonus is their completely free update program. Recently I got a new CD from them when they updated for the 2010 Jyouyou. Absolutely free, not even postage costs. That’s a rare service these days.

There is the beginnings of language support for languages other than English. Spanish and French keywords are included. They will be displayed in preference to English when the preferred language is set in preferences. This also controls what language is used to query chuta.jp. However I found that the returns are very short so English is also submitted. wwwjdic will use the preferred language when searching for vocabulary.
Complete translations of the interface are unlikely at the moment however.

That’s it for now. Next potential release will be January. I really need to spend some more time on documentation! …

Downloads

More about Kanji Sieve

Kanji Sieve v0.4 released

ロバート — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:10:07 +0000

Another month another set of improvements to Kanji Sieve.
In this release I concentrated on getting data in and out of the program.

It is possible to import records from a previous version.
As I strongly believe that the data belongs to the user it can all be exported in a variety of formats to be used elsewhere.
You can use a built-in mini browser to search for texts at your favourite sites.
Plain text and audio can be imported.
Chuta can now be viewed online on PCs and Macs
There is a choice of 7 online dictionaries to search for word meanings
Individual dictionary lookups are automated
The layout is now more flexible
There is a full screen mode for reading
There is an online help system (in progress)
The interface colour has been toned down
Interface and navigation improvements

I was hesitant about using Chuta online display. It was the only way at the moment to implement it for the PC. Chuta only stores a search for a limited time and while chuta is fast it does take a while to compile the custom page. I would prefer to work with cached data. What I do in the online display is check to see if the remote cache has expired and if it has fetch it again. It’s not ideal when loading the Chuta pane in the program but it is the best for now. I also had to sacrifice some screen real estate to get feedback that the program hadn’t frozen. After the first time your own cache should speed loading. Mac users can still work with the cached data by setting a preference.

There are now several dictionary urls to chose from. I think jisho.org (denshi jisho) in a mobile phone version or risukun are the fastest and cleanest. Jim Breen’s wwwjdic is comprehensive but you need to pare down the interface via the preferences to avoid information overload and clutter. The Japanese dictionaries from Wordbank, Yahoo, Goo and ALC all have ads to a varying degree. ALC is the worst, which makes for a very cluttered window without expanding it.
As I like to automate where I can you can submit a search just by clicking a button in the wordlist. You don’t have to type or copy and paste if you don’t want to. Owing to the imprecision of looking up words automatically you have to chose the correct version from the results and paste that into your wordlist yourself.

There is a mini-browser to help with getting text into the program. I dislike jumping from program to program so I wanted something “right there”. However it’s not as capable as a proper browser like Safari or Firefox (and on the PC you’re stuck with the dreadful Internet Explorer engine). And there is no ad filtering. One way around this is to use Evernote and your usual browser to collect interesting text then access your Evernote account from with Kanji Sieve. ( note: Kanji Sieve does not store or access any passwords, history etc. This is all handled by your computers browser software and stored elsewhere on your system. (Safari on the Mac, IE on Windows) Apart from accessing the help files through a browser, the software does not in any way call home. The only data going out are submissions to chuta.jp and dictionary sites for word lookups.)

I am happier with the PC version this time around. Overall I really think this is becoming a usable and useful tool.

The online help is a work in progress. I will be writing it over the next month or so. After that it will be on to version 0.5 to release sometime in November.

The downloads are here.

––update 04Oct10––
bug release v0.4.1 released 3 Oct

Kanji Sieve 0.4 progress

ロバート — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:11:03 +0000

I’ve been working away at Kanji Sieve whenever I get the opportunity.
Printing has now been added. It will now print the text, stats and vocab for a record properly.
As I don’t like jumping from application to application I’ve added the capability to browse your favourite sites within Kanji Sieve to find new texts.
Although the base layout is designed for small screens I’ve made the screens more flexible for larger screen sizes.
When making new records you can now import a text file. I’ve also added search and replace including regular expression abilities in New Record and Edit Record to clean up texts, removing furigana in brackets for instance. (I may look into the optional display of furigana at a later date.)
I’ve cleared up a couple of bugs. I’ve made popup windows modal to stop users going astray by accident.
I’ve updated the version of 360 Works Scriptmaster bundled in the runtime.

Windows still has me stumped to an extent. As this is a hobby project not a commercial one, and to be honest not many people seem to be downloading Kanji Sieve, I can’t justify the cost of setting up a Windows system just to chase down the glitches. (I looked at cheap netbooks but it doesn’t help that Windows 7 has a confusing array of flavours and I’m not sure at which point you get Japanese support. I prefer Mac’s system of buy once get everything.) So while I realise a lot of people are on Windows, I’m doing this firstly for myself and I use a Mac.

I should have something by the end of this month. As soon as I sort out data transfer from version to version I’ll post the update. I might need to consider a data separation model where the user data is kept in a separate file but this may have to wait until I stop adding to the solution.

Kanji Sieve for Windows

ロバート — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:57:23 +0000

Finally.
I’ve cleaned up the display as best I can for Windows. I don’t know whether it is just that I am am used to the display on the Mac, but I’m not 100% happy with how it looks on Windows XP. Maybe it looks better on a more recent release.
I’ve changed the colour to blue for the interface elements. Windows requires the Meiryo font or rather will probably look best with Meiryo. Unfortunately I cannot manage to resolve the display of the Chuta dictionary from within FileMaker, which cuts down the amount that is automated for a Windows user. Mac and Windows use the same base file and I just detect which platform it is running on and the changes happen automatically (more or less!). From the next version (whenever that might be) I hope to have a simultaneous release through more checking as I go along.

The downloads are here and I have a movie demonstrating Kanji Sieve instead of help files.

––update 01Aug10––
And already I have an update. When I was setting conditional formatting for Windows I inadvertently removed the record highlighting from the list view. Version 0.3.2 adds this back. I haven’t uploaded full packages for this just the Kanji Sieve Data.usr file. Replace the .usr file in v0.3.1 with this file. Unfortunately I haven’t implemented import of records yet, so any records you have will have to be re-entered.

Kanji Sieve Windows coming soon

ロバート — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:04:46 +0000

I may have more time again to develop my little application Kanji Sieve.
While I still can’t solve my display problem on the PC to allow use of the Chuta dictionary, I can parse returns from Chuta so text can be broken down into words. Therefore for the time being (maybe longer. sorry) I’ve bypassed this feature and PC Users will have to use another dictionary and do searches manually. Once I’ve gotten the cleanup done for PC (and maybe toned down the colour for perhaps my only user!) I’ll post Kanji Sieve 0.3 for Windows within the next week or two.

In related news, FileMaker have released Filemaker Go. This is an app for iOS4 to allow you to run FileMaker databases on iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. I think this is potentially exciting. It’s at the more expensive end of the app price scale (£13, $20) but it looks fantastic and can open runtime solutions. It certainly had none of the issues I had going from Mac to PC. I tried Kanji Notebook on it and was surprised at how it looked and behaved. Mostly it behaves and looks exactly as it does on my MacBook, although because of the screen size you need to zoom around like in the iPhone version of Safari. The transfer was quick and easy, and according to the manuals the unsupported features are quite few. Lack of support for plugins though means that Kanji Sieve wouldn’t work as I really on external grep functions and Internet routines. On a more standard solution initially the bigger drawbacks are the lack of support for top to bottom Japanese text and a speed issue in running some scripts. But with a bit of thought and design specifically for an iPhone I might be able to make some useful and portable applications.

Kanji Sieve 0.3 Mac

ロバート — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:11:50 +0000

Kanji Sieve for Mac v0.3 is ready. Unfortunately due to pressing matters elsewhere this is about as far as I can go for now.
Unavoidably that means it could be a few months before a Windows version appears.
Rather than sit on the Mac version which is functional, now that I have permissions for the Chuta dictionary and Flashcard Deluxe features I decided to upload it.

The windows version has a huge problem at the moment. A core screen is just not rendering properly no matter what I try. Ugly I could live with but this is completely unfunctional, the css doesn’t render properly and the Japanese becomes mojibake. I *think* it is due to the Internet Explorer version I am using under XP, but until I can explore this under Vista or Windows 7 I’m at a complete loss. If I can find the time I’ll do my best to get a Windows version working. Although I’m now leaning towards just cutting this function from the windows version rather than chase after workarounds in Internet Explorer.

So here we are at version 0.3

What does Kanji Sieve do?
It takes a piece of text entered by the user and first it breaks down the kanji usage to show you which kanji are used by grade and how often they are used in the text. Then it submits the text to chuta.jp. Primarily this is so the text can be parsed to allow individual words to be extracted into a list. Using online dictionaries the user can then put meaningful definitions to the entries in a wordlist. Finally a tab-delimited flashcard deck is generated that can be used with the iOS app Flashcards Deluxe. If multiple pieces of text are entered a listing of the 20 most frequent unknown kanji can be generated, unique to the user and the pieces of text they find interesting.

My thesis is that the 1006 kyouiku kanji are the best target for Intermediate JSL students. The grade school groupings break these down into manageable chunks. If you follow the grade school groupings there is also a wealth of Japanese learning material available. Keywords are only a tiny part of learning a kanji. Indeed thinking about it as learning to read and write, rather than learning kanji would be much more useful. That said you need to learn by reading and using Japanese. Reading targeted at your interests, providing you with a vocabulary you might actually use. SRS systems can help but words and characters need context and to be meaningful in order to be remembered and used properly.
Kanji Sieve may help with this part of the process.

I have ideas about the process of learning individual kanji, which I hope to cover in a post some day.
I feel it needs several elements.

You need to find meaning in the characters – by breaking them down and understanding their structures.
You need to break the task down into manageable chunks. – 2000 kanji isn’t a manageable chunk.
You need a variety of methods and tasks – to stop you getting bored or only being able to function in one method.
You need to find it immediately useful – to be able to use words in real life situations.

I am very grateful to Professor Nakamura for giving me permission to use the Chuta web dictionary in this solution. For the full Chuta experience go to チュウ太のweb辞書, where you will find many more language options than are available in Kanji Sieve and I also recommend the Reading Tutor site
Also thanks to Ernie the maker of Flashcard Deluxe for permission to incorporate a link to his app.

Kanji Sieve Mac 0.3 runtime download page
You will also find a movie demonstrating the solution on this page.

FileMaker Kanji Project – Progress 3

ロバート — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:33:12 +0000

Coming soon. I had hoped to release v0.3 of Kanji Sieve in May, but it will now be mid-June. It required a lot of work. I’ve been cleaning up the behind the scenes scripting etc. and learning a lot as I go along. All the features I want for v0.3 are in place and working (hopefully without any bugs). What I am now mostly doing is sorting out the fonts on Windows. I also have to make some decisions about Kanji Notebook. I am using some data from it but there’s at least a month’s worth of work before the file is usable as a notebook. It possibly needs to be truncated and definitely needs to be locked away from the user in this release.

Some screen shots after the jump.

Main view.
Here is where you can see the statistics for a document and make your wordlists.
I’m pleased that I can get the kanji to highlight depending on the tab being viewed.
I’ve based it around a netbook’s resolution of 800 by 600. I found it didn’t use extra horizontal resolution and I could make the layout expand vertically if there was a larger screen.
I’m fairly happy with the interface, I don’t think it will change radically from now on. I may try to iconise it a bit more, maybe use more Japanese as the default language. I’m not sure I have the energy to make it capable of being localised without starting from scratch. My development strategy has been too haphazard really. I want to put my energies into features I want to use first and foremost.

List view.
In this version, you will be able to keep track of multiple files. Here the user will be able to sort and select documents, and perform certain tasks like editing and deleting.

Flashcards
My iPod Touch flashcard program of choice is Flashcards Deluxe. Using FileMaker’s webviewer I’ve made it easier for me to upload decks. There is also automatic generation of a list based around the most frequent unknown 20 kanji from your documents. I’d like to expand the management of wordlists in the next iteration of KanjiSieve.
This is one of a few features I feel I have to get clearance for before I upload Kanji Sieve v0.3 for public consumption.
The web is a rich source of data. It’s fine for me to mash it up for myself but to wrap my own app around a webviewer is a different matter. I’m only really automating some of what could be done with a normal browser and concentrating it for ease of use but … it’s best to get agreement.

I already have a list of to-do’s for v0.4 but for now, back to the home straight on v0.3.

––update 01Jun10––
Aaaaaaargh!
Windows cleanup is not going well. Many things are ok-ish. But the webviewers are sometimes spectacularly messed up to the point of mojibake. One so badly I’m not sure where to start. I had hoped css would take care of webviewers and conditional formatting would take care of FileMaker native text, but no, I have a lot more work than I thought to Window-ise what I’ve done. If you want it to look good FileMaker’s not as cross-platform as you might hope. If I can’t solve these problems I might end up with a Mac only solution.
orz

FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2

ロバート — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:02:20 +0000

Now with added Kanji Sieve. Or rather the way Kanji Sieve has evolved means I’ll be incorporating my Kanji NoteBook project with it.
Unfortunately I think the direction I’m heading in means an awful lot of work on the interface. And a lot of time I don’t have to spare at the moment, but I am working on it and am excited about the way it’s progressing.
The next Kanji Sieve will have multiple records, so you will save you pieces of text for future use. I’m dropping the keywords as completely futile for reading or understanding a text (although useful when first learning a kanji. I have a blog post in progress about this). I’m fairly confident of parsing text automatically to build word lists. This is why I’ve decided it makes sense to incorporate Kanji Notebook with it, if not in v0.3 at least by v0.4.

I will also automatically generate and manage lists for a flashcard system. Primarily as a tab separated text file so you can import to the tool of your choice rather than my trying to re-invent something that others are doing quite well. I have a basic flash card solution but as I have other tools that work better for my purposes I won’t be pursuing it.
I’m thinking about how to aggregate statistics across the database. I would like to rank unknown kanji and words by how frequent they are overall in the pieces of text you store in Kanji Sieve. This would mean needing a listing of known kanji and vocabulary that can be filtered. That might then give an indication of what words are personally more important to learn. Again maybe one for v0.4 when Kanji Notebook is incorporated.

Most of the functions I want are in place. I can make it work for my own needs but I need to make it work for other people before I release it. I also have to think now about how data will transfer across successive future builds.
In the meantime here’s a pic of the NoteBook.