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.

I have some sad news to announce for us and our poddies.

ChinesePod's Product Manager, Clay, has left Praxis Language. He is moving on to other ventures. We are all bummed about it, and Qing Wen will never be the same without the familiar Clay and Amber banter, but we are very appreciative for all that Clay brought to CPod over the past 9 months. Please join us in wishing Clay well in his future endeavors. We'll miss you, Clay!

Don't miss this blog post, guys! It's all there.

Reading about Yinghuo, new Mars probe, at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-06/09/content_8261363.htm. Dictionary translates Yinghuo as either 硬货 yìng huò ( n. ) metallic coins or 荧惑 yíng huò ( v. ) to dazzle, confuse, mislead. Not likely. I suppose huo is 火 as in 火星. Is ying 濙 (v.) revolve, as in Mars Orbiter?

As promised, the new testing features are out!  You can find them in the "Resources" section, and there is also a blog post about them.

Please feel free to leave feedback here.

Hi everybody...

You may have noticed a few changes in fonts, text size, and link colors. We've just done a CSS overhaul, which means we've applied new, re-written style rules to site text.

The main goal of this change was to update our CSS to a more consistent, manageable format, which will then be easier to iteratively improve upon.

Next we will be addressing smaller issues, like formatting on certain pages, text size in exercises, etc.

Please let us know if you discover any problems with the new styles.  Note that you may need to clear your browser cache to update the CSS; if the site appears oddly formatted, you probably need to do this.

A Radio show about China!  Every week we scour the web, far and wide, to find great little tidbits about China being talked about in articles or on videos or in audio.  We then neatly package it into a simple, quick and easy to listen to radio show and podcast for everyone on the web.  You can participate if you want to!  You can e-mail us your comments or topics that you wish us to cover.  We strive to be somewhat a-political because we don’t want to be blocked in China.  You can reach us at Radio at Mandmx.com or via twitter here. If you have a comment you can use twitter “@MandMx”  and then your comment and we’ll get it!  We might even feature your tweet on the air!

here's the link:

http://www.mandmx.com/2010/04/17/m-and-mx-radio-science-fiction-and-no-more-cctv/