ChinesePod Server Maintenance

Purrfecdizzo

I am able to see the lessons on my end, but I didn't try to download them.

Right-Wingnut

The What's the Story pages are still there, but the only file that can still be downloaded is the PDF. Also the Video Vocab lessons can be played online, but there no longer appears to be a means of downloading the video to my computer.

podster

An announcement like this would be a great replacement for the advertisement in the upper right hand corner of the page. In other words, keep it permanently in view as long as it is relevant, not let it get pushed further and further down the comments section. Just a suggestion.

waiguoren

Does anyone know the reason why the video lessons were taken 'off-air'?

podster

I think the video lessons are still there. CPod just decided to make them harder to find, I suppose. Try typing the word "video" in the lessons search box in the upper right hand corner. You will get results that include some video lessons. Or maybe they were made unavailable temporarily by the server maintenance. ??

RJ

under Library at the top of any page choose "channel" and then the "video" drop down on upper left in the view field instead of the "academic lesson" default and they are there along with the "menu stealer" and "vocab tour" video lessons, but, the "whats the story" videos will not play, at least not for me. I brought this up months ago, several times, and they reappeared in Library but they never did get them working. I gave up. Menu stealer and the vocab tour do work however.

verazhang100

Almost done.

adam_p_lax

yea I wanted to know that as well

ka3er3ni2er3sen1

Can't someone answer?

podster

Maybe you can direct your question to customer support. They don't consistently monitor the discussion boards and reply to questions posted here.

ka3er3ni2er3sen1

Bump! (No answer from support).

ka3er3ni2er3sen1

OK got an answer now. If anyone else was wondering I'll post it here:

Thank you for contacting us. At this time there are no plans to make up for the culture shows that were published last weekend. Unfortunately, due to the server error a number of lessons were erased from our system (note these lessons are still available on the website, but the files have been erased on our academic management system). Our Academic team is currently working to make up for these lost lessons (including re-recording and re-entering data into our system), and once this is done we can consider making up for the 2 culture shows that were skipped last weekend.

Best,

Justin

Right-Wingnut

Sounds very odd. How they could not have made backups of the recordings? Surely properly made backups would not be stored on the server.

Despite the very professional lesson material, the behind the scenes operations at Chinese Pod have always seemed very amateurish.

I'm also wondering why they consider Qingwen to be a 'culture show'.

podster

I don't even know what all that means. For example " ...a number of lessons were erased from our system." It would probably be a service to us to tell us which ones. Also, I don't know what it means that the files were erased from the academic management system but are available on the web site. If referring specifically to the missing production from the weekend, I don't think they ever appeared anywhere. It sounds like it was actually produced, but the server ate it (to paraphrase.) I feel sorry for the academic team if they have to regenerate a huge backlog of prior lessons from scratch. Well, I can understand why CPod did not make a full disclosure of the problem originally; the IT people were probably in crisis mode over the weekend, and "maintenance" was a euphemism for "coping with catastrophic server crash." I guess we should be making our own backups from iTunes or something.

Right-Wingnut

I'm wondering why, when you go to "Latest" lessons, all the recent Qingwens are listed under "Intermediate" instead of "Qingwen". And all the KTV, BST and News are listed under "Any". And when you click on "Any" you get a broken link.