8 ms·

Show HN: Make spaced-repetition flashcards

118 points by deagler 5y ago

deagler 5y ago
Hi HN, Meet Zorbi - a spaced-repetition tool built for exam study. Zorbi helps you create flashcards straight from PDFs and Websites or from our Notion integration. Creating flashcards with Zorbi is crazy fast and crazy easy. Zorbi is a web-app so you'll be able to study from any device (but we have an Android app & an iOS app coming soon!) Our mission is to build a full-featured exam study tool that people ACTUALLY want to use (Combining the power of Anki with the simplicity and flexibility of Notion) Let me know if you have any questions!
- pella 5y ago
  questions: - What is the business model? - any (detailed) info about the "data exporting" functions? - Offline use is possible? - Any API expected? ( creating 3rd party tools ) Thanks!
  - deagler 5y ago
    No monetization right now - we have some revenue streams that will let us keep the core app free. Freemium might happen in the future for niche features (e.g. Improved TTS / GPT-3 Flashcard Generation). No data exporting yet. We plan to add CSV/PDF exports in the next month. Offline mode is not possible yet - it will be within a couple of months. Public API + Extendability is 100% planned. If you're interested in developing anything custom then get in touch with us! Might be able to set something up for you.
    - pella 5y ago
      Thanks for the info!
- unixhero 5y ago
  Hey, what is the pricing?
  - deagler 5y ago
    Tool is completely free. We don't plan to paywall the core tool.
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  Congrats! I hope more people gets into learning by space repetition. I do not agree with the way you are marketing yourself (critisizing Anki) you should be good on your own terms. From you website. « ZORBI IS THE TOOL THAT ANKI SHOULD HAVE BEEN Anki was built in 2006 for lifelong learning, and it was good for a while. But let's get real. Anki is a clunky tool that people tolerate. You have to worry about optimizing settings, downloading addons, and updates that might corrupt your data. Zorbi is easy to use, you won't have to worry about settings or addons, and we release new features every week.» Also, is not clear at what point you will be asking for money. Best of luck!
nestlequ1k 5y ago
Will it be able at some point to export the newly created flashcards to ANKI?
- zwayhowder 5y ago
  It actually looks very similar to this 5 year old chrome plugin. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anki-quick-adder/gpbcbbajoagdgnokieocaplbhkiidmmb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anki-quick-adder/g... (I haven't used that one, I only use Anki for Japanese and therefore use Yomichan for the same thing).
- deagler 5y ago
  We plan to add export to CSV/PDF. You'll then be able to import it into ANKI via CSV
mshekow 5y ago
In my experience (I have over 10k flashcards in Anki and SuperMemo) it takes a lot of time to create the cards (vs. repeating/learning them). But the main reason is because I have to take time to think about and understand the content first, reformulate it in my own words (otherwise it won't stick well!), and cut it into bite-sized cards. What helped me most were articles "teaching" how to do this, or generally the experiences of others [1] [2]. From scanning your product's landing page, it seems you focus a lot on the time-savings during card creation, by relying on copy-and-paste. I'm not sure this is the best way to learn more complex topics, but may work fine for very clear things that are already bite-sized in the source material (e.g. chemical formulas, or language vocabulary). Are you focusing on these use cases? [1] https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24878171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24878171
- nojs 5y ago
  As you hinted at I think there are still cases where mass automated card creation is useful. I’ve had success doing this for Chinese characters - I ordered them by frequency and then made them into cards using the AnkiConnect API addon, then I feed in 5-10 new cards per day. There isn’t much creativity required in creating the cards since all the characters have definitions in Unihan.
- deagler 5y ago
  A lot of it isn't actually copy paste, but just quality-of-life tricks to speed up card creation while going through lecture notes / reading an article. e.g. we have tooltips+hotkeys that let you append the highlighted text to the front/back. One-click card creation for language vocab is on our roadmap and will be a focus-area soon. We're focusing on students / teachers right now. Edit: You may like our guide too: https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards (based on SuperMemo's original article - but summarised for the average K-12 student)
laurieg 5y ago
The app experience is very smooth. I managed to make a flashcard and review it very quickly. Do you have any support for cloze-deletion? I find that is the number one way to improve your output in a foreign language. How are you going to stop people making hundreds and hundreds of cards and being unable to review them? I find that people often start of using SRS systems by putting in way too much information and then getting overwhelmed by reviews. Final question: any plans for teacher/student models. Quizlet has a few nice features for this but there isn't any spaced repetition as far as I'm aware.
- deagler 5y ago
  Glad to hear you liked the app. Yes. We have cloze deletions. Hit Ctrl + Shift + C for cloze deletions (or hit the "Eye" that says "Hide Text") RE: the issue with reviews piling up. - We have some modifications planned for the algorithm that will make this easier. See the Load Balancer addon in Anki + algorithms like Half-life Regression which are making this easier to deal with. Also we could all do with a "let me take weekends off" feature :) --- Yes - we're working on some features for teachers. If you're a teacher you should get in touch - keen to learn more about what you need.
Smaug123 5y ago
I'm afraid I feel this is kind of missing the point. I assert that you will spend the time coming up with how to remember a thing; the question is whether you choose to do that at card construction time (easiest, because you've got all the context available to you of the thing you're trying to remember), or ad-hoc during review time. Creating a card is not just writing down some text (or, worse, copy-and-pasting it so that you remove all your agency entirely); rather, it's focusing a spotlight on a specific small aspect of your enormous mental model, determining how you can remember that particular aspect, and then writing down a card that will trigger you to illuminate that same spotlight in the future. Reviewing a card is not just dredging some detail from your memory; rather, it's remembering the reason you remember that card, and then re-activating the spotlight. Writing and reviewing flashcards is a much more active process than many people think, and I am very wary of anything that purports to remove some of that activity, because the activity is what helps you remember!
- ThouYS 5y ago
  This! Writing your flashcard makes you think the subject through, and sometimes you need to try a few times until you get a good flashcard. This is the learning experience, the rest is just preventing you from forgetting it.
- deagler 5y ago
  You're completely right. Having an understanding of the topic is important. In fact it's stressed on our "Making flashcards" guide: https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards It's mostly the convenience of always having the ability to create a spaced-repetition flashcard there in your browser. Our primary use cases are studying for exams and language learning. Hopefully that sheds some more light on how the Chrome extension / Notion integration are used.
- Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
  I guess it depends on how you use the system. I know you learn more if you make your own flashcards carefully, but sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. I am using Anki to learn Chinese vocabulary with a huge preconstructed deck that I downloaded, I've been doing this slow but steady for over two years, and it's working wonderfully, at least IMHO. Of course it's hard to know whether other alternatives could have worked even better, but this way I devote 30 minutes a day which can be on the bus, in bed, etc. and make progress. If I had to spend the time and involvement of making the cards myself (which requires not only more time, but in practice a more dedicated setting with a PC and keyboard, etc., as I'm not going to make flashcards with my phone on the bus even if it's technically possible) I would probably have quit a long time ago. So work on making the creation of flashcards easier seems like something that could be of interest at least to some people.
noway421 5y ago
Awesome product!! Anki is old and outdated, and it's long overdue for a replacement. Congrats on the launch!
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  I would say Anki is well establish, has a large user base, also free and receives updates often.
- DelightOne 5y ago
  What makes it outdated, what is missing?
- wraptile 5y ago
  Anki is free software - this is far from being a replacement. Also anki3 is the replacement. Its rather modern and python base is well written and documented.
  - bhrgunatha 5y ago
    By anki3 do you mean anki 2.1.xx that uses python 3 or anki v3? I don't see any tags or branches on the github repo that indicate anki v3.
dson210 5y ago
This is awesome
mellosouls 5y ago
This looks like a really nicely put together resource, congrats! I would be likely to sign up if I knew there was an option to export to a more established free flashcard engine (e.g. Anki), or at least to csv, say, for no other reasons than peace of mind and flexibility. I see in your FAQ that that is on the cards (hah!) so I will keep my eye on it and I think you will definitely get more buy-in when that is a working feature. Excellent work and best wishes going forward!
- deagler 5y ago
  Thanks! Export to CSV is coming soon.
wraptile 5y ago
What does this do that Anki doesn't? I really don't get the thought process if releasing a product that competes versus free software and does _less_
- badestrand 5y ago
  The feature checklist is only a part why people use a product. I didn't try Zorbi yet but I tried Anki a few times and I simply hate its interface. Yes, it has all the features but it is far too clunky and bothersome to use for me. Zorbi in contrast looks like it has a easy, beautiful UI that I can actually use with joy.
  - knubie 5y ago
    Mochi[0] is another option in this space that might be interesting to you. [0] https://mochi.cards/ https://mochi.cards/
    - dmerks 5y ago
      Windows 10 home blocks the installer for some reason... Is this new behavior for Windows?
      - mkl 5y ago
        No, it's been happening for years. If "too few" people have run a particular program, Windows decides it's not trustworthy. You can choose to run it anyway, or wait for Microsoft to make it "trusted" (for niche programs the latter doesn't always happen).
  - quijoteuniv 5y ago
    How many months did you try Anki? It is not an instant solution. Needs you to decide how to use it best and try an approach. After a week i found i establish a way of both creating and reviewing cards nicely. I use it on Linux, mac for creating cards and review mostly on Iphone. (Do some card creating on iphone but not the bulk)
lastodyssey 5y ago
https://printflashcards.com/index.html https://printflashcards.com/index.html I had created this website few months back to teach html, css, js to a newbie. Though this doesn't have spaced repetitions and saving stuff. But if you want to print your flash cards, then you can use this.
tomaszs 5y ago
I like that with the emerge of Summon The JSON flashcards become more popular. It is a great way to ease the stress of learning and have some fun with it
d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
I think pitching it as « for exams » can be limiting. Though I understand you want to appeal to a niche at this early stage. Maybe have a landing page with the « ace your exams » hero that students might land on after a google search, and a home page that has a broader pitch?
jethroksy 5y ago
I built a tool for myself earlier this year that's very similar to this, and I wrote a bit about it here [1]. For the most part, I found that flashcards only help when they are crafted with care, and it's a skill that needs to be learnt [2]. But what I found particularly useful about my hacked-up setup is that every card is contextualized: if I need a refresher for the content of a card, I can revisit the location (website/pdf) for it. [1]: https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/taking_srs_seriously/ https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/taking_srs_seriously/ [2]: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/
jehhjq 5y ago
I have a created a flashcards app for Android as well which got quite popular: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.words.words https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.wor...
iandanforth 5y ago
If I can 1. Import from Anki and 2. Have a simple bulk actions API for cards then I'd use this. Anki's db model is so absurdly over designed it's a pain to work with. Cards should be rows in a single unified table per card type.
mariocesar 5y ago
Love at first sight. I started making cards. 45 minutes later ... extension not available for Firefox! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- deagler 5y ago
  Sorry! Firefox is in the books but we're a small team and don't have the resources to maintain it on Firefox right now.
for_i_in_range 5y ago
People think I’m crazy but my office is lined with a wall of 4x6” notecard filing cabinets. All cards linked with individual branched id’s (I’d dare call it that term starting with a Z but the explanation of such term has been warped and morphed into something it is not. Which is why I dare not mention it. All but one first-page google result explains it wrong). While I applaud the creator of this app, I’ve found the analog way most effective and fulfilling. I find it develops my brain instead of developing something or someone else. I opt for the hard way. The slow way. Paper and pen and, a lot of whiteout rollers.
- j4nt4b 5y ago
  I completely agree about using pen and paper for learning and organizing my life. I have a weekly wall planner made of sticky notes and it’s so much more fulfilling than poking around a calendar app to see my week outlined in a two square foot section of my office wall. But for those of us who are curious about your process, could you please tell us what the Z word is and link to your recommended resource?
  - fnordian_slip 5y ago
    Im not the GP, but I'd guess Z stands for Zettelkasten, at least that's the only famous system I'm aware of in that space. You can read more about it ihere: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten
    - for_i_in_range 5y ago
      Correct! But I don’t recommend you read the Wikipedia entry. Read this instead: https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350 https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350
biesnecker 5y ago
I’m very wary of putting my flashcards (about 25k in a bunch of decks stretching back nearly 20 years now) in something that either 1) I own fully (I’ve bought the software and it will work even if your company doesn’t); or 2) at least provide full-fidelity exports of not just the content but also the repetition history. It looks like a very well-done app and I agree that Anki can be clunky but I don’t worry about it disappearing and taking years of work with it. I really do wish you luck but for me at least it’s a high bar to cross.
- ivanhoe 5y ago
  I agree fully that export is a must for app like this. On the other note, your collection of flashcard sounds impressive, perhaps you could consider publishing those flashcards publicly on github or somewhere, and kill 2 birds with 1 stone: backup the flashcard and also share the knowledge?
  - chipuni 5y ago
    I'm not the original poster, but I have more than 23k cards in Anki. I would emphatically not want to publish my flashcards publicly. Many of them are internal to where I work, and simply aren't interesting outside my workspace. (Does any one outside my company want to memorize the class names for the eight steps my company uses to do on-the-fly scoring of open opportunities? I didn't think so...)
    - biesnecker 5y ago
      +1 I would not publish mine, both because of a lot of work-related things, but also a lot of weird / inside-joke / funny but probably only to me references in them. I also believe firmly that the act of creating flashcards is part of what encodes them in your brain. I've never had any luck with prepared decks.
- adkadskhj 5y ago
  Your 25k cards interest me. I've long hoped to merge the concepts of knowledge base and retention. I love knowledge bases, but i want them to aid and augment my natural retention. Can you speak about how you use the 25k cards? Do you feel you retain them all? At first glance i suspect you're using your 25k cards the way i envision my ideal knowledge base setup. A store of information which exceeds my brains capacity, but which i can choose a slice at which i want to transfer to my brain. Ie choose a deck of cards and working on that to transfer (learn) the material again.
xkfm 5y ago
Looks decent. I'd like to see more tooling around creating flashcards that are easy to answer over a long period of time. It's deceptively difficult to make good flashcards because you often can't tell if you've created a bad flashcard until you've repeated it a few times. Often, that means months/years later. For example, rule four here https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards/ https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards/ tells you not to make difficult to answer flashcards. And then the rest of the examples all over the site are all difficult to answer cards. Maybe not now, but in a year or two from now.
fouric 5y ago
I use Anki. It's poorly-designed, but it's the best thing that I've used so far. I'd love to have an upgrade, but you have to convince me that your tool is actually materially better than Anki, and doesn't just "look beautiful". Using language like "modern" is a turn-off - it evokes feelings of Electron implementations, webtech, slow interfaces, and web design that wastes tons of visual space to be "minimal". I see that you wrote a page that ostensibly compares it to Anki[1], but it doesn't tell me anything. You say that it's easy to use, but does it also support all of the features that Anki has? You say that "you won't have to worry about settings or addons", but settings are there for a reason (because people have different needs), and does your tool subsume all of the functionality of all of the Anki addons that people made? You say that "we release new features every week", but where's the list of features that have been recently added, and how does the feature-set compare with Anki? I want a better tool than Anki, but you have to show me that it's actually better. Otherwise, you're not going to win over either the Anki users or the Quizlet users. [1] https://zorbi.cards/anki-alternative/ https://zorbi.cards/anki-alternative/
- deagler 5y ago
  We're not at feature parity with Anki yet. Our focus isn't copying or competing with Anki. iI you just want everything in Anki but better and free, then Zorbi probably isn't the right fit for you (yet!) For now, we're focusing on helping students learn more effectively through spaced-repetition. Hence our Chrome Extension + Notion Integration. Hope that gives you an idea on where we fit into the "Spaced-Repetition" space. Also, here is our changelog: https://zorbiapp.notion.site/zorbiapp/What-s-New-a7c0b5d9241a4c0aa0234f209b95f5b5 https://zorbiapp.notion.site/zorbiapp/What-s-New-a7c0b5d9241...
Korpocalypse 5y ago
I tried it briefly: I really liked it at first but there is one critical flaw; you need to be able to do the flash cards in reverse. Knowing the definition of something by seeing the name is useful, but it's only half of the value of flashcards. I'll come back to it if they add the ability to study the cards seeing the definition side to quiz you on what the name of the concept is.
- deagler 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Will let you know when we have reversable cards.
smoldesu 5y ago
This looks fine, but I legitimately have no interest in this if it isn't open-source. I know that sounds harsh, but I've gotten so tired of tools changing over time, slowly goading me into another subscription service that I desperately don't want. I appreciate this tool being free at the moment (the world doesn't need another SAAS), but I've seen nothing on this page that really makes me want to use it. To me, I see a cloud-based Anki alternative with less control over your data/freedom.
- deagler 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Going open-source is something we'd consider but right now we're focused on building a tool that people love (which becomes difficult with a bunch of hobbyist developers contributing). Also closed source isn't always bad. It's no secret that Duolingo has the world's best spaced-repetition algorithm - they will IPO for 2.4 billion soon.
ngokevin 5y ago
How have you found your initial few thousand users? I've built my own sort of Anki/SRS app but specifically for language learning. Extra features like dictionary lookups and generated audio for each card. Not as super customizable as Anki, but many language learners arrive at similar configurations (e.g., Refold). I've seen more and more language learning apps are starting to have SRS as a foundation

118 points by deagler 5y ago

Hi HN, Meet Zorbi - a spaced-repetition tool built for exam study. Zorbi helps you create flashcards straight from PDFs and Websites or from our Notion integration. Creating flashcards with Zorbi is crazy fast and crazy easy. Zorbi is a web-app so you'll be able to study from any device (but we have an Android app & an iOS app coming soon!) Our mission is to build a full-featured exam study tool that people ACTUALLY want to use (Combining the power of Anki with the simplicity and flexibility of Notion) Let me know if you have any questions!

pella 5y ago
questions: - What is the business model? - any (detailed) info about the "data exporting" functions? - Offline use is possible? - Any API expected? ( creating 3rd party tools ) Thanks!
- deagler 5y ago
  No monetization right now - we have some revenue streams that will let us keep the core app free. Freemium might happen in the future for niche features (e.g. Improved TTS / GPT-3 Flashcard Generation). No data exporting yet. We plan to add CSV/PDF exports in the next month. Offline mode is not possible yet - it will be within a couple of months. Public API + Extendability is 100% planned. If you're interested in developing anything custom then get in touch with us! Might be able to set something up for you.
  - pella 5y ago
    Thanks for the info!
unixhero 5y ago
Hey, what is the pricing?
- deagler 5y ago
  Tool is completely free. We don't plan to paywall the core tool.
quijoteuniv 5y ago
Congrats! I hope more people gets into learning by space repetition. I do not agree with the way you are marketing yourself (critisizing Anki) you should be good on your own terms. From you website. « ZORBI IS THE TOOL THAT ANKI SHOULD HAVE BEEN Anki was built in 2006 for lifelong learning, and it was good for a while. But let's get real. Anki is a clunky tool that people tolerate. You have to worry about optimizing settings, downloading addons, and updates that might corrupt your data. Zorbi is easy to use, you won't have to worry about settings or addons, and we release new features every week.» Also, is not clear at what point you will be asking for money. Best of luck!

nestlequ1k 5y ago

Will it be able at some point to export the newly created flashcards to ANKI?

zwayhowder 5y ago
It actually looks very similar to this 5 year old chrome plugin. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anki-quick-adder/gpbcbbajoagdgnokieocaplbhkiidmmb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anki-quick-adder/g... (I haven't used that one, I only use Anki for Japanese and therefore use Yomichan for the same thing).
deagler 5y ago
We plan to add export to CSV/PDF. You'll then be able to import it into ANKI via CSV

mshekow 5y ago

In my experience (I have over 10k flashcards in Anki and SuperMemo) it takes a lot of time to create the cards (vs. repeating/learning them). But the main reason is because I have to take time to think about and understand the content first, reformulate it in my own words (otherwise it won't stick well!), and cut it into bite-sized cards. What helped me most were articles "teaching" how to do this, or generally the experiences of others [1] [2]. From scanning your product's landing page, it seems you focus a lot on the time-savings during card creation, by relying on copy-and-paste. I'm not sure this is the best way to learn more complex topics, but may work fine for very clear things that are already bite-sized in the source material (e.g. chemical formulas, or language vocabulary). Are you focusing on these use cases? [1] https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24878171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24878171

nojs 5y ago
As you hinted at I think there are still cases where mass automated card creation is useful. I’ve had success doing this for Chinese characters - I ordered them by frequency and then made them into cards using the AnkiConnect API addon, then I feed in 5-10 new cards per day. There isn’t much creativity required in creating the cards since all the characters have definitions in Unihan.
deagler 5y ago
A lot of it isn't actually copy paste, but just quality-of-life tricks to speed up card creation while going through lecture notes / reading an article. e.g. we have tooltips+hotkeys that let you append the highlighted text to the front/back. One-click card creation for language vocab is on our roadmap and will be a focus-area soon. We're focusing on students / teachers right now. Edit: You may like our guide too: https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards (based on SuperMemo's original article - but summarised for the average K-12 student)

laurieg 5y ago

The app experience is very smooth. I managed to make a flashcard and review it very quickly. Do you have any support for cloze-deletion? I find that is the number one way to improve your output in a foreign language. How are you going to stop people making hundreds and hundreds of cards and being unable to review them? I find that people often start of using SRS systems by putting in way too much information and then getting overwhelmed by reviews. Final question: any plans for teacher/student models. Quizlet has a few nice features for this but there isn't any spaced repetition as far as I'm aware.

deagler 5y ago
Glad to hear you liked the app. Yes. We have cloze deletions. Hit Ctrl + Shift + C for cloze deletions (or hit the "Eye" that says "Hide Text") RE: the issue with reviews piling up. - We have some modifications planned for the algorithm that will make this easier. See the Load Balancer addon in Anki + algorithms like Half-life Regression which are making this easier to deal with. Also we could all do with a "let me take weekends off" feature :) --- Yes - we're working on some features for teachers. If you're a teacher you should get in touch - keen to learn more about what you need.

Smaug123 5y ago

I'm afraid I feel this is kind of missing the point. I assert that you will spend the time coming up with how to remember a thing; the question is whether you choose to do that at card construction time (easiest, because you've got all the context available to you of the thing you're trying to remember), or ad-hoc during review time. Creating a card is not just writing down some text (or, worse, copy-and-pasting it so that you remove all your agency entirely); rather, it's focusing a spotlight on a specific small aspect of your enormous mental model, determining how you can remember that particular aspect, and then writing down a card that will trigger you to illuminate that same spotlight in the future. Reviewing a card is not just dredging some detail from your memory; rather, it's remembering the reason you remember that card, and then re-activating the spotlight. Writing and reviewing flashcards is a much more active process than many people think, and I am very wary of anything that purports to remove some of that activity, because the activity is what helps you remember!

ThouYS 5y ago
This! Writing your flashcard makes you think the subject through, and sometimes you need to try a few times until you get a good flashcard. This is the learning experience, the rest is just preventing you from forgetting it.
deagler 5y ago
You're completely right. Having an understanding of the topic is important. In fact it's stressed on our "Making flashcards" guide: https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards It's mostly the convenience of always having the ability to create a spaced-repetition flashcard there in your browser. Our primary use cases are studying for exams and language learning. Hopefully that sheds some more light on how the Chrome extension / Notion integration are used.
Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
I guess it depends on how you use the system. I know you learn more if you make your own flashcards carefully, but sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. I am using Anki to learn Chinese vocabulary with a huge preconstructed deck that I downloaded, I've been doing this slow but steady for over two years, and it's working wonderfully, at least IMHO. Of course it's hard to know whether other alternatives could have worked even better, but this way I devote 30 minutes a day which can be on the bus, in bed, etc. and make progress. If I had to spend the time and involvement of making the cards myself (which requires not only more time, but in practice a more dedicated setting with a PC and keyboard, etc., as I'm not going to make flashcards with my phone on the bus even if it's technically possible) I would probably have quit a long time ago. So work on making the creation of flashcards easier seems like something that could be of interest at least to some people.

noway421 5y ago

Awesome product!! Anki is old and outdated, and it's long overdue for a replacement. Congrats on the launch!

quijoteuniv 5y ago
I would say Anki is well establish, has a large user base, also free and receives updates often.
DelightOne 5y ago
What makes it outdated, what is missing?
wraptile 5y ago
Anki is free software - this is far from being a replacement. Also anki3 is the replacement. Its rather modern and python base is well written and documented.
- bhrgunatha 5y ago
  By anki3 do you mean anki 2.1.xx that uses python 3 or anki v3? I don't see any tags or branches on the github repo that indicate anki v3.

dson210 5y ago

This is awesome

mellosouls 5y ago

This looks like a really nicely put together resource, congrats! I would be likely to sign up if I knew there was an option to export to a more established free flashcard engine (e.g. Anki), or at least to csv, say, for no other reasons than peace of mind and flexibility. I see in your FAQ that that is on the cards (hah!) so I will keep my eye on it and I think you will definitely get more buy-in when that is a working feature. Excellent work and best wishes going forward!

deagler 5y ago
Thanks! Export to CSV is coming soon.

wraptile 5y ago

What does this do that Anki doesn't? I really don't get the thought process if releasing a product that competes versus free software and does _less_

badestrand 5y ago
The feature checklist is only a part why people use a product. I didn't try Zorbi yet but I tried Anki a few times and I simply hate its interface. Yes, it has all the features but it is far too clunky and bothersome to use for me. Zorbi in contrast looks like it has a easy, beautiful UI that I can actually use with joy.
- knubie 5y ago
  Mochi[0] is another option in this space that might be interesting to you. [0] https://mochi.cards/ https://mochi.cards/
  - dmerks 5y ago
    Windows 10 home blocks the installer for some reason... Is this new behavior for Windows?
    - mkl 5y ago
      No, it's been happening for years. If "too few" people have run a particular program, Windows decides it's not trustworthy. You can choose to run it anyway, or wait for Microsoft to make it "trusted" (for niche programs the latter doesn't always happen).
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  How many months did you try Anki? It is not an instant solution. Needs you to decide how to use it best and try an approach. After a week i found i establish a way of both creating and reviewing cards nicely. I use it on Linux, mac for creating cards and review mostly on Iphone. (Do some card creating on iphone but not the bulk)

lastodyssey 5y ago

https://printflashcards.com/index.html https://printflashcards.com/index.html I had created this website few months back to teach html, css, js to a newbie. Though this doesn't have spaced repetitions and saving stuff. But if you want to print your flash cards, then you can use this.

tomaszs 5y ago

I like that with the emerge of Summon The JSON flashcards become more popular. It is a great way to ease the stress of learning and have some fun with it

d4rkp4ttern 5y ago

I think pitching it as « for exams » can be limiting. Though I understand you want to appeal to a niche at this early stage. Maybe have a landing page with the « ace your exams » hero that students might land on after a google search, and a home page that has a broader pitch?

jethroksy 5y ago

I built a tool for myself earlier this year that's very similar to this, and I wrote a bit about it here [1]. For the most part, I found that flashcards only help when they are crafted with care, and it's a skill that needs to be learnt [2]. But what I found particularly useful about my hacked-up setup is that every card is contextualized: if I need a refresher for the content of a card, I can revisit the location (website/pdf) for it. [1]: https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/taking_srs_seriously/ https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/taking_srs_seriously/ [2]: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/

jehhjq 5y ago

I have a created a flashcards app for Android as well which got quite popular: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.words.words https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.wor...

iandanforth 5y ago

If I can 1. Import from Anki and 2. Have a simple bulk actions API for cards then I'd use this. Anki's db model is so absurdly over designed it's a pain to work with. Cards should be rows in a single unified table per card type.

mariocesar 5y ago

Love at first sight. I started making cards. 45 minutes later ... extension not available for Firefox! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

deagler 5y ago
Sorry! Firefox is in the books but we're a small team and don't have the resources to maintain it on Firefox right now.

for_i_in_range 5y ago

People think I’m crazy but my office is lined with a wall of 4x6” notecard filing cabinets. All cards linked with individual branched id’s (I’d dare call it that term starting with a Z but the explanation of such term has been warped and morphed into something it is not. Which is why I dare not mention it. All but one first-page google result explains it wrong). While I applaud the creator of this app, I’ve found the analog way most effective and fulfilling. I find it develops my brain instead of developing something or someone else. I opt for the hard way. The slow way. Paper and pen and, a lot of whiteout rollers.

j4nt4b 5y ago
I completely agree about using pen and paper for learning and organizing my life. I have a weekly wall planner made of sticky notes and it’s so much more fulfilling than poking around a calendar app to see my week outlined in a two square foot section of my office wall. But for those of us who are curious about your process, could you please tell us what the Z word is and link to your recommended resource?
- fnordian_slip 5y ago
  Im not the GP, but I'd guess Z stands for Zettelkasten, at least that's the only famous system I'm aware of in that space. You can read more about it ihere: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten
  - for_i_in_range 5y ago
    Correct! But I don’t recommend you read the Wikipedia entry. Read this instead: https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350 https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350

biesnecker 5y ago

I’m very wary of putting my flashcards (about 25k in a bunch of decks stretching back nearly 20 years now) in something that either 1) I own fully (I’ve bought the software and it will work even if your company doesn’t); or 2) at least provide full-fidelity exports of not just the content but also the repetition history. It looks like a very well-done app and I agree that Anki can be clunky but I don’t worry about it disappearing and taking years of work with it. I really do wish you luck but for me at least it’s a high bar to cross.

ivanhoe 5y ago
I agree fully that export is a must for app like this. On the other note, your collection of flashcard sounds impressive, perhaps you could consider publishing those flashcards publicly on github or somewhere, and kill 2 birds with 1 stone: backup the flashcard and also share the knowledge?
- chipuni 5y ago
  I'm not the original poster, but I have more than 23k cards in Anki. I would emphatically not want to publish my flashcards publicly. Many of them are internal to where I work, and simply aren't interesting outside my workspace. (Does any one outside my company want to memorize the class names for the eight steps my company uses to do on-the-fly scoring of open opportunities? I didn't think so...)
  - biesnecker 5y ago
    +1 I would not publish mine, both because of a lot of work-related things, but also a lot of weird / inside-joke / funny but probably only to me references in them. I also believe firmly that the act of creating flashcards is part of what encodes them in your brain. I've never had any luck with prepared decks.
adkadskhj 5y ago
Your 25k cards interest me. I've long hoped to merge the concepts of knowledge base and retention. I love knowledge bases, but i want them to aid and augment my natural retention. Can you speak about how you use the 25k cards? Do you feel you retain them all? At first glance i suspect you're using your 25k cards the way i envision my ideal knowledge base setup. A store of information which exceeds my brains capacity, but which i can choose a slice at which i want to transfer to my brain. Ie choose a deck of cards and working on that to transfer (learn) the material again.

xkfm 5y ago

Looks decent. I'd like to see more tooling around creating flashcards that are easy to answer over a long period of time. It's deceptively difficult to make good flashcards because you often can't tell if you've created a bad flashcard until you've repeated it a few times. Often, that means months/years later. For example, rule four here https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards/ https://zorbi.cards/making-good-flashcards/ tells you not to make difficult to answer flashcards. And then the rest of the examples all over the site are all difficult to answer cards. Maybe not now, but in a year or two from now.

fouric 5y ago

I use Anki. It's poorly-designed, but it's the best thing that I've used so far. I'd love to have an upgrade, but you have to convince me that your tool is actually materially better than Anki, and doesn't just "look beautiful". Using language like "modern" is a turn-off - it evokes feelings of Electron implementations, webtech, slow interfaces, and web design that wastes tons of visual space to be "minimal". I see that you wrote a page that ostensibly compares it to Anki[1], but it doesn't tell me anything. You say that it's easy to use, but does it also support all of the features that Anki has? You say that "you won't have to worry about settings or addons", but settings are there for a reason (because people have different needs), and does your tool subsume all of the functionality of all of the Anki addons that people made? You say that "we release new features every week", but where's the list of features that have been recently added, and how does the feature-set compare with Anki? I want a better tool than Anki, but you have to show me that it's actually better. Otherwise, you're not going to win over either the Anki users or the Quizlet users. [1] https://zorbi.cards/anki-alternative/ https://zorbi.cards/anki-alternative/

deagler 5y ago
We're not at feature parity with Anki yet. Our focus isn't copying or competing with Anki. iI you just want everything in Anki but better and free, then Zorbi probably isn't the right fit for you (yet!) For now, we're focusing on helping students learn more effectively through spaced-repetition. Hence our Chrome Extension + Notion Integration. Hope that gives you an idea on where we fit into the "Spaced-Repetition" space. Also, here is our changelog: https://zorbiapp.notion.site/zorbiapp/What-s-New-a7c0b5d9241a4c0aa0234f209b95f5b5 https://zorbiapp.notion.site/zorbiapp/What-s-New-a7c0b5d9241...

Korpocalypse 5y ago

I tried it briefly: I really liked it at first but there is one critical flaw; you need to be able to do the flash cards in reverse. Knowing the definition of something by seeing the name is useful, but it's only half of the value of flashcards. I'll come back to it if they add the ability to study the cards seeing the definition side to quiz you on what the name of the concept is.

deagler 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Will let you know when we have reversable cards.

smoldesu 5y ago

This looks fine, but I legitimately have no interest in this if it isn't open-source. I know that sounds harsh, but I've gotten so tired of tools changing over time, slowly goading me into another subscription service that I desperately don't want. I appreciate this tool being free at the moment (the world doesn't need another SAAS), but I've seen nothing on this page that really makes me want to use it. To me, I see a cloud-based Anki alternative with less control over your data/freedom.

deagler 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Going open-source is something we'd consider but right now we're focused on building a tool that people love (which becomes difficult with a bunch of hobbyist developers contributing). Also closed source isn't always bad. It's no secret that Duolingo has the world's best spaced-repetition algorithm - they will IPO for 2.4 billion soon.

ngokevin 5y ago

How have you found your initial few thousand users? I've built my own sort of Anki/SRS app but specifically for language learning. Extra features like dictionary lookups and generated audio for each card. Not as super customizable as Anki, but many language learners arrive at similar configurations (e.g., Refold). I've seen more and more language learning apps are starting to have SRS as a foundation