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Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine

45 点作者 gsaines大约 16 年前

16 条评论

gsaines大约 16 年前
We founded Skritter just about 9 months ago. We got two grants to fund development and as the front page attests, we're just three right out of undergrad living in an apartment and developing full time.<p>When we were first getting started, App Engine was just becoming available, and we thought that would be a great platform mainly because of its scalable architecture and Python backend, which both Nick and Scott liked. We incorporated the Spaced Repetition after we read about Supermemo in Wired Magazine shortly after launching.<p>The idea is to charge users small monthly subscriptions with big discounts for semester-signups. Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable. We've also attended 2 trade conferences in language learning software, and will be going to one more in about a month at which we'll be trying to sell Skritter as a site license to institutions.<p>If you'd like to check it out in more detail, we've set up a demo account for everyone on HN:<p>UN: hackernews pass: hackernews<p>Thanks a lot for your time.
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gyeh大约 16 年前
Very nice job! One potential customer/institution to cater to: western-based Chinese schools:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_schools" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_schools</a>, <a href="http://www.ncacls.org/ncacls_frm_intro.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncacls.org/ncacls_frm_intro.htm</a><p>These community based organizations often rely on eastern teaching methods (often rote) to instruct large numbers of young children. Your app would definitely introduce a different mindset (and fun!), when learning Chinese.<p>Btw, will you guys support different dialects (ie. cantonese)?
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bdr大约 16 年前
Bad: the logo, the blue "next" arrow", the buttons on the front page, overall UI is busy and confusing.<p>Good: Everything that happens inside that beautiful white square. Stroke recognition, hinting, etc. The demo video is also good.
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pradocchia大约 16 年前
The stroke recognition is both really cool and somewhat disorienting. Really cool because it works, and somewhat disorienting because if you're off a bit, it repositions the stroke.<p>In a fluent writer, each stroke follow from muscle memory, <i>relative</i> to the size and position of the previous stroke. Repositioning breaks the rhythm.<p>I don't know, the positive reinforcement might work very well for a beginner. I would be more worried about the intermediate student and above.
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swombat大约 16 年前
Looks absolutely awesome. I gave up on chinese a month ago (my chinese girlfriend just broke up with me and I've decided to learn spanish instead), but the tool looks immensely useful, and I was looking for a tool like this previously (and didn't find all that much). Learning to write the characters is integral to learning to read them (stroke order is very important).<p>The video is excellent... I just sat there and stared at it. Only criticism is, being able to draw the characters on-screen does not automatically translate to being able to write them by hand. Do you have a way to translate the on-screen writing skill to manual writing skill? If not, I would suggest this simple method: provide a way for the user to select characters that he/she has already learned on-screen and print out a practice sheet (A4 or Letter sized, probably as a PDF), filled with measured squares (with the guidelines), with the first square containing the character, the next 10 containing a pale grey version of the character, and all the other squares blank.<p>In my experience I needed to fill most of an A4 page before being able to write the character freehand without guidelines - perhaps even more than that. If you have this feature, then next time I'm learning chinese (!) I'll gladly pay an "affordable monthly subscription" (like, about $5-10) to use your tool, probably for about a year (I'd probably buy a year in advance).<p>Oh, as someone pointed out, you'll lose all the students with that subscription... perhaps worth offering a student subscription for a little less (or even contacting universities to subsidise their student memberships?).<p>Good luck!
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simc大约 16 年前
I'm a serious student of Chinese. Would I pay for this? Maybe if it was cheap, but probably not. The stroke order thing is useful, and that is the only reason i'd use it. It just revealed to me the while I was writing the strokes for 我 in the right order I was writing the first stroke the wrong way, which was interesting I guess. However, your stroke order for 好 seems wrong (the woman radical upward vertical stroke, should come before the horizontal, according to Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1).<p>However now I'm not a absolute beginner any more so I have a reasonably good intuition about stroke order, but if I write them in the wrong order I guess I don't really care very much.There are already many good spaced repetition programs like Anki, which are free. I've implemented my own system based of Leitner flashcards for the Nintendo DS (I haven't released it), which is what I use.
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jbrun大约 16 年前
That is amazing, I spent a year in China and the characters were so hard. I would have to try this over a long time to see if it is better than hand drawings, but it seems pretty good.<p>How do you deal with radicals and learning related characters?
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smoody大约 16 年前
Nicely done! Google should use it as a showcase app -- It's definitely the most 'grown-up' App-Engine-based site I've seen.<p>As an aside, how did you accomplish those great perspective transformations in your front-page screencast?
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rms大约 16 年前
The relevant Wired article: <a href="http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...</a>
Tacomanator大约 16 年前
I'm glad you're planning on expanding the site to include Japanese, I'm very very excited about this. I was not able to login using the demo account given, did you already expire it?
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est大约 16 年前
I am a Chinese, I'll say this app is awesome, esp with the animated Flash for stroke orders. You must have quite a large database &#38; clever algorithm to do so.<p>The only website I know that could lookup Chinese characters based on strokes drawing on screen is <a href="http://www.nciku.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nciku.com/</a><p>About GAE &#38; GFW, I strongly suggest skritter to support httpS protocol fully
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dantheman大约 16 年前
I just signed up, but once i get to my home page I click practice &#38; it doesn't allow me to start.<p>I'd like to learn a simple character as soon as I've signed up.
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rgrieselhuber大约 16 年前
Very nice. If you could incorporate a Japanese version, it would be great.
jwt大约 16 年前
Wow, very impressive stuff. A job well executed and done. Keep it up!
jpwagner大约 16 年前
so easy to try it now: i love it!
si2大约 16 年前
What a cool application. I would love to be able to use it without paying when you do launch. I find that learning Chinese on there becomes enticing, and there is a certain feeling that I am playing a game. I don't think it would hurt to have a ten character demo on the front page with a full tutorial for the Chinese and computer illiterate. That may hook inidividual users, especially if you can buy in at a good rate for starter packages. It seems like you guys are trying to exclusively appeal to the very intent on learning Chinese people, but even from your testimonials it seems that Skritter is a good pass time, even for those not studying Chinese and just want an easy, fun way of drawing chinese letters. I think offering a startup package for cheap will draw a lot of people, and as I have found out, you will soon get hooked.<p>Also, it may be sweet to add little quiz games to Skritter. Like timed strokes, or something fun (you appear to be creative) to really entice people and motivate them to move on to the next lesson. It always feels better to conquer something like that in an online learning app... And finally, please tell you guys are planning an iPhone app?
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