CPod Website : A Wish List
calkins
March 11, 2008, 04:10 PM posted in General DiscussionI'm sure there's already one of these out there in conversation cyberspace, but no way to search for it (which brings me to wish #1):
1. Search feature for Conversations.
- This has been discussed a lot lately.
2. Lesson Bookmarking
- Please make this more user-friendly.
- Being forced to bookmark one lesson at a time is tedious and time-consuming.
- The "Order by" feature is nice, but as soon as you bookmark a lesson, it reverts back to its default and sends you back to page 1 (a pain when you're bookmarking lessons from page 12, for example).
3. Grammar Guide
- I know it's in the works, but I'm dying to see this baby! An estimated time frame would be good to know and would go a long way in keeping us patient.
4. Vocabulary Manager : Traditional Character Option
- I've probably talked this to death, but definitely one of my biggest wishes. I know the majority here uses simplified, but the option would be huge for us using traditional.
I know our wishes are usually easier said than done, but one of the miracles of CPod is that it actually listens to its customers, and often implements the changes we ask for. So, I just want to say thanks for listening CPod (it is rare these days)!
memmifer
March 14, 2008, 05:46 PMI think this request would be really easy: Add to the list of dropdowns in the status control: List currently contains Remove; Studied; Bookmarked; Default. Add something to the effect of: In Progress I can't always finish a lesson in one setting, and I want a quick way to find the one (or many) lessons that I've started.
rich
March 12, 2008, 02:00 PMConversation searching... a must. I can't even find my old posts any more, and don't care to go through my whole list of conversations I've participated in. Too bad Google also can't search them... only indexes lesson discussions.
darcey
March 12, 2008, 08:35 PMI would really encourage the website speed (though it may have something to do with time/location; I was checking it from the NYC metro area and it was *always* slow, regardless of time of day; I just relocated to St Paul, MN and it loaded rather quickly today). I also would like to see an enhancement that added mass-bookmarking, or at least didn't adjust things back to Page 1.
John
March 13, 2008, 01:44 AMI love to see a wishlist full of (1) things we're already working on and (2) things we already want to do. Hang in there, please!
jenyoung
March 12, 2008, 02:41 AMI definitly agree with you about the traditional characters, I am not allowed to start officialy studying simplified characters till next year! All I know is traditional! My college, along with many others in the states to my knowledge, focuses on traditional for the first one to three years of study so that sudents get a real feel for what makes up characters and their history/roots.
Julesong
March 13, 2008, 03:07 PMMy wishlist: 1) Being able to edit comments we've posted. 2) Conversation searching. 3) Adding Wade-Giles to the PDFs. As much as I wish they did, very few places use pinyin to write non-hanzi Mandarin. 4) adding a few benefits to the basic subscription. Things like access to the dictionary I've heard exists. Having the PDFs is very helpful, yes; but being able to access the lesson dialogues, I feel, should be part of the basic subscription. I think you'd probably get more basic subscribers if there were more benefits to pay for. Looking at the subscription comparison (http://chinesepod.com/products)... a) high quality audio - I haven't found there to be much of a difference between the recordings b) RSS feed - just beginning Mandarin, wouldn't most folks need to look for specific newbie lessons rather than getting whatever is being 'cast right then, and c) PDF, *very* helpful, thank you. :) I love my Chinesepod, I do! (An aside... the bookmarking doesn't really seem to be useful - although I suppose it could be if you're only listening to the sessions on the website. Maybe it's the premium folks it works well for.) 5) a more comprehensive "How to get going" for folks new to CP. Guidance on what lessons might be good to begin with - since they were recorded in a certain order, there was a vocabulary built up. I've heard it said, "You can start anywhere in the newbie lessons, it doesn't matter" but I've not found that to be true. When you're a newbie, it really can be overwhelming, with all those words coming at you. :) You want those newbie free accounts to become newbie paid accounts, and the best way to do that is to give them a little more guidance and support.
John
March 14, 2008, 02:07 AMThanks, julesong. Good suggestions. (Although, I must admit... your Wade-Giles request will pretty much never happen.)
boran
March 14, 2008, 04:20 AMMy wish is to have the bugs fixed in the Advanced Lesson Search as well as making it easier to find older lessons. A more detailed list of the bugs and features are here: Advanced Lesson Search Issues
boran
March 14, 2008, 04:22 AMOh yeah, I second Julesong about having another enticement for the basic membership besides the PDF transcript (which is very nice).
sushan
March 13, 2008, 04:33 AMWould be great to have some visual indicating conversations have posts that you have not seen yet, especially on the 'Your Conversations' list. Also, I don't get why the update time (XXXX days ago) on the Your Conversations list is the last time of my update. I would prefer it was the last update by any user. This would address my above issue as well.
rsmith91
March 11, 2008, 07:44 PMI particularly agree with what you said about conversation search and bookmarking, calkins. Number 1 on my wishlist would be making the website faster.