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.

Related posts:

1. WordChamp – Internet Flashcards
2. iFlash
3. Japanese on an iPod Touch

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

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
2. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2
3. Kanji Sieve v0.2

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

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve 0.5 released
2. Kanji Sieve for Windows
3. Kanji Sieve 0.3 Mac

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.

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve for Windows
2. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2
3. Kanji Sieve v0.2

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.

Related posts:

1. Kanji Sieve for Windows
2. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
3. Kanji Sieve 0.4 progress

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

Related posts:

1. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 2
2. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 1
3. Kanji Sieve 0.4 progress

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.

Related posts:

1. FileMaker Kanji Project – Progress 3
2. FileMaker Kanji Project – progress 1
3. Kanji Sieve 0.3 Mac

I finally bought myself an iPod Touch about a month ago. I wanted something to allow me to use electronic flashcards on the move. On the train I can use my DS and Kakitorikun but it’s impossible to use pen input properly on the bounce around tube journey. With the Touch I’ve more than doubled the amount of time I can study on the otherwise mostly unproductive daily commute, although I read a bit less as a consequence. I also find myself using it at other spare moments, a couple of minutes here and there going through flashcards.As a device it’s almost what I’d hoped for since my first Palm device by Sony. Lot’s of storage, lot’s of good apps, a good screen, small and light it easily goes in a shirt pocket, good battery life, a good reasonable price as long as you don’t need the phone or 3G functionality.
The oversights. No pen input. For kanji learning and quick notes and just drawing a pen is indispensable. A finger just isn’t good enough; it’s like a blunt jumbo crayon compared to a 0.1 Rotring pen. That said the multi-touch interface is nice, except for all the erroneous button pushes and link clicks. And you can forget about ever using a stylus on the current screen. If they are all like the one I bought it’s not much of an improvement over a finger.
What I dream of now is for an iPod DS. two screens in a clamshell. One multi touch the other pen input.
With a user replaceable battery while I’m dreaming.
I don’t care about lack of Flash. This seems to be the new version of the OS wars. That the OS is locked down by Apple is of more concern. At least I’d like to see more interoperability between apps beyond cut and paste. I’ve been using an ad blocker for so long on my MacBook that it’s a bit ugly seeing all those ads on the web again, and there sure ain’t going to be any blockers for browsers on the iPhone OS.

The core of the experience is the Apps. Odd given that the iPod is touted as an MP3 player and the iPhone as a phone but really they are the Newton finally realised albeit without handwriting recognition.

Anyhow what’s on my Touch?

Flashcards

My first stop was to get flashcards going.
Anki was more or less dismissed. I don’t really like the somewhat unfriendly linuxy desktop application and without jailbreaking by all accounts the iPhone experience is limited. That said a lot of people like it and you may have a better experience with it than me. (Anki is good for is getting my lists out of smart.fm though)
I was very disappointed at the functionality of iFlash Touch (free, but really only an extension of the desktop app). It’s very basic compared to the desktop application. About the only good thing I can say is the sync between the desktop and the iPod is easy. It’s a shame because I like iFlash but I think the developer is too busy with his life and studies to keep up with the runaway iPhone market.
I looked at Mental Case, which has a Mac desktop client, but I didn’t want the extra expense and something didn’t quite click with me, too many bells and whistles perhaps. It does have trial and lite versions so it’s easy to see if it’s a good fit for you.
There are many I suppose dedicated Japanese flashcard programs but I find it very hard to sort of anything of quality. I’d prefer to come up with my own lists. What wanted was straight forward import and export. An SRS system preferably a bit more sophisticated than a basic Leitner card system. Text styling. Pictures and Audio support would be a bonus, I don’t use them at the moment but you never know.

Flashcards Deluxe (£2.40 , $4, 450円, €3)
I went with Flashcards Deluxe in the end. It’s fairly simple but still full featured.
It has support for three sides per card and two categories and a flag.
You can colour cards and style the text. This is all achieved with html tags so it is easy to set up your list in a text editor.
Import is via a WiFi link to a server. (Apple won’t let anyone sync over a USB cable). The author provides a webpage and use of a server for you to upload your cards. If you want you can also share your list with other users. He also gives details how to set up your own server. Export is by email or back to the server.
From the app itself you can access Quizlet.com if you don’t want to make lists yourself or duplicate effort in making lists from popular texts. Although due to sheer volume I wonder about how useful quizlet is and what quality the lists are.
You can also make and edit lists within the iPhone app. It’s completely standalone really.
It’s drawbacks. Well it could be I’m not used to the iPhone OS yet but in Flashcards Deluxe the settings and interface seem a little bit sparse and disorganised. Replacing the ? button for a cogwell icon would be a start, and reserve the ? for when you are giving extra information about the app or interface would be a start. That said after a little exploration I’ve found out most things.
It could also do with a Desktop client. However I have an idea about this for my Kanji FileMaker projects; after all it’s only a webpage away.

Smart.fm (free)
This is the other flashcard app I have installed. I liked Smart.fm when it was still iKnow. Now I don’t use it so much after the redesigns. Mostly it’s just too laborious to make your own lists and almost impossible to export them. (Although you can export via Anki and making a list from a textfile is in progress) The iPhone app is nice but has limited offline functionality, and is only a subset of what is possible on the smart.fm site.
There is another app (unaffiliated with Smart.fm) iKnow Touch (£1.20) that uses API’s that smart.fm publish to download entire lists that looks a bit more interesting, as it doesn’t rely on a constant connection. I only found it while checking links for this post.
–update on iKnow Touch– I’d save your money. iKnow Touch downloads your lists, (and the audio card by card), but that’s all. You can read them but not test yourself on them. I don’t need to sync with my progress on iKnow but it’d be nice to have flashcard functionality, or export, or copy and paste, so I can use them in another program. It’s also the first app that’s crashed on me. I can’t recommend this.

Dictionaries.

For most uses I prefer electronic dictionaries over print versions. Lighter and easier to search. As long as the battery holds out and you don’t drop them.

Kotoba!. (Free).
Can’t beat free as a price. Kotoba! uses JMDict data as do most of the Japanese dictionaries and applications you see in iTunes and on the web, especially the free ones. So mostly all that differentiates these apps is the interface or price. Kotoba! does everything I want for now, why pay more for JMDict or Edict data.
I may succumb to the uninspiringly named Japanese later on, it looks to have better cross references and a cleaner interface, but the £10 price is offputting. Across the store 60p and I’ll buy without much thought; £5 I’ll probably buy if it fills a need and looks like quality; £10 and I really stop and think; over £15 and it needs to be extra special. The immediacy of the App Store is dangerous, all those costs add up.

MSDict Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary.
( £6, $10, 1200円, €8 ) This is a good implementation of the print version the Oxford Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary, including its essays. Edict is fine for what it is, but it gives no guidance or differentiation. What it lacks is professional editing and compilation. I’m willing to pay for that and £6 is very good value for an electronic version of this dictionary. I already own the print version and thoroughly recommend it as a first E-J dictionary. It’s limited in its entries but should have most of what you may need as a beginner but more importantly it gives good examples and usage guidance. As a J-E dictionary it has the problem that you need to know the reading to use the index. You could use the Chinese handwriting fingerpainting recognition, but it is sometimes hit and miss. It would be nice to have multi-radical search for kanji. There are also hotlinks in the entries to allow you to explore cross references and it has a history function.
There is another version of this dictionary in the store that is the same price, has a nicer icon, but I think has put in English audio instead of the articles from the print dictionary. I’m unsure. I can speak English so the audio is not really any use to me and misses the point of a dictionary primarily designed for English speakers.

Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary. (£15, $25, 2900円, €20)
I usually call this KKLD but for some reason officially it’s KALD. No idea what A stands for. It is one of my favourite print dictionaries and I was delighted to find it in the App Store, it was released in late April. This has the best interface of any of the electronic dictionaries I have on the iPod. It’s a very well made implementation of the print version. It includes all the essays and appendices as well. It looks wonderful. All the kanji are hotlinked making it very simple to explore the compounds. It still has SKIP, which was a good invention for paper dictionaries, but to be honest only Jack Halpern’s dictionaries use it. Now that it’s electronic there’s no good reason not to have multi-radical as well. There isn’t a radical index which is a pity, nor are the numeric indices searchable which is a pity as I can’t quickly cross reference with Edict as I can with the paper version. There is an English index which is a huge bonus. A nice feature is you have a choice between romaji and kana for the readings, which was always a criticism of this dictionary especially by the “romaji is evil” camp. The quality of editing in this dictionary beats any other kanji reference currently available on the iPhone platform. It is expensive though in the App Store ecosystem, but compared to the print version it’s a bargain.
––update 17Jun10––
This seems to have disappeared from the UK, Japanese and US app stores. I’ve no idea why.
I hope it hasn’t been withdrawn permanently it’s an excellent dictionary and I’d like to see it supported. (I’m showing an update I can’t access in iTunes) I only hope iOS4 doesn’t break it now.
––update 18Oct10––
I asked the publishers, enfour, about the disappearance. All they can say is that it is an “internal matter”. I can only speculate that it’s a rights issue. I hope they can sort things out.

Eijiro Touch. (£5.50, $9, 1000円, €7)
Not so good. No copy. No hotlinks. The barest of interfaces. A fairly useless flashcard system. It’s a pity as I like the Eijiro dataset. I thought this looked like the best of the dictionaries on the App store that use it as the others looked overly gaudy and unprofessional. For now I’ll just stick to Eijiro on my MacBook where I can cross reference it and copy and paste. Maybe this app might improve and in the meantime I don’t want to throw good money after bad to explore the other eijiro apps on the store.
––update 25Jun10––
And now this has gone from the App store, and stops working under iOS4. Good riddance.

Learning Programs

Many of these seem a bit cheesy or are at too basic a level. By and large I’ve ignored them.

Japanese Sensei Deluxe. (£9.50, $10, 1200円, €8 )
This caught my attention though. On the face of it it’s a custom flashcard app, that introduces words ten at a time, in no discernible order other than relative difficulties over a couple of hundred lessons. So far so blah. What earned my money was the audio and example sentences. Every sentence and word has a native speaking it. Every word had an example sentence. It is all searchable like a dictionary. That alone would have convinced me. As a bonus there are some nice review games. A multi choice quiz, where the audio is also used. A matching pairs memory card game. Sentence building from the word elements. Select the correct particles game and a draw lines to match pairs game. These provide necessary variety to my flashcard studies. The interface is ok although the reviews criticise it, I think the programmers are looking for a designer to spruce it up a bit. I’ve come across some audio doesn’t quite match what’s written though which is a bigger problem. It’s rare though. Sometimes it’s a different particle. Other times the complete sentence is different from what’s printed. Both are always correct though, it’s not bad data, just oversights in matching up the thousands of sound samples. The other niggle is any word you look up is added to your flashcards, I’m not sure I want this, at the very least I’d like to be able to edit what has been added.
I bought the full version as I wanted to use its potential as a dictionary. It does have a free lite version, where you can buy the extra levels from within the app.

Fun and Miscellaneous

路線.Locky (free)
This is a very clever graphical representation of timetables for the Nagoya underground. I go to Nagoya and I’m not sure how useful this information is because the trains are so frequent but I keep this just because of it’s uniqueness.

駅.Locky (free)
Crowd sourced train and station information for Japan. Most of it is offline but you can download and store it on your phone. Obviously all in Japanese and quite hard to go through at times, but with a bit of planning it might be useful on a trip around Japan.

Shueitai Type Specimen Book (free)
This is a reproduction of an old specimen book. Doesn’t do much but the typefaces are beautiful especially the kana which tends to be much more expressive than the kanji typeforms.

Stanza (free)
An ebook reader. It seems full featured although I’d prefer to scroll rather than “turn” pages. Reading is doable but not ideal, although I used to read on my Palm and the iPod has a much better screen. Check out the free versions of Lafcadio Hearne‘s first hand accounts about Meiji period Japan as in-app downloads from Project Gutenberg. You might also search out “hana” in Feedbooks if you’d like to attempt to read something in Japanese; also available for download in-app. There are also translations of famous Japanese authors such as Natsume Soseki’s Bothcan.

Related posts:

1. Applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone
2. Kanji Sieve v0.4 released
3. Flashcards Deluxe 2.7

These books have the usual unwieldy titles of so many Japanese books.
1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字—低学年500漢字 and 1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字—高学年506漢字. The idea behind them is quite simple though. You read one line per kanji to memorise if not all, at least most of its important readings. It’s similar to books written for Japanese second language learners like JLPT3 Kanji by Examples and JLPT2 Kanji by Examples.

The difference here is that the author crams all the readings into a single and maybe quirky sentence rather than the rather dry single use sentences of normal texts. The drawback being that this can use more complex or less common vocabulary and grammar, which is fine for natives but is a bit harder for learners. However as it’s aimed at primary school children, overall the language isn’t difficult.

The books also don’t fully stick to the grade school order. Book 1 is mainly Grades 1 to 3 and Book 2 Grades 4 to 6 but they are presented thematically and so are mixed up. I’d say it’s a bit more of a revision and consolidation tool in this respect. However by grouping them thematically I feel you make more connections and so remember more. Connections are the key. It’s easier to remember a sentence than a string of readings or even a single word. At the very least it should be a good resource for those that like to sentence-mine.

As you can see from the example below, there are five kanji to a page. Five sentences with the target kanji highlighted with a variety of readings. All kanji have furigana. 5 sentences per sitting seems reasonable. Only time will tell what my retention will be like. Maybe I need something like Smart.fm to help me, but while I am transcribing sentences for myself into my kanji notebook project, I don’t think it’s ok to make them public. It’s a very nicely designed book and not too expensive at 1260 円. If you want there’s even pictures to colour in to chart your progress!

The books certainly get rave reviews from parents on Amazon.

Related posts:

1. 漢字練習ノート・小学２年生 • Kanji Practice Notebook Grade 2
2. Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns
3. Basic Kanji Book vol 1

LingQ is another site that is based around learning through flashcards. It takes a slightly different approach to WordChamp however. The underlying philospophy here is the natural acquisition of language through reading and listening.
The idea is that you become receptive to a language before you can become active in it. You learn from examples rather than studying the specifics of grammar. Vocabulary is seen as the most important tool for communication and understanding. Oh, and having fun.

The basic premise is that there are lot’s of resources in your target language available on the Internet. By reading sites you’re interested in and learning vocabulary for the topics in context you can improve your language skills. They might go as far as to say you can learn a language this way.

On LingQ instead of just having vocabulary lists of words as flashcards, you have lists attached to an written article. You make your flashcards while reading articles in the target language. Your flashcards will also have example usage from that story. So you are learning words in context.

It works like this. First set up your free account. Then from the “Store” choose an article to read. This will appear on your “Work Desk”. Most articles have audio to accompany them. Listen to the audio and read along. Then try extensive reading if you can, hopefully the piece will be at a level where you can do this. Then do intensive reading where you use the built-in dictionary while making LingQ flashcards.

This is the core of LingQ. When you go through an article you can highlight a word and click the LingQ button. This looks up the word in a dictionary and starts a flashcard for you. A major component of this flashcard is that it copies the phrase around your target word so you have an example in context. You can also tag your flashcard to organise your vocabulary lists later.

You review these flashcards in the traditional manner to memorise the words. The flashcard system has a simple interval learning system marking the cards as New, Can’t Remember, Not Sure, or Known depending on your answers. It can also help you to manage your own interval system if you want as you can set the levels manually. Based, I think, on the frequency of words in the articles you’re reading, LingQ lists the 25 most important words for you to learn. This is such a simple but effective idea. The words that occur the most are the ones you need to know.

On your overview page the system also sets you targets for the amount of words to learn or read etc. It’s an external incentive for you go for that high score and Level Up.

If you can’t find anything in the store there is also an option to import text files into LinQ’s system. These can be shared with other users. There are certainly copyright and I think ethical implications here however. Tae Kim also voiced this in his review on 3 Yen. I would prefer to read a site in situ than go through the process of exporting, cleaning up, and re-importing to LingQ.

There is also a forum. It seems friendly and reasonably active. The post I made got quick replies from the moderator and other users. It’s a fairly basic forum though. They might have been better off using one of the more familiar off the shelf solutions. I do like that when you opt-in to a thread it emails you the full text of follow-ups. However that also means I’m less likely to visit their forum or site.

This is a business. Beyond the free account you have the option of subscriptions and buying points to spend on having writing corrected or having one to one conversations. In the future they intend to charge for articles in the “Store” (the reason they went with that label) in a sort of iTunes like manner I expect.
The one on one conversations are charged in 15 min blocks for 500 points. Up to four people can share an hour paying for 15 minutes each. The conversation is on a pre arranged topic and led by a native speaker. It’s reasonable value perhaps, it might depend on the skill of the tutor and in a group situation having the proper share of a conversation.

There is also the option to have your writing corrected. at a cost of 1 point per character. (kanji is cheaper!) You receive a comprehensive correction for this fee. The Japanese LingQ is still in beta so the charges may change. Points cost $20 for 1000 if you don’t have a subscription or $10 for 1000 if you subscribe. Higher levels of subscription have points included. Points unlike money expire after 90 days though.

I don’t think I would go the paid route. I feel that with a good tandem partner you could have a similar experience for conversations and corrections to writing. However if you are in an area where you cannot find a tutor, it seems reasonable value. I pay £15 ($30) an hour for one to one tutoring, but have seen much more expensive rates.

Overall this site has potential. It still feels a little rough around the edges however.
The content needs better level classifications. What might be worth paying for would be a graded series of articles or stories.
I prefer flashcards that have more sides. As always exporting the content you’ve made isn’t as easy as importing it.
The LingQ button and audio only seems to work properly in Internet Explorer or Firefox. (On the Mac I only really had success using Firefox) It’d be nicer if web apps like this could be browser agnostic and standards compliant.

The LingQ system of making a flashcard with a words context is the most attractive part of this system. Unfortunately it is only available within LingQ’s site. This is a slight problem I think.
It’s fine for material LingQ has produced themselves. But it’s not so good when working with material from elsewhere. I’m uneasy about this. LingQ isn’t sitting on top of other sites. The articles are republished albeit with atribution but I wonder about permission sometimes. I see a lot of Miki’s blog from JapanesePod101 with a transcript. They are “free to air” so to speak from jPod’s site but it feels wrong. Maybe it’s just I feel a part of jPod’s zoku and feel protective of what they do. I noticed work from another couple of sites as well. This is different than linking, which would drive traffic to these sites. It’s different than having a toolbar solution like WordChamp which sits on top of a site, because at least you are using the primary site. I am certain LingQ will take down material when asked. But in the end content is king, user posted content can be very difficult to police (just look at Internet video sites), and LingQ will need to produce quality content themselves and that is expensive and time consuming.

I think ultimately what I would like, and would pay for, is a stand alone desktop solution. I would like a flashcard program that could copy a word from a browser or e-mail as well as the surrounding text and put it in a flashcard looking up the meaning for me on a single mouse click. If it can be done on a web page it should be possible to do it on the desktop.
I could do it by hand of course but the 1-button approach is seductive.

Overall this is a site that’s worth watching and the method of making flashcards is a good one.

Related posts:

1. How to gain vocabulary
2. WordChamp – Internet Flashcards
3. JLPT 3 Kanji and Vocabulary Tests