john - New Features for a New ChinesePod
Hi everybody! We hope you like ChinesePod's new look, but we want to be sure that you don't miss the new features. Let me tell you about some of them.
Grammar Guide: You've waited, you've inquired, you've made jokes, but hopefully you haven't despaired. Because it's back! What we have now is just the beginning. This is going to be the place to go when a podcast doesn't cover grammar in-depth enough for you, or if you just want to dig deeper into Chinese grammar.
Community Search: You've been asking for this feature for a long time, and here it is (finally)! It's right there in the sidebar on the Community page. For now, it only covers user post content (title and body), not lesson comments, and not comments to user posts. We will continue working on those, but we wanted to get this basic functionality out first. When you do a search, it also searches for matches in ChinesePod usernames at the same time.
Glossary: Any word that is featured in a lesson will show up in the glossary. It's like the previous ChinesePod Dictionary, but more up to date with new words from new lessons, and better integrated with the site.
iPhone site: Is there any other way to browse the mobile web? It has audio and everything!
Lesson Manager/Vocab Manager: Managing your vocabulary and your bookmarked lessons just got a whole lot easier. Labeling vocabulary and lessons, bulk editing, and removal is now a breeze.
Lesson Sets: A few collections of related lessons, conveniently grouped for you to add all at once.
Listening Test: Try out the newest version of this simple comprehension test to see where you fall in terms of ChinesePod podcast difficulty levels. (It only goes up to Upper Intermediate, so if you're Advanced, you should know it!)
If you have any questions, problems, or comments, please let us know here.
Tags: ChinesePod, news, features,
Posted by john May 27, 2008 .
henning says
May 27, 2008
Hi Master John!
Congratulations!
Have you changed the MAU-algorithm as well?
sanp says
May 27, 2008
Good site. 很好很强大.
henning says
May 27, 2008
The new mobile site ("iPhone site") does not work for me. Characters are not displayed properly. Windows Mobile 5 - after lots of struggles with Chinese support.
john says
May 27, 2008
Henning,
Do you think the MAU algorithm is different? :) (It actually went a little funny in the last month...)
Thanks for the update on the character display on the mobile site. We will look into it.
henning says
May 27, 2008
Well, with those funny entries I could easily convince everybody (boss, wife, etc.) that it was just a strange coincidence that I am always on that list. Because of course in reality I spend all my time either working hard or caring for the family. No time at all for posting messages here...
;)
hankfdh says
May 27, 2008
@henning,
All the sites - including the mobile sites - use UTF-8 encoding consistently. It will be interesting to see how ArabicPod works out!
H.
wildyaks says
May 27, 2008
Here it is - the updated Cpod. It looks cool. Will have to look around a bit more, when I have more time.
Congratulations!
wildyaks says
May 27, 2008
Wow, and one can now edit comments... That has been requested by many.
richyfrost says
May 27, 2008
Looks great, really like the update. Seems to have had a speed bump too which is nice! Is the mobile phone number in the profile made public? Or is it kept private just for use by Chinesepod teachers?
michele says
May 27, 2008
It seems very good looking, but what happened to Traditional PDF? I can't see anymore in my RSS, and what makes me worry, I cannot see even the possibility to choose them in my RSS....
hankfdh says
May 27, 2008
@richyfrost,
Yes, the mobile phone number is ONLY used for communication purposes between teachers and students. This is private info. We are also looking at some opt-in services to memorize vocabulary through SMS, but that is down the road.
michele says
May 27, 2008
hmm... I have 15 minutes to edit my comment, that's good!
tstox says
May 27, 2008
Two comments/ questions:
amber says
May 27, 2008
hi michele,
The traditional PDF will be back soon.
Originally there were two ways of receiving the traditional PDF. One was a plug-in, it will be back but not until we have finished the changes to the core site. The second way is by RSS feed. This will be back soon as well, just at the moment you will have to bear with the Simplified til we get it up.
Thanks for your patience! :)
amber says
May 27, 2008
hi tstox,
The no English in the flashcards is a bug, will be fixed up asap. It will be back!
henning says
May 27, 2008
hank,
thanks for the answer. I know the Mobile IE is to blame.
But: With the old V3 mobile site the characters displayed fine. Maybe some kind of meta-tag could help?
chanelle77 says
May 27, 2008
Hi Guys,
Love the new look and feel; nice work! It feels like having a new bag ;-) Thank you for helping me survive China!
fjeffrey says
May 27, 2008
I like the new user interface, but I noticed when I was using the flash cards that the meaning does not show anymore when you push the show button. Is there a way to have it show?
light487 says
May 27, 2008
I like most of what I am seeing but one thing does immediately irk me.. the size of the pictures in the Community conversation listing means that only a small number of conversations fit on each page. I liked it before how I could see about 20 or so conversation at once. Is there an option to reduce the image size or remove them completely like it was before?
With the slowness of the server retrieving pages, it's a little frustrating to have to go to the next page of conversations each time..
sarahjs says
May 27, 2008
Wow, This is so cool. Well done. I was searching this site yesterday night (BST) when it wasn't live and I was really impressed then. I was so exscited when the new front page popped up when I visited this site. Really happy.
amber says
May 27, 2008
hi fjeffrey,
The no English translation in the flashcards is a bug, will be fixed up asap. It will be back!
amber says
May 27, 2008
light487,
Think of the positive side, you can see how handsome and beautiful all of our poddies are now.
john says
May 27, 2008
Did you guys notice that you can edit your usernames and e-mail addresses again?
sarahjs says
May 27, 2008
goulniky says
May 27, 2008
ok, so I was not all the prescient, got it wrong by a day. You just did this to prove me wrong Steve :-(
sarahjs says
May 27, 2008
John just had a look, that's nice. It will be good for people with 'user####' I had that, and got mine changed by e-mail. much nicer to be able to do it yourself.
light487 says
May 27, 2008
@Amber
But it's so distracting now when the person is as beautiful as you. :P
goulniky says
May 27, 2008
another issue : I just posted two comments (see above), then proceeded to edit the 2nd one within the allowed 15 minutes. But the changes were ignored, the initial content of post #2 disappeared, and was replaced by content of post #1 !
Probably some tagging / ID issue with JavaScript. Content of 2nd post was, clicking on someone's name doesn't seem to work, always returns the same list irrespective of the avatar
light487 says
May 27, 2008
Oh.. just noticed. The link to the forums at the bottom is missing.
goulniky says
May 27, 2008
despite messing up my tag parser, the new look and functionality of this site are cool, albeit expected.
sarahjs says
May 27, 2008
Ooo Ohh, where is the link to the Dictionary?? I really like the Dictionary.
http://labs.chinesepod.com/dictionary
Also, (I use firefox) I had a spellchecker (in the comments box, it just underlined my poor spelling, i think it was a magic speller-fixer) , but now I don't,
johnb says
May 27, 2008
Sarahjs,
http://chinesepod.com/resources/glossary
:)
amber says
May 27, 2008
hi light487,
Yes, the Forums link will be back... soon.
light487 says
May 27, 2008
I like most of what I am seeing but one thing does immediately irk me.. the size of the pictures in the Community conversation listing means that only a small number of conversations fit on each page. I liked it before how I could see about 20 or so conversation at once. Is there an option to reduce the image size or remove them completely like it was before?
With the slowness of the server retrieving pages, it's a little frustrating to have to go to the next page of conversations each time..
foleadu says
May 27, 2008
Fantastic update. Looks good and all the new functionality is really useful. Congrats!
Update:
I just upgraded my subscription. I noticed one problem. The final page in the procedure - something like 'See Payment History' - is not in the same format as the rest of the site. It comes just after a page where you can leave comments about 'how cpod is doing'.
sarahjs says
May 27, 2008
Thanks John B, prefer the labs dictionary, I really like the sample sentences. So I don't have to search through the lessons to find what I am interesting in learning.
Also, where is the view posts thing, it was mentioned in a John P post about watch lists. Just that I could choose to view my posts, and then I could see if anyone had posted on the same lesson. (Does that make sense?)
muffelputz says
May 27, 2008
Hey all - saludas:
Have seen a lot of language-learning pods - this is - BY FAR - the best.
Congrats.
Aside: Can old podcasts be down-loaded in bulk? The 1 by 1 routine is getting me down.
And - B.T. W. light487 comment above is true, Amber, VERY distracting!!
light487 says
May 27, 2008
Ahh.. hrmm..
I just edited my last post and it repeated what I posted in the original post, up further, rather than what I said in the edit.
Here's what I was trying to say in that last post:
Measure Words(0)
posted by light487 December 31, 1969
Onomatopoeia(0)
posted by light487 December 31, 1969
These are appearing in the conversation listing. A couple of interesting things to note here: 1. The date.. I wasn't even born then! :p.. and 2. I haven't posted in those sections. I didn't even go into them.. I went into the Adverb section though but didn't make a comment.
Also it now says I have 915 minutes to edit a comment after I post it rather than 15.
goulniky says
May 27, 2008
It looks like my suggestion to clean up the lesson tags (Topics, Functions) has been taken very seriously, to the point that most seem to have been scrubbed away!
light487 says
May 27, 2008
Another weird thing.. the post by Henning that was done 13 hours ago is appearing at the top of the conversations list and then hank's post 2 hours ago etc. That is, out of order.
wer1family says
May 27, 2008
Hello,
I am wondering where is the 'English' test menu at flashcards?
I need it very much
jane says
May 27, 2008
I have just spent a few minutes on the vocabulary flash card section and I must say I feel everything has just gone crazy!
1 no English available on the flashcards.(Amber has explained that.)
2 I tried to find my current lesson 0082 and the result returned no lesson existed. I could not believe that so I went through the numbers and finally found 0082. Please check out the find facility as otherwise a lot of time is lost.
3 I went to the third exercise but it looks as if no correction was made.
Sorry that after all your work I have nothing but complaints but hopefully when I have time to explore further I will appreciate the changes you have made.
jane says
May 27, 2008
I have just spent a few minutes on the vocabulary flash card section and I must say I feel everything has just gone crazy!
1 no English available on the flashcards.(Amber has explained that.)
2 I tried to find my current lesson 0082 and the result returned no lesson existed. I could not believe that so I went through the numbers and finally found 0082. Please check out the find facility as otherwise a lot of time is lost.
3 I went to the third exercise but it looks as if no correction was made.
4 The little mikes on the voc.list don't sound.
Sorry that after all your work I have nothing but complaints but hopefully when I have time to explore further I will appreciate the changes you have made.
light487 says
May 27, 2008
Under jennyzhu's Recent Comments:
Aren't you.... （不是.... 吗）(0)
Isn't Qing Wen supposed to come out on Monday? Ha, now you can say that in Mandarin Chinese. Enjoy the new website, and enjoy this useful pattern that enables one to call someone out, or just pose an obvious contradiction.
posted by jennyzhu 38 minutes ago
But she never posted on that page. Also the amount of comments on that page is more than 0.
changye says
May 27, 2008
I agree with light487. I also think that being able to see only ten conversations each page is not convenient enough, especially when many comments are coming in, but on the other hand, my chubby dog seems to be very happy to see her bigger avatar on the screen!
muushi says
May 27, 2008
I've already sent an email about these issues - but haven't heard back yet....These were happening before you did the upgrade to the site
In some of the elementary lessons:
1. There is the link for "The Fix", but when you click on it - you get an error message. . eg. Mild Swearing.
2. There is no 'dialogue' and no 'fix' eg. Basketball
3. There is no 'the fix' eg. China's Most Famous Tourist Destinations.
Adi originally responded saying that all lessons were supposed to have a dialogue and the fix... and asked me to send him the particular lessons which were a problem (which I did in a huge excel spreadsheet)... but I don't know what's happening with it now...
Has anyone else not found this?
changye says
May 27, 2008
Wow, the characters used in my above comment are bigger than those in other guy’s. I usually write a comment in a large font with WORD first, then after that I copy and paste it. Looks like I have to adjust the font size before posting.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
Quoting test.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
That's neat. :)
Looks like we can only edit comments once.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
Still only lowercase names though?
ewong says
May 27, 2008
Hello! I don't understand the function of the ME section, how come old lessons are shown when I click ME? what will happen if I mark it as studied? On the community section, when I press My Conversation, it also shows other conversations that i didn't comment on.
Thanks!
light487 says
May 27, 2008
I think the ME section is the same as Home used to be now. I think it is based on your RSS feed settings and whichever lessons you have bookmarked.
A font size thing would be handy actually...
markymark240682 says
May 27, 2008
love the new site. keep up the great work guys! i've been studying chinese and wish i would have found your site earlier! best site on the web for learning chinese!!!!
eprice says
May 27, 2008
There was a way of goign through the lessons in the order of which they were released - i.e. ascending. This feature doesn't seem to exist any more. I was moving through them in that order. Now I am lost. What's the story here ?
linfeng2008 says
May 27, 2008
The My Lessons section is not displaying any of my lessons. It is only displaying Qingwen. How do I get them back?
bennyboyk says
May 27, 2008
Looking very sexy CPod, thanks!
joannah says
May 27, 2008
Linfeng2008, i found all of mine were there, they were just in a different order with all the qing wen first. Go to the bottom of the me page and see if you have the option to select the page number.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
Looks like you need to go through them all and mark them as studied where applicable, then it just shows the ones you need to study.
wonglungsek says
May 27, 2008
The site got an upgrade. Yay. Sorry, my keyboard is broken. I have to reformat it. *sad face*
changye says
May 27, 2008
I think new font size is too small.
pspierings says
May 27, 2008
Loving the iPhone site, makes it incredibly easy to catch a lesson at the airport or anywhere else with wifi.
Would be a plus if the lyrics showed with the mp3s on the mobile site - other than that, nice work!
phil says
May 27, 2008
I'm impressed!
The feedreader URL has changed again though:
http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/feed/All
But there seem to some problems with the feed. Instead of seeing posts, in many cases (50%) I am seeing the lesson introduction e.g.
Pricey Beer
When you can get take out draft beer poured into a plastic bag for pennies, it's easy to get incensed over the price of pijiu. In this podcast, learn how to use your Mandarin Chinese to get picky about your brew. But no Bob and Doug hoser jokes please.
From a very brief look it seems that user conversations are working OK but lesson posts are not.
However, the problems with Firefox and no sound with >15 flash files in vocab etc seems to be fixed...for me at least
calkins says
May 27, 2008
Michele, you should still be able to get to the traditional PDF directly from the lesson page. Or you could copy the PDF link and paste it into a new browser window to get to the text version....example:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0893/pdf/chinesepod_C0893trad.html
light487 says
May 27, 2008
Michele, you should still be able to get to the traditional PDF directly from the lesson page. Or you could copy the PDF link and paste it into a new browser window to get to the text version....example:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0893/pdf/chinesepod_C0893trad.html
Oooh.. I didn't know you could do that! That makes it so much easier to copy and paste the Hanzi and Pinyin directly from the PDF! Could you do that before, on the old version of the site? That's very handy.
joannah says
May 27, 2008
Yes you could, but i think it was only linked from the bottom of the pdf files
light487 says
May 27, 2008
Right.. I think they should add a link for it, most definitely, to the main lesson page. I'm going to be using that from now on and not even bothering with the PDF format unless I need to print it.
jwosmun says
May 27, 2008
In the old lessons, where I spend most of my time, the sound buttons in the Dialog and Expansion sections only yield a "no data" message. I hope fixing this is on the to do list. Listening to these is a major part of my learning process.
codexus says
May 27, 2008
不错, not bad at all! :)
I like the new look and the new features seem great. Lesson sets could be a great way to provide a little more structure to guide us newbies.
The glossary is amazing, it's now really easy to find where an expression was used. Really great for those things that we know we know but can't really remember what it was and in which lesson we learned it.
lunetta says
May 27, 2008
Most things are working great and I really like the new site. However, as jwosmun pointed out, there's an audio problem with the older lessons and this affects the sample sentences in the dictionary as well.
jill348 says
May 27, 2008
Love the new look. :) FYI, I tried out the Newbie Grammar section, and selected "Particles" and then, each time I clicked on the links for the different types of particles, expecting to find more information about each of the particles listed, I was instead brought back to the main newbie grammar page.
Also, the "tool tips" that pop up when I hover over the particles listed, provides the pinyin but not the english meaning for the particle. So I see that there are 3 different "de" particles, but have no information as to when each would be used.
henning says
May 27, 2008
If you click on a name you are supposedly getting a list of that users's latest conversations. Most of the liested entries are coming from someone else, though.
davelandis says
May 27, 2008
The Exercise section on some of the earlier lessons
have yet to be updated.
Also, how can you sort by ascending/descedning?
That was a feature that I liked.
Overall, I like the new look and feel.
sparechange says
May 27, 2008
I think I'm going to cry a little... I never thought this day would come.
sparechange says
May 27, 2008
Although, it would appear someone kidnapped my turtle.
lunetta says
May 27, 2008
Oh no, didn't it win you a Cpod Oscar as the best avatar?
henning says
May 27, 2008
All "returns" in my small Grammar Point collection have been erased which renders the list unreadable.
Well, nothing lasts forever.
sparechange says
May 27, 2008
It did win me a CPod Oscar. That little turtle has been good to me. I haven't received any demands for ransom yet.
sparechange says
May 27, 2008
It's nice to see a new subscription level (between premium and "Executive"). I always felt like that gap was a little wide.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
I'm guessing the change over has convert your avatar into a non-animated gif, so it's just showing the 1st frame.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
Like the bulleted lists. We could do with a selection of smilies to choose from as well. :)
goulniky says
May 27, 2008
sparechange, apparently, The turtle is a symbol of longevity, strength, stability and prophecy in Chinese culture - must be a bad omen that it's gone after this change...
apparently, the pop up to insert links doesn't work either... pop up comes up, but then [insert] doesn't do anything... well it did't work the first time, seems to work in the 15 minutes of the 2nd edit for some reason
sballa says
May 27, 2008
One feature of conversations that I've always found useful was not just looking at "all conversations", but specifically at "my conversations" as well. That way, I could quickly see if there have been any responses to a query I have posted. This function still seems to be there, but when I click on "my conversations" I don't get a list of the conversations to which I have posted in the past. Many of the conversations that come up are ones I have never been part of.
cassielin says
May 27, 2008
Wow, I was impressed!
I did try to sign in this morning, but obviously the website was upgraded at then.
It is very cool and nice, I had changed my username yet! And we have some other new things and functions. Thank you chinesepod crew, thank you for your hard work.^_^
I like this new feature although I had missed the old one yet! It will take me time to get used to it. Hey guys, let's start something new together.o(∩_∩)o...哈哈
hoggins says
May 27, 2008
Hi,
I really preferred the clean, white look of the old chinesepod. Is there any way you could make it available?
Thanks!
architpol says
May 27, 2008
The new site was a surprise. Once I got over the shock, I toured most of the features. I think it is organized well and I was able to navigate easily. Overall, I'd say the update is successful and there are a number of new features. I didn't read all of the discussion comments in detail, so forgive me if the following comments are repeats.
In the Pinyin Introduction, the first paragraph is repeated. I thought I was experiencing deja vu when reading.
In the concentratin game, the selection of Hanzi and English gives you Hanzi and Pinyin. The selection Hanzi and Pinyin gives you Hanzi and English.
By the way, the edit comment feature is really nice. I think it will eliminate a lot of the "oops" comments we have seen in the past.
penben says
May 27, 2008
I have to agree that the new font is too small. I have trouble reading the english and no chance at the chinese characters, and that's on my 22 inch screen! Also, the ability to remove words from the next flashcard run is gone! Randomize is gone from flashcards as well. Arrgh!
man2toe says
May 27, 2008
真棒! Can we consider this version V4? The transition from v3 to v4 was so smooth and seamless. Very nice and comfortable for us poddies. I am sure it wasn't so easy on your end there in 上海 however. Thank you for all the hard work.
May you have computer screenless dreams tonight Amber and the rest of Cpod.
amber says
May 27, 2008
hi everybody,
Thanks for all your suggestions/input. We will be going through them all and fixing any bugs one by one! Thank you for letting us know, and please know we appreciate your patience and input.
As far as the audio on the older lessons, we are slowly going through and fixing / updating them all. So will just take a little time!
We're going to bed now in Shanghai, but will be hard at work in the morning getitng everything running tip top.
inland says
May 27, 2008
I have a suggestion for the flashcards. The hanzi cards give an answer of pinyin and audio, but there really ought to be an english translation with it. I could quess that a hanzi was "zhangkai" but damned if I can remember what it means in English.
bazza says
May 27, 2008
Video test
Image test
shi3ma3ke4 says
May 27, 2008
Can you make a change so we can use Chinese characters for our usernames? i.e. so I can use 史马克 as my username instead of shi3ma3ke4 ?
wolson says
May 27, 2008
For those of us who are visually challenged, the new font size is too small I need help reading the materials, particularly the characters! Please, oh please, increase the font sizes!
Like the edit feature though. But why have my gears stopped turning?
darcey says
May 27, 2008
I really love the fact that you've taken the format that works so well for SpanishPod and FrenchPod and converted it to CPod. It also looks a little more professional, and hopefully with a quicker loading time and data, this will make it more accessible to everyone.
goulniky says
May 27, 2008
Another thing about links - links within old posts no longer work (comments posted before today). They now appear as text within the post.
Even more annoying, all formatting seems to have gone, including line and paragraph breaks. This is a little annoying, particularly with posts from uncle-scholar changye who takes great pains to lay things out very neatly.
see this example : http://chinesepod.com/lessons/ping-pong-nation/
wildyaks says
May 27, 2008
We want sparechange's turtle back!
wildyaks says
May 27, 2008
and, yes, the font size is rather small. Very tiring for my eyes.
wolson says
May 27, 2008
The number of conversations per page is too limited:
I would like the option of seeing a full day or perhaps two days worth of converstation on one page. I was searching to see if anyone responded to some comments I made a couple fo days ago ... it was very difficult finding which subject it occured in in!
wolson says
May 27, 2008
The pull down menu under conversations "My Conversations" does not work the way that I expected it to work ... that is it does not find the conversations that I have contrinuted to in chronological order. It seems to be pulling down coversations that I visited but I am not sure what it's search logic is.
azerdocmom says
May 27, 2008
Yes, bring sparechange's turtle back! Bring it back, it's sorely missed.