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.

ChinesePod has a new default page: the Me page. Some of you seem a bit confused as to what exactly that is, so I thought I'd clarify a bit.

Basically, "Me" refers to content that is perosnalized for the individual. "My Lessons" are the lessons that you bookmark, or that you have subscribed to automatically receive. You can delete any of these lessons or mark them as studied. You manage them.

Similarly, "Vocabulary" refers to the words that the individual user has saved for review. "Counseling" is a Guided/Executive service where a user can get personalzied feedback on lesson progress. "Posts" is a place to write new conversation posts, as well as an archive of all your own conversation posts (you can even edit them from here, whenever you want!). And, of course "Profile" is very personalized.

We've put together a screencast about all this (voiceover by yours truly!):

(You can see more cool screencasts like this one in our new help section!)

One thing that might confuse some people is what you see as a Free user. Full personalization is a Premium service; free users do not get to customize their feeds, bookmark lessons, manage their vocabulary lists and use flashcards, etc. So don't be alarmed if you're a free user. You can still listen podcasts as before, participate in discussions, etc. As a Free user, you'll probably want to make more use of the Lessons page, where you can see all the latest podcasts, across all levels and Extra shows.

I hope this clears some things up! Please let me know if you are still unclear about how the Me section works.

Hey all...I'm back... been travelling and so haven't seen ChinesePod in a while... and somehow I knew when I came back today I would be facing the new website that we saw SpanishPod change to a few weeks back, and lo-and-behold, it had.  I haven't even begun to get a feel for it, and sadly I wasn't around to see all the posts about the switch over nor have I begain to read them.  I still remember the switch to CPod V3.  We calling this one V4 now?  Fill me in.

Well, I thought I would put a more interesting Title on this post than "I'm back" because who really cares anyhoo?  Ha ha.  But I was thinking after traveling to Paris, then London, then Around the coast and islands of Scotland how many places the lessons that Jenny & Co teach managed to get listened to by me.  While I'm listening to them on the go usually, I have to note that there have been a few places where I never thought I would be studying Chinese but found myself purposing listening to ChinesePod because it was just something I had to do:

1. The Louve 卢浮宫: When wandering around the Louve in Paris I had to listen to Chinese at the same time  (and oddly, just a tad too late right after my trip to Paris巴黎, two lessons came out with "Louve" 卢浮宫 in the vocabulary)
2. Eiffel Tower 艾菲尔铁塔： I actually had so much time on my hand and spend a whole day in the Eiffel Tower.  But being surrounded by metal in such a high place, you can only study Chinese before watching to be back on the ground.
3。British Museam 大英博物馆 WHILE in the Chinese exibit:  Can you say nerd?? Okay, must admit, that is just a little too much Chinese, but I don't care for being in silence in museams
4. Under and around Big Ben 大笨钟：I actually did take the "London" lesson with me on that trip, and played the couple's disagreement for a few Chinese friends in London when at Big Ben...they laughed.
5. On a boat cruise of Loch Ness 尼斯湖：Just did this last week... wondered if the Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, knows any Chinese...
6. Sitting on the Isle of Iona: An island off the Isle of Mull that is famous for an Irish Christian missionary (Columba) bringing Christianity to those parts in the 6th century, and the island still keeps to that spiritual message of good news.  No Chinese people there though. :(

Well, those are all I can think of.  Last year I even took ChinesePod to the Great Wall, but that is too close to Cpod's home to almost not count as an exotic place.  You guys listen to ChinesePod in any unusual locations?

The Huffington Post had an article about ChinesePod today. Here it is.

If you're in China you'll need a proxy link.

More love from the Times today as Claire Cain Miller posts about the Olympics site and CPod in general.

Today I received this email from CP:

I just come back to Tokyo after a long flight from Sweden where I have been listening to Chinesepod most of the time. After reading some of the posts about the new changes for non subscribes where some people seems to think that there is not enough stuff in the premium package for them to be willing to pay I asked my self, how does other people use Chinesepod? Please add your experiences and thoughts. I can’t be the only one that feel that there is actually very good stuff in the premium content.

This is what I do with it.

-         I download the whole package to my IPod touch. In that I can not only listen to the dialogues, I can also se the dialogue in Chinese (for beginner also with pinyin). I usually listen to the dialogues when I ride the bike to and from work. I usually listen to the dialogue twice on the way to work and then the repetition and words on the way back.

-         When I come home in the evening I log in to the net and reads though all the dialogues. Useful patterns and sentences I save in my own software for future use.

-         I do take a couple of tests with the flash cards. Interesting new words I save to my vocabulary collection for repetitions.

-         I am lucky to have a Chinese wife since over a decade so I let her play one part in the dialogue and hence we can practice the spoken Chinese. She is also taking the new words and let me construct new sentences wit them.

-         I am often revisiting old lessons to refresh my memory.

-         From time to time I download lessons from the advanced section just to challenge my listening skills.

-   When flying or sitting in booring meetings (I have a lot of those) I log in to the Iphone version of the site and takes some flashcards tests.

Managed to find ChinesePod on my iPhone. I had to find it visually in satellite view as there's no street detail in China yet.

Hi all,

Long time no see, long time no post.  In case you didn't see my post on the new Terrorist lesson, just thought I would share my pictures I took when visiting ChinesePod last month... pretty much the usual, general pictures, but did like the new place.  Unfortunately I didn't get my butt in gear and make ChinesePod my first stop on my 5 day stay, otherwise I would have seen Jenny and maybe had been able to grab lunch with a few.  But alas I left it until the end, but glad I got to see John and Ken (ooh...good rhyme).  Here is a link to the pics:

<a href ="http://picasaweb.google.com/richmahn/2008120410_Shanghai">

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmahn/2008120410_Shanghai</a>

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!

Until recently, I blogged at blogs.chinesepod.com/de - Chinesisch lernen, the German blog for Chinesepod.

Without further notice, this blog was disconnected some 5 days ago.

It was one of the blogs to support communities from German, French, Korean and Spanish speaking countries and Frank Fradella's newbie blog.

Most of them had not been updated for months.

The German blog HAD been updated. My last entry was on March 30th.

I have asked Chinesepod to resurrect it, but have not received a (positive) answer, yet.

At least, I'd wanted it to be accessible in an archive of sorts.

I - and formerly anne m. - have put quite some time and effort in that blog.

I would appreciate any comments, support or proposals how to retrieve on possible automatic online archives that might have documented this blog.

So this bbc presenter is learning Chinese around here.

I quite enjoyed his interview with Ken (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p002m3ps at appr. 02:19) 

I had doubts on Ken's answer that Chinese (Mandarin) is the number one language in terms of the number of (nativ) speakers, but it's backed by this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_by_speakers 

If you use ChinesePod's private messages a lot, be sure to read this blog post and give some feedback: Private Messages on ChinesePod

Thanks!

Hi Poddies,

There has recently been discussion within the ChinesePod community about the small number of users who come here primarily to learn English, and post language exchange messages on the boards. However, ChinesePod is not the best place for such messages, which are actually considered as spam.
We welcome ALL users who want to participate in the ChinesePod community, to enjoy the bilingual exchange and help improve their own (and others'!) language skills. Indeed, we are very grateful to the local Chinese users who contribute so much to the community in this way.
However, out of respect to our users who pay to learn Chinese here and may have been irritated by such postings, the authors of the spam messages will be advised to participate constructively in the community and pointed in the direction of EnglishPod.com. Spam will be removed from the site.

Thanks for your understanding and we look forward to your participation here at ChinesePod or over at EnglishPod.com!

Does anyone know if there is a list (excel?) with an overview of all the lessons? Thx. :-)

New Exercises Launched

Hey Poddies, CPod has a new set of exercises. A lot of work went into designing new exercises, they are more comprehensive and help you practise reading, writing and listening.

There are four parts in the new exercises:
1. Matching-match words to the closest meaning
2. Sentence Re-ordering-Move sentences into correct order
3. Dictation-listen to the audio and type out what you hear
4. Multiple Choice-choose the best answer

One of the major changes in the new exercises is no more Flash. This gives you a lot more control, allowing you to copy/paste, and also to control character size using your browser's text size controls.

The new exercises are available from lesson Amusement Park. (http://chinesepod.com/lessons/amusement-park/exercises)

We highly encourage you to try them out and tell us what you think.
Let us know!

Hi all:

We are repairing the Audio Review sound level problem. We will need the rest of the week to repair it. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

For those who are interested, the problem is with the new AMS coding. It does not currently include the code for normalizing and equalizing audio. This leads to the differences in volume that people have noticed.But we are fixing the problem as we speak.

真灵啊！
Zhēn líng a！

一对夫妻来到一口许愿井旁。
Yī duì fūqī láidào yīkǒu xǔyuàn jǐng páng.

丈夫弯腰，许了个愿后往井里扔了一枚硬币。
Zhàngfu wānyāo，xǔ le ge yuàn hòu wǎng jǐnglǐ rēng le yī méi yìngbì.

妻子也想许愿，但她弯腰时不小心翻入井里。
Qīzi yě xiǎng xǔyuàn，dàn tā wānyāo shí bù xiǎoxīn fānrù jǐng lǐ.

丈夫惊呆了，然后笑着对自己 说：“真灵啊！”
Zhàngfu jīngdāi le，ránhòu xiào zhe duì zìjǐ shuō：“zhēn líng a！”

真靈啊！
Zhēn líng a！

一對夫妻來到一口許願井旁。
Yī duì fūqī láidào yīkǒu xǔyuàn jǐng páng.

丈夫彎腰，許了個愿后往井里扔了一枚硬幣。
Zhàngfu wānyāo，xǔ le ge yuàn hòu wǎng jǐnglǐ rēng le yī méi yìngbì.

妻子也想許願，但她彎腰時不小心翻入井里。
Qīzi yě xiǎng xǔyuàn，dàn tā wānyāo shí bù xiǎoxīn fānrù jǐng lǐ.

丈夫驚呆了，然後笑著對自己說：“真靈啊！”
Zhàngfu jīngdāi le，ránhòu xiào zhe duì zìjǐ shuō：“zhēn líng a！”

夫妻/ fūqī / couple
许愿井/ xǔyuàn jǐng / wishing well
弯腰 / wānyāo / to stoop
许愿 / xǔyuàn / to make a wish
扔 / rēng / to throw
硬币 / yìngbì / coin
翻入 / fānrù / to fall into
惊呆 / jīngdāi / to be stunned
灵 / líng / efficacious

Here's a very good article from Venture Beat - 'Web technology is about to change how we learn'. The author, Russell Moench, references us with some positive comments.

Here on ChinesePod, of course, it already has changed how we are all learning. 

The article is well worth a read.

Posted this already in Xiaophil's post about the meet-up, but thought I would also pass this along in a new post.  Was a great time last night...lots of people, but great to get to know more of the ChinesePod staff.  Do hope we can do this more often.  Took some photos of our table, but somehow I never got a picture of Jenny... she was there I tell you. :)  Here is a link to the few photos I took:

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmahn/20100120_ChinesePod_Shanghai_MeetUp

Es tut sich wieder etwas auf unserem Blog.

Ein Hinweis auf die 3sat-Themenwoche Shanghai vom 18. bis 23. April 2010.

http://blogs.chinesepod.com/de/?p=551

Außerdem ist Krix unermüdlich mit seinen Chengyu-Beiträgen.

Der letzte war zum Thema "Regen": http://blogs.chinesepod.com/de/?p=502