We have mentioned before that a ChinesePod “Quick Review” iPhone app was developed last year and has been in Apple approval purgatory ever since. (The Android app was swiftly released.) Fortunately, other developers have had better luck in releasing an iPhone app that supports ChinesePod. This week inZania’s StudyArcade caught our attention. It supports your ChinesePod, SpanishPod, FrenchPod, and ItalianPod user vocab lists, and even supports Anki as well. As a huge plus, it uses an SRS intelligent review algorithm to make your review sessions more focused and efficient.
We’re all very impressed with inZania’s new app, and strongly recommend that iPhone-/iPod Touch-equipped ChinesePod users try it out [iTunes link]. It’s completely free.
There are other third party programs out there as well, such as WeLoveChinesePod. Without proper support, however, such programs are hard to maintain and keep up-to-date. ChinesePod is aware of this, and is actively working on building much better support for third party developers. (If you are one, please send us an e-mail or leave a comment.) Our tech team is currently building vocabulary export support for Anki and PlecoDict, and we’re also in the early stages of building a ChinesePod Vocabulary API. This will make it much easier for third parties to access vocabulary data, create flashcard programs, create vocabulary review games, etc. Everyone wins! Expect to see release announcements later this month.
We’re really excited about these upcoming changes, and we’d like to once again thank our users for providing the valuable feedback that guides our improvements, both through UserVoice, the ChinesePod Community section, and individual e-mails. The best is yet to come!
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
A ChinesePod Vocab API might just be enough to encourage me to get back in to programming. Really looking forward to this. Any early indications of what features you are thinking of for inclusion? Not talking about what you want to include in the first release, I’m wondering what the grand vision is.
Very interesting, this really has caught my eye.
Looks really great!
I’ve written yet another flashcard program for Chinese. The vocabulary is contained in a database so it can be tailored to many systems for studying Chinese. I’ve created a ChinesePod database, but was unsure what to do with it since releasing it would probably violate ChinesePod’s intellectual property rights. The program is mostly complete and usable. I was planning to release the program as opensource.
The program is written in Java so should run on many systems. I have been considering porting it to the iPhone/iPod Touch. This would not be too difficult if Apple offered official support for Java. Then again Objective-C, the programming language of choice for Apple systems, is not entirely different from Java and could be used for a port.
Dennis
John, I just installed Anki and StudyArcade and I wanted to thank you for these posts! ChinesePod never stops amazing me with all the different ways to learn. It’s wonderful to have all this free stuff available to make it possible to learn on the go. I have absolutely no reason to learn Mandarin and yet I have spent the last two years doing just that. Can you say addictive?
Any update on when the vocab api will be released? I am planning to add vocab lists to my open source Java application, SeePod Lesson Manager. The vocab api is just what I need to get started.
I’m interested, John. I’ve made a few projects but it’s really hard to do without language content. If CPod is interested in sharing an API I’d be happy to make use of it.
Here’s the best example, a game that reinforces creating sentences with proper word order:
http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/40711/BingXiangTie/iframe.html
Seems like a great Idea, but does it really work? Im tryign it and it claims my login/PW creds are wrong.
If you decide to release an API to 3rd party developers, I would be interested.
I wrote a Windows game that uses CPod expansion sentences for content. It is available at http://cid-cb841d691d9279ad.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BingXiangTie.zip.
A blog with some other Chinese and CPod-related projects is at http://apardoe.spaces.live.com/, including some C# source that logs into CPod programmatically.
I have an iPod Touch and I currently use Study Arcade. I really like it. I wish though that as a Windows Mobile user there was some sort of ChinesePod app for that platform. I know that it’s a less popular platform with less developer tools, but with Windows 7 coming out I hope that more developers turn an eye to it. If my carrier (US Cellular) carried any other type of phone besides Windows Mobile and Blackberry I’d consider the switch, but, alas, they do not. Maybe one day a port will be in the future!