Why the September changes?

Yup! I am now a Jay Chou fan! :) I didn't know who he was before this movie.. but now.. now, I can't get enough of him! :) Not to mention the girl who plays the lead role of Rain.. she is very beautiful! :)

shanghaitexan makes an interesting point:

"However, when you start charging for all audio you just opened up a nitch for one of your competitors.  This is exactly the type of oppurtunity that they had hoped for.  You may make more money in the short run but you could be giving your competitors the opening that have been waiting for."

In a sense, you are correct, but the question is, giving them the opening to do what? They have the opening to give away more and more for free but I don't think that will get them very far in life.

my .02 is that it's much easier to distinguish and copy new sounds when they are made by higher pitched voices (women, kids) especially when first learning. (Can Amber do some interviews at a kindergarten? That would be too cute.) But a variety is definitely needed as well.

Light, your 'Secret' is now out - you are a Jay Chou fan!

I've recently bought some new DVDs in mandarin, one in particular called "Secret" is about some teenagers at school and it is very obvious from this movie that guys speak very differently from girls. Guys tend to speak lazily and girls with precision.. at least that's the way it comes across. As a majority of the male speakers on the MP3's are non-native speakerr, they naturally go for the precision type of speach because they sub-conciously (or may be conciously) need to be precise because it is a second language rather than a first where they can be lazy in their speach.. anyway.. I agree that we need more male voice dialogue stuff spoken in genuine, native speaker ways.

I will be taking Mandarin in University, and the only thing I will really miss is Qingwen's, but I guess I can qingwen the prof instead (and picture Amber and Connie arguing with Clay).

I found the lessons under the free subscription, while interesting, a little... ineffective, to me anyways, because of the lack of the transcript for free users (and a transcript seemed like a bit much to pay for). This is probably because of my focus to learn to write chinese is as much as to be able to speak it.

Well, still it was enjoyable while it lasted, and I wish you luck in your quest for more cutting costs and maximizing your profit margin. You are a business first, after all.

Thanks for the years of free use.

I fourth that.

I'm informed on a regular basis that I speak in a relatively feminine way in Chinese...

I agree with calicartel and helenhelen.  I think almost all of the vocab mp3's and audio reviews are women's voices.  Don't get me wrong, I love Connie's sweet voice...but I feel that when I speak Chinese it often sounds more feminine to me than when I speak English.  And there seems to be a distinct difference between the way native men and native women speak Chinese.  It'd be great to hear male voices more often to balance it out.

It may not be cost-effective to have all vocab./audio reviews with both male and female, but it'd be good to at least do every other one.

I think they mean that the ones from the archive are being re-recorded.. so it would essentially be an updated, better lesson than the first one was... at least this was my understanding of the archive ones being posted once per week.

calicartel - I think that's an excellent idea, not only because of the memory benefits. For foreign languages generally, I find female voices much easier to understand than male voices, so being able to hear both would be better practice. In terms of what Chinese you hear, the gender balance at C'pod is not very balanced..

If one of the newbie lessons posted each week is from the archives, is it possible you can adjust the feeds so that it is possible to screen out the "old" lesson and only download the new one?  I have been a subscriber to ChinesePod since 2005, so I probably have all those old newbie lessons downloaded already and don't really want to download them a 2nd time and take up memory on my computer and/or iPod. 

You might think after all this time I wouldn't want to download the newbie lessons any more, but even now I find them useful and often learn a new vocabulary word or two.

I think creating added value for paying customers is fair. Being at intermediate level I welcome the emphasis on that level.

In videos, please make sure lip movements are as visible as possible when actors talk. Being able to read lips - and even faces - can be a great boost for improving one's pronounciation. Close-ups (like in soap operas) should be favoured.

One thing worth considering is having the expansion phrases read twice in a row, once by a female, then once by a male voice, like they do in the intermediate course "David & Helen in China". This is very efficient for memory imprinting.

I have been listening to your podcasts for years and I have never posted before.  I think that Cpod has every right to try and earn money for the material that they spend so much money to create.  The subscription fee that you charge is more than worth the service that is provided for that price. 

However, when you start charging for all audio you just opened up a nitch for one of your competitors.  This is exactly the type of oppurtunity that they had hoped for.  You may make more money in the short run but you could be giving your competitors the opening that have been waiting for. 

Although I really enjoy the podcast and have learned and improved my Chinese, I don't think the basic package is worth paying for.  I use only one level at a time and it takes almost a month for a new podcast to be posted.  $9/month = $9/podcast is a little too much for me.  If it were $3/month I would stay.

There already is a iTunes feed for paying subsribers. If you are one, down the very bottom of the page, just under where it says Me, click the orange square.

I'm wondering if Cpod will provide an iTunes feed for the subscribers that would like to download the intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced lessons to their iPods?

One concern that I've seen repeatedly voiced so far is the loss of native speakers who contribute to discussion. If some of those native speakers are trying to learn another language, say, through Spanishpod or Frenchpod, then by giving subscribers an option of a joint pass, Chinesepod could retain some of its community of native users.

All I can say is good luck Chinesepod.  I've followed your company for a long time and was always impressed by it.  It's a little irking that Ken always said that the podcasts would always be free and is now going back on that.  It is a business though and you gotta do what you gotta do.  I subscribed for a year after the advanced section was in full swing.  I didn't renew my subscription because of the scaling back of advanced and upper-intermediate podcasts.  Even now upper-intermediates are more plentiful, but advanceds are pretty few.  This would have to change before i would think about renewing.  Also the way chinesepod changes I don't know how people feel secure subscribing for an extended period of time.   For the reasons above i also don't know how you would recruit new upper-advanced users.  A week long trial subscription that just includes newbies?  Anyway it was fun while it lasted.

Here you can read how Google earns its money:

http://investor.google.com/pdf/2008Q2_earnings_google.pdf

@matthiask, I agree that Google makes it's money from targetted advertising, but if you go to google.com and tell them that you're interested in a panda screensaver, it's not exactly due to "spying" that Google now knows you like pandas. If you don't want them to know, go to ask.com.

@KennyK

as google is making a lot of money by the pure fact that they spy on us, it's in there marketing plan to provide services where they can integrate their little ads. So, indirectly, you pay already. That chinesepod makes it explicit is just fair.


"We would like you to remember the days without chinesepod, but crying in public is so 80ies" ;-)

its not nessesarily cheap. As much as people keep saying it is. 看情况

I only listen to the upper-inter lessons, bugger the transcipts and the rest of it, $US9 for how much content about 1.5 hours (8-10 pods a month maybe)?

I get one-on-one tutoring for RMB75 an hour (about US9) using my 口语课本, which is incomparibly better.

Not to mention the massive $US2999 package, thats only 4 chinese annual wages a package, cheap ah? 

@xiaohu - i agree, chinesepod indeed does provides WAY MORE than enough fantastic content to pay for the service... like i said previously, i would like to be able to pay for the extra features offered, but i can't due to transaction problems. 

HOWEVER, can u honestly tell me BLOCKING non-paying users from hearing podcasts and participating in forums is fair??? it's very easy as an existing paying subscriber feel it's fair, but just imagine if you are in my shoes.  what if suddenly youtube.com starting charging for each video you view.  or if google started charging people for using it's great services?  would you feel that's fair too???of course not... many websites provide fantastic content and services (yahoo, msn, amazon), but how many do you use for free, xiaohu??? 

the main reason i'm disappointed is that FROM THE BEGINNING chinesepod offered  podcasts and access to the community FOR FREE and now suddenly the free users are being pushed away or forced to pay up... it's not about a "free lunch", i don't expect free users to be able to access EVERYTHING, only what we were promised in the beginning...

I've been following this discussion here and on the forums, I haven't made any comments yet as I didn't really have much to say about it. Until now of course...

Even before these changes, there has always been an issue of subscription. In the past 6 months or so that I have been a member here, I have seen numerous discussions about this. Now that Praxis has made a sound business decision, whether it is a good or bad one only time will tell, it is going to open the same can of worms again.

You can only give out so much stuff for free and hope that people will want to benefit from the premium content and subscribe to it out of the need to learn more. Unfortunately, for the Praxis free-audio business model, there are so many resources to be found on the internet that you can listen to the podcasts, get involved in the discussions and do the rest on external sites. This means that you would never have to pay a cent and get a extremely thorough online learning experience.

I can sympathise with those people who really can't afford the $9USD (or $5USD/mth for 1 year) for the ability to access the other levels of the lessons here, for me this is about $11 AUD per month. When you are already scratching out your existance, even such a seemingly small amount is a lot. This is why there are also student options available. May be a similar 20% discount for 6 and 12 month subscriptions could be applied for people living in countries where mandarin is a primary language.

Casual Plan (Idea)
A casual learner is not really going to want to pay even a small amount because there is no real commitment to learning on a regular basis, where a monthly subscription is going to pay off. Another option might be to have a "Casual Plan" where the user pays an amount to get "Credit". This credit is then used to "Activate" their account for a specific lesson using some of their credit. Ideally this would work out cheaper in the long run for the casual learner but not less than it would cost them to have the same level of access for a month. Currently the most basic level of access if $9USD a month, without any discounts applied. That works out to be 30 cents a day.

So for example, the casual learner buys $10 of credit and then uses 50 cents to unlock a specific lesson at the basic level. Once that person has paid for that lesson, at that level, it is always unlocked/activated for them from that point on. This means that they can actively participate in not only the content but the discussions in an ongoing way. The price of the premium "activation" would be higher than the basic level of course but "you get what you pay for", as they say. May be the premium lessons could be unlocked for $1.50, which is inline with the same pricing structure already in existance on all Praxis Language sites. If the person had already activated a lesson at the basic level, the cost to upgrade the lesson to premium would be offset of course.

I think this plan would be very much in tune with the "learning on your terms" vision that has driven Praxis Language learning model from the very beginning. It would allow people to pick and choose what they want to learn, rather than being locked into a fixed term that is unreasonable for some people as they don't have the time, funds or ability to benefit from a monthly subscription.

KennyK,

Yeah, I don't think they really explained themselves on how this action helps paying users.  My guess is that by doing this, you will significantly reduce the number of downloads and people accessing the website.  This effectively will reduce some overhead costs. 

For example, CPod will be paying less to Amazon for its S3 service that they use for storing all of their podcasts.  Also, they are counting on at least a small percentage of free users to subscribe as paying members.  So this action may reduce overhead costs and increase the number of paying members.  With this extra income, they can improve the premium services and add more support for paying members.

Of course, the big question is if this will be good in the long run.  That is, can CPod maintain an adequate growth rate of paying subscribers if they no longer have the publicity that a large free user base gives them? I really have no idea.

Having been a user for only 2 months and just entering the elementary ranks, I don't have the experience here that many of you have.  But as a software executive that faced a similar dilema just a few ago with my own package.  I can understand what CPod is going through.  We lost a few customers early on by forcing them to pay for enhancements but those that stayed on will now testify even greater than before what the benefits have been to them.  Keep up the good work CPod. I believe that a majority of us are behind you!!

Steevo,

I couldn't agree more!  Basic Newbie lessons continue to be free, which is all a Newbie to Chinese would need to make an educated decision on whether or not to purchase Chinesepod's paid services.

I believe Chinesepod provides WAY MORE than enough fantastic content to pay for the service.  A Premium subscription is only $240 USD, and the basic, only $60 USD!  Think about how cheap that is compared to College courses or private tutoring. 

I've done both.

After buying textbooks, paying class fees, buying a student ID and paying for my parking permit, just one semester of my college level Chinese was around $600...at the COMMUNITY COLLEGE LEVEL, which is very inexpensive compared to classes at a 4 year University.  I learned next to nothing I didn't already know from my previous study.  I only really improved in my writing skills because I was forced to write by hand to complete assignments.

My private Chinese tutor was $200 per month, going to study only 4 times per month!

• 1 year/2 semesters of Community College Chinese: $1,200 USD
• 1 year private Chinese tutoring: $2,400 USD
• 1 year Premium subscription on Chinesepod: $240 USD

As my former Chinese tutor used to always say, "Quite a striking contrast!"

Chinesepod gives us a wealth of lessons, study material, online help and tools with which to help ourselves learn Chinese.  Content that is, in many ways superior to College curriculum.

Any "Advanced Student" who is not willing to pay just isn't taking the future of their Chinese seriously enough, or they are blind to the great wealth of benefit that Chinesepod has to offer.

I personally don't feel that Advanced Students comments are so helpful as to be given a free lunch, because often times even Advanced Students comments on the message boards, while it goes without saying they have the greatest of intentions, are often riddled with mistakes and therefore, not only unreliable, but also detrimental to new learners.  I hate to admit it, even though before I leave any messages attempting to give Chinese advice or guidance to anyone, I always triple check my facts, and yet I myself have left many, many comments that were essentially giving incorrect or incomplete information.  Besides, take a look at the Advanced Message boards and you will see how few Advanced Students really actively participate in lesson discussions.

No...giving Advanced Students a free ride just for the sake of the Community is not the way to go either. 

I firmly believe that users should pay for their Chinesepod experience.  It's more than worth the money, and in order to keep bringing us this great content, Praxis Language needs to turn a profit.  That's just the way of the world, after all, money IS what makes the world go 'round.

Sorry, but I don't understand Chinesepod's logic here.  I can slightly understand from a business perspective, however, how can taking away from free users improve quality of services for paying users?  Actually, the site will lose much user participation because free users (including native speakers who will not pay, but can offer great advice) can't comment on or listen to podcasts.  Instead of restricting users, why not just focus on creating new, cool features for paying users?  

As for myself, I live in Taiwan, so listening to the upper level lessons helps a lot.  I have been listening for almost two years, and have recommended the site to other foreigners in Taiwan. 

Also, I would love to pay for the services, however, I am a foreigner here and cannot get a credit card here.  I have tried many times to use my bank card, but doesn't work - don't know why.  I even called into the chinesepod office before...still didn't work.  Chinesepod has now become unusable to me.

 Is great that you left Newbie free, as people can "give the language a try" to see if they like it or not. Or, if they like your system or not.

 Paying for the rest of the lessons is good for the user more than any other person. why? because sometimes, when you don't pay, you don't appreciate the value.

 Keep going forward, I really like your POD.

 Gracias!

The changes have certainly engendered a lot of discussions. I am not going to attempt to research  what was provided pre 1st Sep 08 and post Sep 08.  I came across CPOD by accident. I used the 1 week trial free service and within the week joined and signed up for the Premium service in July 08. Am not looking back because I have learnt so much to date. In my view, CPOD provides good value for money.Have even bought myself an MP3 and a small ASUS eee to get maximum benefit out of it (when driving or catching train to downtown Sydney to work)!

Like all commercial/business organisations, CPOD is no different. To ensure a sustainable business that can provide for returns, growth and further benefit its subscribers, organisations do need to look at their business models and strategy from time to time. Its responsible management.

In truth, theres no such thing as a free lunch.  CPOD has been generous enough to provide some free content in the past  and will continue to provide some free, although restricted,  content to non payers.

I wish CPOD all the best and hoping the new strategy will see CPOD grow and go forward from  strength to strength.

I think this is a positive change, if anything a little overdue. The basic level is only a few dollars a month and far from excessive considering the amount of content available.

People will always complain when something that was free now costs money, but I think these complaints are only justified if that content has no value. A free lunch is nice, but you can't demand it! And there's still enough there for people to try it out before they commit.

As running costs inevitably go up, it is only fair that Cpod attempts to cover this by encouraging more users to pay for what they use instead of charging existing customers more.

What price would I put on what I've learnt so far? A lot more than what I've paid that's for sure.

Thanks CPod and keep up the good work.

I was wondering whether the videos would be anything like Mi Vida Loca from BBC Languages. Of course a continued storyline is not part of the CPod teaching style but other features of the video lessons would be very interesting, especially when it comes to actively practising the language taught.

So can we get some more information on the videos yet? :) Are they going to be like the old ones were? Or are you going to try your acting skills? I hope that they are more like the old ones, where you have a scene and you do a commentary over the top of it. The "Hair Salon" one was my favourite of the commentaries, also the one with the old ladies with the wool.. I don't think having people acting out a scene will hold much more benefit than the normal podcasts already do.. so I am really hoping it will be the commentary styled stuff again, with subtitled mandarin and hanzi.

谢谢 Andrew!

That would be the Praxis Pass.  If you go to http://chinesepod.com/help/subscription it's right below the Executive Plan Subscription.

I'm really sorry if this has already been answered but what subscription plan will allow me access to other languages? Is there a plan for multiple languages? Like if I want Russianpod and Chinesepod? 多谢！ Melissa

PS. 加油Chinesepod! I'm sure these news changes will vastly help the site!

Frog,

Agreed. Qingwen has gone from free to paid to free and it looks like back to paid next week - whether that's basic or premium i'm not sure. It's been free for at least the past 2 months but on the Channels page it still says it's premium content.

I didn't realize that all of that other content wasn't protected. I'm not subscribed currently but have noticed I can access the pdf transcript by changing a few letters in the URL name, not that I do it.

You might want to tighten up the access restrictions to existing content.  Your site is like a sieve.  I signed up for the Basic subscription a couple of days ago, and in my RSS feed, I got links (that worked) to the lesson review and "dialog only" MP3 files.  Deciphering the URLs, I could download anything I wanted to from http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/ (except expansion sentences -- I don't know how to discover the URLs of those), including CD quality MP3s, PDF transcripts, lesson reviews, dialogs, for all of the previous lessons, ** regardless of whether I was signed in or not **.

Just thought you should know.

Take the money.

I have just managed to pay for 6 months.

Regarding the changes, I was going to subscribe because I did a lot of downloading already and thought I made a contribution.

Learning I think depends 95% on the individual. I have been trying to learn for over 20 yrs with not much suceess even now with about 5 dictionaries, software purchase, a few years of classes. Will try various methods now as I had enough of waiting.

If I pay, I would be more willing to learn rather than not paying. Just like if you eat out, you are more likely to appreciate more or expect more as you have to sacrifice something and want to get something.

Or people go on expensive holiday to relax and thus want to relax when I think they can easily relax at home.

Hopefully I did not make five payments as I have tried several times to pay and it was saying that I already submitted the information but could not move to the next page.

Finally it succeeds today.

We’re getting contradictory messages from Chinesepod with regard to Qing Wen. Ken says that there will be no change to the content access for paying customers; praxislanguage says that Qing Wen will be for Premium subscribers only. I would hate to lose Qing Wen. Even if the dialogue is way above my Newbie level, I still get a lot out of the lesson.

Hi Andychoo,

I just made a test payment, and it went through fine. You may be having problems for a number of reasons (related to your card issuer, the country you are in, network connections, etc). I'd recommend giving it another try, and if that doesn't work, either contact us at chinesepod@gmail.com, or PM me. We'll be able to find an alternative solution for you.

I don't seem to be able to pay. I have tried using my credit card several times.

My thanks, too, for the clarification of Creative Commons licensing.  

Once again I have to ask, doesn't it look a little a little, (not sure how to day this) 'ungraceful?' for ChinesePod to say 'we're taking away the free lessons' and leaving newcomers to look up the old resources on bittorrent or some hodgepodge of 'fan sites'? 

I kind of thought I 'got' the Praxis model of giving away a lot for free--'here, kid, knock yourself out'--and then charging for the add-ons.  It is really a bold statement in support of the notion that books/learning materials are sort of a commodity, but the guidance and social aspect of learning require a carefully maintained and moderated community. As such, I can certainly understand that it has become necessary or desirable to restrict free users as new material is introduced.

What I don't quite understand is how Praxis gains from removing the 'legacy' lessons from the ChinesePod website.  Since the value 'add' comes with transcripts, extension lessons, tutors, social interactions, and just the pleasure of experiencing new (often topical) lessons with a cohort of other people, it seems like removing the lessons demonstrates a lack of confidence or perhaps even a retreat from the CPod model.  It seems like pushing people away from the site entirely to find old lessons will be driving traffic the wrong way.  Obviously only Praxis can do the cost/benefit analysis, but this is how it looks from the sidelines. 

Keep ItalianPod and Frenchpod free a little longer, at least until they complete a year and have a larger user base.

Auntie68, Boran, Frances,

Thank you all for your quick responses.  I think I get the idea - it seems similar to my brother's website (primarily a photo-sharing site for clubbers).  Photos can be copied from the site by the users, but wherever else they are used they have to include my brother's website name logo (I believe it's actually embedded into the photo when the photo is originally uploaded to his site).

Anyway, thanks again, Chris.

Thanks, Frances. Actually, my comment about jurisdiction was not the only thing out of date... I am out of date!!! 

Chris, with copyright restrictions getting stricter all over the world, people who produce material often find that users are more legally limited in how they can use the material than the copyright owners prefer. Creative Commons is an organization that exists to help copyright owners to loosen the legal restrictions the way they want. You decide what you want to allow people to do with your material: are derivative works okay? noncommercial reproductions? You decide what permissions you want to give and CC provides the legal mumbo jumbo to make sure that people can use your work in the ways that are okay with you without your accidentally giving up any rights you wanted to keep.

edit: wow! It looks like I could have saved some time as two other good responses came through before mine. I would say, though, that auntie's comment about the CC licenses being grounded in U.S. law is out of date. They licenses have now been ported into the jurisdictions of more than forty countries, including both the PRC and Taiwan.

chris,

A Creative Commons license is a type of copyright that encourages sharing and remixing of any kind of creative work (in CPod's case, their lesson podcasts).  It's seen as less restrictive than a typical copyright, allowing an author more control over what rights a user should have on their work. 

In CPod's case, all of the their lesson podcasts were released under a Creative Commons license allowing anybody to take them and do what they want with them as long as credit was given back to CPod.  In theory, this means a user could take lessons, alter them, and distribute, even sell, them to others.

A Creative Commons license is non-revocable.  That is, once you release something with that license it can't be taken back. Thus, all the lesson podcasts released prior to September will still be sharable by everyone.  Although CPod may no longer make them accessible to free users on their site, there is nothing to prevent someone else from distributing them on their own web site.

You can take a look at the Creative Commons web site for more info.

Hi Chris. "Creative commons" licenses are standard-form copyright licensing contracts which were developed -- and made freely available -- by an organization known as "Creative Commons" (CC).

The advantage to small copyright holders is that they don't have to negotiate every single term of any licence they grant. In theory, they can simply pick the standard form contract which suits their needs, and not only that, one which was drafted by a body (ie CC) dedicated to protecting the rights of copyright holders. In theory.

Of course, as such contracts become more widely acceptable, the harder it becomes for licensees to try and dictate and modify terms. 

The advantage to end users is that -- in theory -- the availability of such contracts reduces the risks for copyright holders, making it more likely for them to make material available to the general public. The Creative Commons licences tend to be open "publication licences", allowing fairly free use of the materials.

Unlike the industry-negotiated terms which -- eg. -- don't even give you the right to copy your own CDs for personal use, or show a DVD to your church choir etc etc, the CC licences normally allow you to share the materials with others, perhaps even modify it, as long as you are not doing that for commercial gain.

One potential advantage of any set of standard terms is that, with time, it becomes that much easier to predict how the courts would interpret particular clauses. This makes it more difficult for infringers to weasel out of claims by raising fanciful arguments attacking the drafting. And just like everybody knows that "red light means stop" and "green light means go", the terminology used in such contracts eventually takes on a "universal" meaning which makes it easier for all sides to be on the same page at the negotiations stage. 

One big limitation of CC licences is that they are drafted with US law in mind. So the question of how enforceable they might be in -- say -- China makes a nice theoretical essay for Final Year law students.

Phew. chris, I bet you regret asking that question now... HTH.

Could anyone explain what a "creative commons licence" is?  Sorry, but I've never heard this terminology before?

Thanks, Chris

@user1049
Comparing the Basic with the Premium plan, here is some information that may be useful.

With Basic you get access to all the lesson audio podcasts, the PDF for each lesson with the dialogue and an lesson feed that will send the lessons you want to receive to your chosen reader (i.e. iTunes).

Premium gives you access to everything on the site. You can access all of what Basic provides as well as being able to receive additional revision audio (dialogue only - which cuts out the teachers discussion, lesson vocabulary review - which repeats the vital vocab to drill it in to your head); being able to access all lesson suite materials (vocabulary, expansion sentences, dialogue online - all of which will allow you to listen to individual sentences and words over and over again, in addition to being able to save words to your vocabulary manager to create flashcards or a memory game. When reading the dialogue and expansion, you can hover your mouse over each word/phrase to see the pinyin/translation. Finally, when you have revised all this content, you can test what you have learnt with exercises). With Premium access you can also access the mobile website and the extra shows such as Qing Wen and Movie Madness.

Let me know if you have any other questions regarding the subscription types,

Ross

great idea Ken!!!

there is way too much info on this site to be handing out for free.

you guys need to close the freebee small mirror sites down like...

http://www.clearchinese.com/mp3-lessons/index.htm

keep up the great work!!

Bill

Praxis is thinking really BIG!

With EnglishPod, the market is nearly endless. The only problem to solve: Learners of English need in the beginning a website in their native language...

I only hope you are able to manage the growth and to keep every customer happy!

加油!

Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag. I don't have  secrets that I hold from you chaps because you slways find them out anyway, but sometimes we wait until we have specifics to share. Anyway, yes, we are revisiting EnglishPod in the relatively near future. You will be the first to know when we have more details.

kimiik,
Thanks for digging that one up - Wow!

Englishpod is indeed coming back home to praxis! And it is coming in a Chinese flavour also.

"Why the september changes ?"

I've heard that most of this new policy of free podcast limitation on the Praxis websites is related to the futur important release of EnglishPod.

It makes perfect sense as EnglishPod will push Praxis into the big pool with no clear size limits. Who could really afford to send Millions of free-daily-podcasts from the Amazon servers ?

This new website is a logical and welcome extension but I hope EnglishPod won't monopolize to much of the Praxis resources.

Mark,

Let me asusre you that CPod is in perfect health. The change is more along the lines that Henning described.

Have no fear - we're just getting started!

i'm about to subscribe but i'm not sure if the Premium plan is worth it.

What are it's big advantages over basic?

Or what can u not access with the basic plan?

there's quite a large difference in price between the 2

i've read the subscription information page,

but there isn't much detail explaining the differences there at all

mark,
isn't it rather a sign of maturity?

All bigger sites sooner or later either started to move towards a paid model (e.g. ebay) or began paving their web pages with advertisments (e.g. all those freemailers, free-webhosters, web portals...).

In my eyes, the pay model suits Cpod more - not only does it ensure professional and user-focused content, but also independence of the unstable banner prices.

In my experience, it is a sign of trouble for a Web service to make formerly free services paid.  I hope CPOD is healthy and weathers the change ok.

My personal wish is also that CPOD will continue to help me on my journey towards complete fluency.  我学习中文六年多，但是我的中文还是很差。

moloch,

We share you skepticism t oa certain degree, and it's one reason we've waited so long to get into video. We're certainly not going to "switch over" to all video instead of audio or anything like that, but we do feel it's time to start experimenting with video.

frances,

We will be doing a News and Features podcast every week going forward, but we don't count that as a lesson.

I am also sceptical about the video but looking forward to the HSK stuff.

What exactly is the demand for vid-casts for mobile learning? For me mobile learning is listening to chinese lessons in the car or while walking to the store. I don't have a lot of time during the day that I can spend staring at a small screen watching the same video over and over again.

I'm not discounting the usefulness of videos. When I first started studying Chinese, I found a site with great Mandarin lesson videos that I learned a lot from. Once the glut of podcasts came along my focus shifted solely to podcasts, likely due to the fact that I had much more time available during the day in which I could consume the audio. For me, I would watch vid-casts for their entertainment value, such as seeing familiar CPod folks act out a scene, but they aren't something I could devote much time to for language learning.

I'm just curious, and I'm sorry if I've missed something, but can someone clarify what will happen with the old audio lessons? Hankfdh says: 

'All previously published lesson MP3's will forever be Creative Commons licensed. The change will only affect freshly published lessons.'

I'm not familiar with Creative Commons licensing, etc., but is the plan to continue to allow unpaid users to access previously published audio lessons?  Just not through the ChinesePod site?  According to the faq only Newbie lessons will be available from ChinesePod.

If by any chance the public will still have access to the advanced lessons I think you all at ChinesePod may want to emphasize that point.  If all of those old lessons will continue to be available it certainly would be hard for anyone to complain about the changes.  As it is, my impression is that Newbie lessons by themselves won't be sufficient to attract the kind of learners who will eventually want to join the site, but that's just me...  It think offering some more advanced level 'reruns' in the free feed would make a lot of sense.

Ah. I suspected that might be the case, but I had to ask. I'm eager to see what the video lessons add to the mix. It may be a little early to ask, but has it been decided how difficult the video lessons will be?

I assume that the same trick will not be used to provide a News and Features cast each week. :)

frances,

We'll be publishing one new Newbie lesson per week. That means starting next week, the public feed will include one new Newbie lesson and one from the archive.

So the previous statement was actually targeted at paying users, who will be seeing all the new content.

Sorry for the confusion.

You won't see an immediate return from 5 to 7 audio podcast lessons per week, but you will have the addition of video lessons, so the lesson output will begin to increase again, yes.

Wait... we had a great long conversation (argument?) when CPod went from seven to five lessons a week about how the difficulty level distribution would work out. At that time John said that we would be seeing only one new newbie lesson a week in order not to give other levels short shrift. I think this has largely been what has happened since then. Does this new promise of two newbies each week mark the return of the seven lesson week?

auntie68,

No. It is absurd to sugest that I was slurring anyone.

auntie68, when I say "I'm honored", for example if I'm offered a job, it doesn't mean all the other companies are dishonorable - it's just a variation on thanking someone. I think it's just a term for politeness.

A group of people, one sneezes. Someone else says "Bless you". That doesn't mean the other eight want the sneezer to suffer damnation.

Ken, why do you suddenly start talking about people "honouring" CPOD by paying -- as if non-paying users were somehow dishonourable -- when up to a day or two ago you were flogging/ plugging CPOD on the basis of "free podcasts", for all it was worth? This sudden slur is hardly fair to the users who were enjoying the free services, at your invitation. No?

I'm looking forward to the videos. That'll be a great addition! I'd also love to see some resources for learning Chinese characters in the future.

Videos! Finally! I saw the original ones, which are still available on YouTube and I eagerly anticipate the return of them.. they are such high value!

@pinkjeans.
I agree. Sample lessons for non-Newbie lessons will be made available for people to see which level suits them best. These sample lessons will be online next week.

The changes seem fair, but I suggest that selected non-Newbie lessons be made available free, as this is how new listeners get enticed into continuing (and thus subscribing) with Chinesepod. I for one, first stumbled onto the site by accident, listened to the different level lessons, and found the ones appropriate for my level amazing, then signed up for a free trial subscription, and eventually paid up to continue what I think is an excellent learning resource.

hanyuxuesheng,

I'll  cerftainly let you know more details as soon as I can. I think it would be bad form to announce stuff before we were sure we could deliver!

Ken,

thank you very much for your answers about the coming changes.

I appreciate very much the work of you and your team, and I look forward to the things to come.

jjcarson,

You'll be seeing some video and some new mobile applications in the next few weeks. We also hope to bring on more people in a matter of weeks. Beyond that I don't want to say too much - to be honest, we have to ensure that these transitions go smoothly, first.

Ken,

Thanks for the reassurance and of course the hard work. My comment was some way down the bottom of a very long thread so I hardly expected many people to read it, let alone your good self. It's always good to know that the ChinesePod team have their feet on the ground.

I for one am excited about what this change could mean.

@jamestheron,

All previously published lesson MP3's will forever be Creative Commons licensed. The change will only affect freshly published lessons.

If you can send an email to chinesepod@praxislanguage.com letting us know how you want to use the lessons we can grant 'performance rights' so that your meetups will be unaffected.

Thanks,

Hank.

The transcript  for The 80/20 Rule is available on the pdf to any paying customer, and perhaps ChinesePod would be willing to post the English version here for the benefit of others.  The 80/20 rule is standard for any business, and directs attention to those activities that have the greatest impact on the success of a company. The same principle is used in quality control and problem solving, and goes by the name Pareto Analysis.  Ignoring the rule makes it unlikely that a company will survive in the long term.

Edit: I see that the same topic is being addressed in the lesson itself, as it should be.

Is there a timeline yet on when the new features for paying people will happen? Or are the details on that still being worked out?

jjcarson,

The changes will not affect premium subcribers. Ross outlined these details:

FAQ regarding free content change:

When will the change come into effect?
September 1st, 2008 (the 3rd year anniversary of ChinesePod.com)

What changes will be made?
Access for free users will be reduced.
Focus will be on providing more valuable services for paying users.

What content will be available to free users?

• Newbie lesson podcasts (old and new - currently 274 lessons as of August 27, 2008)
• Dear Amber podcasts
• News & Features podcasts
• Access to Newbie lesson conversations
• Access to view all lesson conversations
• Access to general conversations (under community section)
• Online dictionary
• Online grammar guide
• Online pronounciation guide
• Listening test
• Access to Groups

What podcasts will be distributed through the public feed on a weekly basis?
2 newbie lessons
1 Dear Amber show
1 News and Features show

Will there be any changes to the content access for Basic, Premium, Guided and Executive Plans?
The only changes are that all of the above mentioned subscription types will be able to access more new content and features in the future, such as video, which will be released in September.
Further improvements to the premium services will be made over time.

Will the prices in any of the subscription types change?
No

How much are the subscriptions?

• Basic: 9USD for 1 month
• Premium: 29USD for 1 month
• Guided: 49USD for 1 month
• Executive: 199USD for 1 month

For more information, see the subscription information page.

What is the minimum cost to access all lessons?
All 1,100+ lessons and the daily additional lessons can be accessed at just 5USD per month (on a 12 month subscription). Other benefits of the Basic subscription are PDF's for all lessons and an RSS customized feed that will send you the lessons that you want.

I've been a free user, basic subscriber, practice plan user, preimum subscriber and now just a basic subscriber again (since I use other services/classes as well).  This decision was not too unexpected.

I do wonder about the older free podcasts.  Since they were introduced with the Creative Commons license, is this license being changed for the old ones or just for the ones going forward?

(I've been using these for my meetup group, but now may have to find some other materials.)

What changes are being made? Where can I find out this information?

Edit: Is there a more direct translation of the 80/20 lesson? Us Newbies don't really get a lot out of that lesson.

ChinesePod is definitely applying its own lessons to it's own business - the 80/20 Rule.  The timing cannot be an accident - you must have been thinking deeply about this.