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.