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Hi there, developer of noot here. Anki was actually the inspiration of noot for me. In my opinion, Anki's clunky and has too many options. While I understand it

Hi there, developer of noot here. Anki was actually the inspiration of noot for me. In my opinion, Anki's clunky and has too many options. While I understand it's good for power users, it also presents a learning curve which I feel might turn off a lot of prospective learners. I envision noot as a simpler, nicer alternative to Anki, with more stuff hidden behind the hood (for example, answers can only be right or wrong, instead of Again, Hard, Good, or Easy) so people can just focus on their material and not spend hours configuring and designing templates for their cards. Also, Anki doesn't currently have a good way to sync cards; AnkiWeb feels outdated and more centered around the computer version of the application. I want noot to be a lot like the Rdio music service: with nearly all user info stored on the cloud and the various platforms just to be interfaces to that service.

jkscm 13y ago
AnkiWeb is probably outdated because nobody cares about it. That's because their Android, iOS and PC apps are great. How accurate can your spaced repition algorithm predict my forgetting curve? The time between repitions can be substantially different depending on the answer I give to Anki (a day between a week or something like that) In which other aspects do you want to be like Rdio? Closed source, analyzing user data, advertisement, monetization?
- lawrencewu 13y ago
  Their iOS version is quite expensive if I recall correctly. It also isn't quite up-to-date in its design. Neither are any of the Anki apps, in my opinion. Anki does have a huge advantage from its excellent spacing algorithm. The prototype I have working so far uses the Leitner system, which is very basic, but an advantage of keeping all the data on the web is the huge potential for A/B testing to figure out the actual best spacing algorithm. Lastly, I'm not too interested in generating revenue from this project. I don't even have any ideas for monetizing it. This is mainly to scratch my own itch. If I can make enough to cover the cost of running the project (which is currently zero; it's being hosted on a free heroku dyno), I'll be happy.
  - zhubert 13y ago
    Howdy lawrencewu, I think it's fantastic that you're working on something to scratch your own itch! It's exactly what I did a year ago when I started work on http://www.memorific.com http://www.memorific.com to build a SRS that was fine-tuned for software developers. We just changed to public beta a few weeks ago and started generating revenue and it's been a great experience helping people learn, grow, and meet their goals for learning. Keep up the good work on noot.io and have a blast doing it! There's nothing like making a product that people use and enjoy.
davycro 13y ago
I rely on flashcards for medical school. A few requirements that I would need to switch from Anki-- 1) Copy paste of images. This is key. With my mac I screenshot a slide from an anatomy atlas to the clipboard. Then use the image occlusion editor to hide labels on the slide, and then I use the editor to highlight a certain area on the slide and ask "what is this muscle?" 70% of my cards require copy/paste of images. Without this feature I could never switch. 2) Cloud storage that synchronizes flashcards on my mac and mobile device. I do a lot of flashcard review in the gym, bathroom, waiting in line, etc. Without mobile I could not switch. 3) Searchable index of cards. I make a flashcard for every major piece of information that I need to know for school, and I use search to connect that information. For instance we spent the last 6 weeks learning about metabolic pathways and what factors regulate enzymes within them, but we never focused on specific regulators. With Anki, however, I can search for a certain activation enzyme, say protein kinase A, and then have a deck of flashcards showing me what pathways are affected by said enzyme. Those are the biggest must have features for me that set Anki apart. There are loads of great minimal and social flashcard applications (eg Study Blue or Quizlet) available for average users, eg, someone learning spanish. You'll have to find a way to stand out from them.
wahnfrieden 13y ago
I've been working on this too, but only with an iPhone client to start (though still with the data "in the cloud"), and only targeting Japanese to begin with. Anki runs into trouble when you need to customize it to suit your material - and then when you download any shared decks, each one uses its own scheme of representation. It's great software but not very friendly. There's no excuse for you to use Leitner though. Anki is based on the SM-2 algorithm which is well-documented (though only a starting point).

jkscm 13y ago

AnkiWeb is probably outdated because nobody cares about it. That's because their Android, iOS and PC apps are great. How accurate can your spaced repition algorithm predict my forgetting curve? The time between repitions can be substantially different depending on the answer I give to Anki (a day between a week or something like that) In which other aspects do you want to be like Rdio? Closed source, analyzing user data, advertisement, monetization?

lawrencewu 13y ago
Their iOS version is quite expensive if I recall correctly. It also isn't quite up-to-date in its design. Neither are any of the Anki apps, in my opinion. Anki does have a huge advantage from its excellent spacing algorithm. The prototype I have working so far uses the Leitner system, which is very basic, but an advantage of keeping all the data on the web is the huge potential for A/B testing to figure out the actual best spacing algorithm. Lastly, I'm not too interested in generating revenue from this project. I don't even have any ideas for monetizing it. This is mainly to scratch my own itch. If I can make enough to cover the cost of running the project (which is currently zero; it's being hosted on a free heroku dyno), I'll be happy.
- zhubert 13y ago
  Howdy lawrencewu, I think it's fantastic that you're working on something to scratch your own itch! It's exactly what I did a year ago when I started work on http://www.memorific.com http://www.memorific.com to build a SRS that was fine-tuned for software developers. We just changed to public beta a few weeks ago and started generating revenue and it's been a great experience helping people learn, grow, and meet their goals for learning. Keep up the good work on noot.io and have a blast doing it! There's nothing like making a product that people use and enjoy.

davycro 13y ago

I rely on flashcards for medical school. A few requirements that I would need to switch from Anki-- 1) Copy paste of images. This is key. With my mac I screenshot a slide from an anatomy atlas to the clipboard. Then use the image occlusion editor to hide labels on the slide, and then I use the editor to highlight a certain area on the slide and ask "what is this muscle?" 70% of my cards require copy/paste of images. Without this feature I could never switch. 2) Cloud storage that synchronizes flashcards on my mac and mobile device. I do a lot of flashcard review in the gym, bathroom, waiting in line, etc. Without mobile I could not switch. 3) Searchable index of cards. I make a flashcard for every major piece of information that I need to know for school, and I use search to connect that information. For instance we spent the last 6 weeks learning about metabolic pathways and what factors regulate enzymes within them, but we never focused on specific regulators. With Anki, however, I can search for a certain activation enzyme, say protein kinase A, and then have a deck of flashcards showing me what pathways are affected by said enzyme. Those are the biggest must have features for me that set Anki apart. There are loads of great minimal and social flashcard applications (eg Study Blue or Quizlet) available for average users, eg, someone learning spanish. You'll have to find a way to stand out from them.

wahnfrieden 13y ago

I've been working on this too, but only with an iPhone client to start (though still with the data "in the cloud"), and only targeting Japanese to begin with. Anki runs into trouble when you need to customize it to suit your material - and then when you download any shared decks, each one uses its own scheme of representation. It's great software but not very friendly. There's no excuse for you to use Leitner though. Anki is based on the SM-2 algorithm which is well-documented (though only a starting point).