I want to share with everyone some pictures... and I want to know how to go about doing that??

Do you have to do it through FLICKR?  or can you post just like others do it.  SOrry, I'm not completely computer illiterate but I can't figure out the picture choice on the post window...

1 Image URL???  Does that mean that you have to have the picture already on the web somewhere?

2.  Dimensions??  What is that all about?

3. every attempt through flickr came up with no picture.

Someone help me.  THANKS!

Locals and visitors alike.  If you're in NC and want to find ways to collaborate, exchange, or study together drop a line. NC is a popular tourist spot, give us a heads up if you're visiting our state this summer!

We released The Radical Show last week, and got a ton of feedback. My conclusion is that the show had some merit, but still needs quite a bit of work. We will try again in the future.

We've been thinking about what video to do in the meantime. (We're taking a break from video during the holidays, but it will return in January.)

One idea that has been floating around for quite some time is doing some kind of collaborative effort with the ChinesePod community. There's so much creativity and passion out there that it just makes sense. So the question is: how do we work with you to create helpful video content?

Below is just one possibility of how user-created video might be augmented by the ChinesePod team and then returned to the community.

Please note that our primary mission is still producing excellent audio podcasts. Video takes much more time than audio to do properly, and for that reason we can't be out on the streets every day taking footage, combing through it, and then editing it. Please understand that.

Anyway, we'd love to hear your ideas. The best ideas should:

• have educational value
• require a realistic time investment
• be FUN!

We are listening...

I recently started a conversation about Video and Community, asking if you guys were interested in some kind of collaborative video experiment. There were some interesting responses, but the conversation took a turn and started focusing on the role of video in ChinesePod as a whole.

These two quotes kind of surprised me:

Here's what I think about the whole video thing.  Scrap it completely!  I don't think it is needed. (Calkins)

I can only speak for myself but I really dont care if there is any video right now. I like the site the way it was. Sure video is nice but but if a weekly thing is not in the cards right now, so what. Make it a periodic treat until something clicks. (RJBerki)

We never wanted to do video just to do video, and it has always been a bit of an experiment (more in-depth explanation about the situation here), but the most important thing is that ChinesePod continues to produce quality learning materials.

The longer we do video, the clearer it becomes that beyond simple experimentation, video requires far, far more time to be done right. We can do daily podcasts indefinitely, but to do video on top of that, in a format that meets our standards, is not something that can be slotted into a weekly schedule.

So to cut to the chase, our commitment has always been to quality learning materials, and weekly video efforts were a worthwhile experiment, but to produce quality materials for ChinesePod, we will not be publishing a new video every week in 2009. (Basically, we're taking RJ Berki's view.)

We are currently developing a video series on ordering food in China (to be released soon after CNY), while working on the longer-term Chinese character video project (much, much planning is needed for that one). We will also be releasing a fun one-off video to YouTube late next week; stay tuned for that.

As always, we welcome your feedback, and we'll do our best to keep raising the bar on the quality of what we offer.

The ChinesePod Blog is back: http://blog.chinesepod.com/

A lot happened in 2008. We made some progress, we made some mistakes, and we learned some lessons.

One lesson we learned is the importance of a blog for ChinesePod as a direct channel with its community of users. It's just not the same without one, and we miss it. We know some of you miss it too.

The blog is part of our effort at greater transparency. UserVoice was a great step, and the return of the blog is another.  I have added a few of my own Community user posts to the blog that would have gone on the blog had we had one at the time, and I've also been blogging a few things in the past week or so. I'll be writing a more detailed blog post on transparency that will be published this Friday.

See you on the blog!

Has anyone else managed to get the links in the RSS feed to work? I subscribe to the feed in Google Reader and am constantly seeing interesting posts or questions where I might be able to offer some advice. I click the post title to respond and I'm taken to the home page rather than the post.

What am I doing wrong?

Surely we've all enjoyed the guilty pleasure of googling ourselves.

Well, we at CPod just googled our own website. It seems that our wikipedia entry is a bit brief.

Since it wouldn't really be cricket for us to write our own entry, this is a request for help from our Wikipedian poddies.

Your time is valuable. Could you spare a few moments to help us update our entry? Your contributions could help introduce new Mandarin learners to the lively CPod community.

Hi guys!

I just put up a new post filling you in on what tech stuff we've been working on, and also asking for specific feedback on how we can improve the Community section of the site.  Please take a look, and if you have ideas, now is the time!

ChinesePod Development Updates, Community Discussion

We've made the change to threaded comments, and are currently tweaking some small issues.  I have written a blog post with more details on the changes.

Please let us know, here, or on the blog comments if you run into any problems. Comments are hugely important to ChinesePod, so we want everything working perfectly. 

UPDATE, UPDATE 2, UPDATE 3, UPDATE 4, UPDATE 5

If anyone in the Bay Area is interested in some Friday night Badminton/Mandarin practice, the Fremont Chinese Language and Culture Meetup Group is meeting this Friday (February 19) for Mandarin and Badminton practice at the United Badminton courts in Fremont. (See here for details.)  The group includes several old-time poddies, including the principal organizer, James Thereon, and there's always a fair showing of native speakers as well.

Anyway, though I'm not the organizer, I am sure that I speak for James when I say that guests are welcome; however, you need to either join the group and RSVP (it's free) or contact one of us for an invite.

Number of comments over the past week:  

Media - 13

News & Features - 7 

Qing Wen - 15 

Intermediate (Monopoly) - 23 

Elementary (April Fools Day) - 27 

Advanced - 4 

Upper Intermediate - 17  

Questions: Where is everybody? (Surely not studying?)  What proportion of the comments on Lesson threads are people seeking language partners?  

But that raises another question - if the high % of 'spam' is affecting the discourse, should ChinesePod design a space just for messages seeking language partners?   

John, Catherine and Jenny have told us in the April 25 News & Features how the CPod team are discussing ways to make our User Groups--those Groups we users created--easily accessible so that they can keep thriving, not get lost and shrivel up. So I guess we can look forward to some changes toward a lot more user-friendliness in this area soon. 期待期待！

Meanwhile I wanted a place for us users to talk about this. Some of us have founded, or have been actively involved in some really interesting User Groups, and might like to give those a little PR--let people know they exist. Please feel free to start a thread here and do that!

I've recently suggested that the Community Rankings tab show us a list of the top ten most active User Groups instead of the top ten most frequent commenting users. I guess though it's cool to keep the yearly top 10 users contributing the most conversations. Looking back to past years, it's interesting to see those prolific users who have moved on, likewise those who have stayed on! And I guess for long-time CPoddies there's a lot of nostalgic value in those lists.
(but I still really wouldn't mind if the Weekly and Monthly rankings were done away with. the whole idea seems so 过时 to me, in this "new environment" we have now  ...)

And if we were to have a Rankings for the Most Active User Groups it should probably be more like the Top 20 or 30. Ten would be too few.

Anyway--欢迎大家来介绍介绍你们最喜欢的小组！ Come up here and let us know about your favorite User Groups!

I've never been in a community before that doesn't have a picture post! It may be nothing to do with learning Chinese, but it's always nice to know what people look like ! (I know we have the little avatars, but it's not the same :-p ).

Since I'm not shy, this is me:

那显示你们的脸! Don't be shy :-) Or I can just post picture after picture of myself, and turn this discussion into a monument to my colossal vanity :-D

For those that don't know how to post images. Do this:

1) Find an image you like

2) Upload it to a suitable image hosting site, e.g. http://tinypic.com/

3) Put the image URL into your post with the following HTML code:

<img src="http://YOUR.IMAGE.URL.HERE">

4) Voila (hopefully!)

edit: sorry, the code and the image should work now!

edit2: Oh, if you are posting a new reply (not in a thread), you can just use the little "insert/edit image" button on the toolbar above your post!