12 ms·

Show HN: CleverDeck – I built the spaced repetition app I always wanted

305 points by jmcannon 12y ago

jmcannon 12y ago
Hey HN - a little background, which might be interesting to some. I went through YC twice, the second time with a company called EveryArt. After working on that for two years as a solo founder, I decided to close it down. I moved from San Francisco to Istanbul and started a niche business (actually, just renamed EveryArt, Inc. in fairness to investors) that has done well enough to support me. I started teaching myself objective C in January to eventually build CleverDeck, which was motivated out of dissatisfaction with the available spaced repetition apps available (Anki, Memrise, etc.) I'll be hanging around if you have any questions. Thanks!
- lordlarm 12y ago
  What especially were you dissatisfied with using Anki and Memrise? And how do CleverDeck do them better?
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    There's a lot to talk about, much of which I wrote about in detail here: http://cleverdeck.com/blog http://cleverdeck.com/blog But to name the big two: 1. I just wanted something I could pull out of my pocket and tell me what to learn. Of course I want to be able to customize it (and you can in CleverDeck), but I found myself spending so much time in the others creating and managing different lists. With CleverDeck, the app is the list. If I don't have time to add words that I'm encountering in the wild, then the app will pull from a default ordering that's sorted by "usefulness." 2. I didn't really like the user experience of others. Too many confidence levels led to cognitive fatigue; I had to tap through menus to find which lists had which number of cards I needed to review. With this, just open it and swipe. It just tells me when cards come up for me to review, and automatically presents 10 new cards the next day (or whatever I have the setting adjusted to).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - beering 12y ago
    It seems like a slicker UI specifically for language learning, as well as "curated" decks for each language. I doubt anyone can replicate everything that Anki can do, but there's probably some gains to be had by cutting out complexity.
    - qznc 12y ago
      I use Anki for everything except language learning. It helps me remember books I've read, people, certain numbers, facts, etc. I am really grateful for a lot of the complex features Anki has.
  - jurassic 12y ago
    My main beef with Anki is the developer's unwillingness to open up the API. Card creation is currently a pretty unpleasant experience, but I can't currently build a browser extension without doing a lot of hacky bullshit because the the developer won't expose any public endpoints.
    - Blahah 12y ago
      AnkiMobile developer here. Are you referring to the mobile app or the desktop app? Because the desktop has API endpoints you can hook into with extensions [0]. If you're talking about the mobile app, I believe we originally decided not to provide an extension API because Apple forbids it. [0]: http://ankisrs.net/docs/addons.html http://ankisrs.net/docs/addons.html
      - jurassic 12y ago
        I am talking about a REST API that hooks into your AnkiWeb infrastructure. I believe I asked about this in one of the google groups and was told you aren't interested in doing that because of the additional load it could put on the service. I would love to put together something like the Evernote webclipper for creating cards right here in the browser without doing this awkward alt+tab+click+click+click+etc dance to create cards on the desktop client. I admire the work you and others have done on Anki and its extensions, but if I'm going to use Anki as my primary learning tool it needs to be delightful and effortless to create/delete cards as needed.
        Blahah 12y ago
        Ah OK, in that case I can see both sides. From Damien's perspective, AnkiWeb is a free service, so development/support time and server load have to be considered for any new feature. From the user perspective, web clipping tools would be really nice. Is there anything to prevent interacting between the desktop app API and a web clipping browser plugin, in the same way that the Zotero connector plugin does with the Zotero app API for example?
    - metaleks 12y ago
- gwintrob 12y ago
  CleverDeck looks great and I've been looking for something to use alongside Duolingo. Do you have plans to expand from vocab to grammar? Duolingo can be too flexible and I'd love some more rigorous lessons on conjugation, etc.
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    Thanks! Right now, we just want to make the best piece of technology possible for learning thousands of words. I don't think grammar is learned very well through flashcards (though, every word does have an example sentence, so you could pick up on some through pattern recognition). But, for sure, CleverDeck is just one tool in a language learner's toolbox. I have DuoLingo on my phone. It's great. But not ideal for learning tons of vocab.
    - gwintrob 12y ago
      Awesome. Please add German!
      - louthy 12y ago
        Yes, German would be great!
        jalanb 12y ago
        Für mich auch!
- joshdance 12y ago
  What was your niche business? How expensive is Istanbul to live in?
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    I'm a Turkish teacher! I make podcasts to help people learn Turkish. Supplemental material costs a monthly subscription. It's here: http://turkishteatime.com http://turkishteatime.com Istanbul doesn't generally feel much cheaper than San Francisco, except for rent. I pay $500 to live in a gorgeous apartment with a sea view in downtown Istanbul. That has really added up over time.
    - will_lam 12y ago
      Wow, that would be a great case study over at bootstrappers.io ... Would love to read about your bootstrapping / lifestyle business experiences.
      - akbar501 12y ago
        Absolutely. As another story to back this up, I moved to India when I was bootstrapping my first business. I got down to $2/day for food, and found free rent. This low personal burn rate massively extended the amount of runway available. Of course, Bangalore is no longer low cost, but there are plenty of places that still are.
    - jczhang 12y ago
      "Except for rent." I LOL'd.
    - gerhardi 12y ago
      Off topic: I recall talking about this last year and I believe we have met quite randomly over some beers when I was travelling in Istanbul in July 2013! Good luck for your business!
    - brusch64 12y ago
      Isn't the cost of living there (eating) cheaper than in San Francisco ? I am from Austria (Western Europe) and have been in Istanbul some weeks ago. If you are not going to eat at tourist traps I had the feeling that eating was cheaper than in Austria. Buying clothes and shoes was cheaper than in Austria too - so I guess the cost of living there is less than in Austria. Beer and alcohol is / can be pretty expensive - but other than that I thoughts it is pretty cheap there (as a tourist)
- will_lam 12y ago
  I find the Anki software to be perfect for my purposes of spaced repetition learning. I've invested a lot of time in creating my decks. Because I don't want to recreate those decks again, is there anyway to import those decks I've already created onto CleverDeck?
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    Not right now - I'm sorry. If Anki is perfect for you and you've made all your decks, that's great! Keep using it! If you ever decide to learn another language, we'll be here with a bunch of content ready for you :)
kevinherron 12y ago
Signed up to be notified, awaiting German :)
icholy 12y ago
Looks good. Any plans on allowing custom decks (for stuff other than learning langauges)?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Yeah, definitely. Learning languages seems to be the largest use-case for spaced repetition apps, so building in lots of good content for language learning seemed like a smart way to differentiate and target ourselves at first. One of the biggest annoyances I had using the others was how much time I spent building my own decks - when, really, I just wanted to learn common, useful words. It's true that some apps include user-created content you can share, but the quality was pretty hit or miss - and usually didn't come with pre-associated images, sound, and example sentences.
dubcanada 12y ago
Awesome, I signed up to be notified of new languages. But the field border just turned green. Does that mean it went through? Looking at the network it seems the return value was success, but it says "We'll just need to confirm your email address". Shouldn't there be some text or something besides a green border? Either way this looks awesome...
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Shoot - I knew this was going to happen. Sorry about that. I'll go take a look.
ashishk 12y ago
Congrats Justin!
callumprentice 12y ago
I can't install it right now as I am upgrading to iOS 8 but why is the app free and the 3000+ cards mentioned in the description cost $15? Is it because the App store doesn't support any form of trial? It may be unfair, but I always feel like I am being tricked when a purchase is set up this way?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Oh no, I really hope it doesn't give that impression. I'm open to suggestions on how to avoid that perception. It's freemium. You can download the full-featured app with a deck size of 50 (also enough to learn just enough words for a short trip for free). If you like it, you can add different increments to the total deck size through in-app purchases: 99 cents for +100, up to 14.99 for 3000. Didn't mean to be tricky. I thought this was a good way to price it so everyone could try it, tourists could get what they needed for free, and every gradient of language learner could only pay for the amount they needed.
  - callumprentice 12y ago
    Thank you for taking the time to reply. I apologize if my comment was rude or insensitive. It looks really nicely done and I can't wait to try it once the iOS 8 install has finished breaking my phone.
tehwalrus 12y ago
German and Mandarin are my two requests (even just 300 or so Mandarin cards would be great! I'll help!). Just started on French while I wait, looks great! :)
- ryanjodonnell 12y ago
  There is an app called Skritter for mandarin that will allow you to practice writing the characters too.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Thank you! The German list is done and we actually finished recording yesterday. I think we'll be able to release it within a month.
- pimlottc 12y ago
  There is a fantastic dictionary app for Mandarin called Pleco that includes a SRS-based flashcards feature as an in-app purchase (around $10-15 if I recall). The base dictionary itself is free. While of course you can just program your own cards into Anki or the like, being able to create new cards from dictionary definitions with one tap is very handy.
alexchamberlain 12y ago
Android version in the pipeline? Should I sign up for email updates?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Ah man - one of the things I've learned from my launching my first iOS app is how painful it is to answer this question. Painful because yes, I would LOVE to. Let's see how people like it on iOS, then I can decide the best way to go about getting it in the pipeline as quickly as possible.
  - gknoy 12y ago
    That was a very tactful way of saying "probably not soon". ;)
  - alexbecker 12y ago
    I for one would definitely buy this app if there was an android version. So that's one person out of the few thousand you need...
  - arbitrage 12y ago
    I concur with the other post; I would buy this app if there's an android version. While I understand that porting and maintaining two applications is difficult, you're ignoring half your potential market. Good luck, I hope to see the droid version soon.
    - jmcannon 12y ago
      Thanks! I appreciate the nudge. :)
      - ZoFreX 12y ago
        Is there a way for me to be notified if/when the Android app is available?
sethbannon 12y ago
I almost hate to ask this question here because this seems like a really nice product, but does anyone know of any similar apps? I ask because I'm learning Polish, a language not yet available on CleverDeck.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  I'll answer! Check out Anki and Memrise. They, in my opinion, are the best SRS alternatives out there.
  - Tossrock 12y ago
    What's your opinion on Mnemosyne?
- abecedarius 12y ago
  I once wrote https://github.com/darius/spaced-out https://github.com/darius/spaced-out which is certainly not serious competition, but came from a similar idea: build the deck from the most common words in the language (automated using an aligned parallel corpus), and replace the Anki interface because I didn't like it. It's probably a better starting-point than starting from scratch, I'll say that for it. (I wasn't interested enough in language-learning to take it further.)
- adambyrtek 12y ago
  Give SuperMemo a try, it's a Polish company. http://www.supermemo.net/ http://www.supermemo.net/
soneca 12y ago
Nice UI. I would love if you add a "Advanced English" deck. I have a 11 years old vocabluary (according to some online test I forgot the name). There is a place for people learning english as a second language where you know enough to be able to communicate, but you don't have a good enough vocabulary to express more sophisticated ideas, or express simple ideas more elegantly. I am at this place and I am sure there are lots of others here.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Yes, when talking about the language learning market, English is the whale. We're going to get there as fast a possible, but it means we'll have to be prepared for everything that comes with having non-English speaking customers. Though, having an Advanced English deck - so people have good enough English to tell us all the problems we have - sounds like a terrific way to start :)
  - vtail 12y ago
    As a non-native English speaker myself, I agree with GP. I have a bunch "English Vocabulary in Use" books of various levels which I almost never open because, you know, it's hard to carry it around with you. $14.99 seems to be a right price, too.
- hnriot 12y ago
  you don't need an app for this, you need to read more books. Not about expanding your vocabulary, but just quality fiction novels. That's how native english speakers broaden their vocabulary and your ability is clearly far enough along that most books will be within your grasp. From what you wrote your vocabulary is fine, it's the nuaces of grammar where your English would be improved by reading copiously.
  - teach 12y ago
    Books will really, really help. But targeted practice will also help. For the original question, there's an Anki deck for English idioms with sentences.[0] [0] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/846593111 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/846593111 Edit: It seems Anki is mentioned quite a bit further in the thread, so I'll skip defining it here.
3JPLW 12y ago
One thing that's unclear in the app description: does the free app come with 3000 words? And then is the $15 purchase is for an additional 3000? That would be amazing! Are all the words nouns? Or are there verbs/adjectives/adverbs, too? Is there a way to create a set of flashcards via a file upload? That'd be a wonderful feature!
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Good questions! The free app (there's only one freemium app, actually), has all 3000 words built-in. We charge based on how many you swipe into your deck (i.e. you decide to actively learn). The app comes with a free deck size of 50, then you can increase that incrementally with in-app purchases. There is a healthy mix of nouns, verbs, adjective, and adverbs. There isn't currently anyway to add your own content outside of creating individual cards within the app. It's something that I'd like to get to (if people find the SRS system useful, I'd like people to do whatever they want with it).
  - jschuur 12y ago
    I was genuinely confused about this too, and am still not 100% sure I get it after your comment. So the deck size means it's 50 concurrent cards, but I can add/remove card sets to my deck as much as I'd like using the free version? If I remove cards from my deck to make room, does this mean any training on how well I've told it I know those words is lost?
ajsharma 12y ago
You won me over immediately with the fox in a lab coat
quadfour 12y ago
Looking great, just a small pet peeve, in the coming soon section, above portuguese you have the brazil flag, feels kinda weird being portuguese and seeing that :)
- jmcannon 12y ago
  I know, I know - I'm sorry. Despite some of the objections, I just think flags do make great language icons. I do understand that complaints, though. In that particular case, we chose the Brazilian flag because the list and audio is target at Brazilian Portuguese. We should probably explicitly write "Brazilian." Interestingly, we couldn't find a flag icon for Arabic that was neutral enough. So we just chose the green color from the Arab League flag (which I guess could itself be controversial) and wrote "Arabic" in white text.
  - alexbecker 12y ago
    I would write "Portuguese (Brazil)" rather than Brazilian, similar to how you often see "English (US)" or "English (UK)". If I saw "Brazilian" my first thought would be "whoever wrote this doesn't know that Brazil speaks Portuguese".
    - jmcannon 12y ago
      Haha, right - I was thinking "Brazilian Portuguese." Though, we will be launching Mexican and Canadian soon as well!
joshdance 12y ago
Looks great.
LeonidBugaev 12y ago
Looks great, but does it have pronunciation?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Absolutely. All 3000 included cards have native-speaker audio. We recorded it ourselves.
adriand 12y ago
Looks and works really, really nicely. I am currently in the midst of cramming Spanish (trip to Barcelona in two weeks, trip to Cuba in four months, woo hoo!) and I've been using these two trips as a motivation to finally learn the Spanish I've always wanted to know. I've been using Duolingo a lot, as well as Memrise. Memrise has been quite good so far, but it is certainly not very polished, whereas this seems extremely well-done. Congratulations on the launch, this looks like a superb product and if it works for me I'd be happy to pay for it. That's a clever idea for in-app purchases too, by the way.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Thank you. That means a lot to me.
- simonswords82 12y ago
  Hey, I lived in Barcelona throughout March this year and Catalan is the dominant language. I felt (and perhaps I was too self conscious) that when I spoke Spanish they worked out pretty quickly I was English and defaulted back to that. Either way, learning Spanish is definitely an advantage as there's crossover to Catalan. Hope you have a wicked time :)
  - adriand 12y ago
    Well hey now. I can't believe I never came across that piece of advice before, but you're right! I knew that Catalan was spoken but did not realize it was the dominant language. I guess I better learn some basics...as if I didn't have enough to learn already. ;)
thanatropism 12y ago
How does this compare to Anki? Duolingo is nice, but it's not as good for cramming as for low-intensity, long-term learning. Anki is awesome for just "I'm going to memorize this speech like a poem"
- jmcannon 12y ago
  I agree with you on DuoLingo - great app, not good for vocab learning. Anki was my main SRS app for many, many years. I didn't like managing all my own lists (and was often buggy). I didn't like the UI. Adding pictures and audio was awkward. It didn't have some basic features like reminders or notifications built-in. Also, I had to add all my own stuff to Anki. If you want to learn Spanish (for example), we've already done all the work of picking the 3000 words we think you should learn, added high quality images and audio to each one, and gave each an example sentence with translation. I think that's what's most exciting to me.
kpennell 12y ago
Good work, Justin. Hope Turkey is fun.
brandonmenc 12y ago
Looks great! I cast my votes for Hebrew and Japanese.
coldcode 12y ago
Very nice, I wish I'd done this :-) Maybe I can finally learn Spanish and relearn all the German vocabulary I've forgotten.
shamney 12y ago
How did you decide on the vocabulary list and where did you get the example sentences?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  We wrote in detail about how we picked the words here: http://cleverdeck.com/blog http://cleverdeck.com/blog. Most of the example sentences were hand-picked from tatoeba.org. That covered about 2700 of the words - our teachers wrote the remaining 300 or so.
omarish 12y ago
This is amazing. I've been using Anki for a few years now and have been looking for a better app. Congratulations. I can't wait to use it.
frankdenbow 12y ago
Would love this on Android. Currently I use Duolingo, which is great, but many of the words they teach seem irrelevant for common conversation.
techpeace 12y ago
Thanks so much for building this! Just purchased the full 3k Spanish deck. You've saved me a ton of time vs. my plan of writing a script to build my own Anki decks. One question: is there a recommendation on whether to go with English-first or target-language-first when studying? I prefer to go with Spanish-first, but I don't know if there's any data on which is more effective. Thanks again!
- jmcannon 12y ago
  You're welcome! :) In building this app, we didn't survey the research addressing that question specifically (though googling "L1 vs L2 flashcards" pulls up some interesting sites). For me personally, speaking from 15+ years learning French, Chinese, and Turkish, it's native --> target. Learning that way helps me recall faster when I need to construct my own sentences. If you're looking just to learn to read, I think target --> native is easier and might be a better approach. I've also had success starting with native --> target to familiarize myself with the word, then quickly switching to target --> native to solidify my ability to produce it on my own.
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    Sorry, switch native-->target and target-->native in my last paragraph.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hfsktr 12y ago
Everyone seems to be focused on languages but is there something like this for music? Especially instrument specific, for example a card for finger placement? Would something like that require me custom adding every card? and somehow figuring out how to get pictures/symbols on the cards instead of just text? FWIW I don't know how hard that is with existing apps, maybe it's gotten easier. Sorry if it is a derail.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Anki is a spaced repetition app that would allow you to create your own cards for this sort of thing (add arbitrary images to one side of the card).
  - qznc 12y ago
    Anki basically generates cards from a table of fact and a HTML template. You can include pictures and sounds. It takes a little to get used to it, though.
- ThomPete 12y ago
  The thing is though that you need to build muscle memory not just memorize the finger placement (thats the easy part)
  - hfsktr 12y ago
    That's a good point. Something I hadn't really thought of. I had been thinking of this (flashcards/learning) for a while and I ended up buying physical flash cards[1] that I can keep at my desk. At the time though I couldn't tell one note from another and like learning anything it seems impossible and pointless to start (and I'm not THAT old). I sometimes wish I had the feedback (stats) that the apps have but I have learned and that was the goal. I will probably end up coming back to this app when there are more languages though. [1] I had downloaded Anki but got discouraged at the thought of building every single card myself and figuring out how to import it all. I tried to find some online that were premade but with no success I moved on. I don't consider myself lazier than the next person but this kind of made me feel like it.
z3ugma 12y ago
Going through the French deck, I've noticed some errors, especially with gender and homonyms - is there a built-in, effective way to report these kind of problems to the devs?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Really? I'm really sorry about that. We checked those lists so many times. If you can be bothered, please email me at justin@cleverdeck.com and let me know what you found. We'll push an update fixing any errors ASAP.
serkanh 12y ago
I have been using Anki for a while now and i love it. I wish there are more spaced repetition apps out there that are not limited to learning a language.
ZoFreX 12y ago
> "We can email you when we launch new languages." How? Presumably I'm being slow because others have managed it, but I can't figure out how to sign up to be notified...
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Oh, is there not an email input there? Sorry about that. Feel free to email me at justin@cleverdeck.com.
  - ZoFreX 12y ago
    Ah-ha, Adblock was to blame!
rxdecoster 12y ago
Great work Justin. As an intermediate/advanced Turkish speaker, I find a lot of value in being able to learn new vocabulary easily and in a manageable way. Thanks for building this.
saganus 12y ago
Does anyone have an idea why I get a McAffee Web Gateway error with: Alert: This website has a Security Reputation Rating of High Risk URL: http://cleverdeck.com/ http://cleverdeck.com/ Category: Site Reputation: Medium Risk Code: Reputation Coaching How is "Reputation coaching" a bad thing? I don't even know what it is but unfortunately I also don't want to risk getting a red flag in the system because I'm trying to find out. Anyone have any ideas?
- spacefight 12y ago
  No, no idea why you're running McAffee Web Gateway, sorry :(
  - saganus 12y ago
    I'm browsing from a work computer, and the network has the gateway enabled. I would never do that by choice. But it struck me as weird that they had this site blacklisted.
wf 12y ago
This looks really cool, definitely going to download it and give it a shot. (btw I didn't know what spaced repetition was and your wikipedia link is missing the colon on your about page)
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Thanks! All fixed.
dannylandau 12y ago
Who is the designer? Did you outsource this part to a freelancer?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  I did all the UX design myself then passed it to the very talented Yoshini who made it pretty. yoshinig.com
splatcollision 12y ago
Really great apps just downloaded them all. I've picked up turkish from my wife but it's still great to get more practice. Only suggestion is the right-ward swipe on cards to dismiss them as well-known should trigger earlier - I find myself having to swipe further than I feel I need to in order to dismiss the card. Otherwise great work & thanks for sharing
fataliss 12y ago
I'm desperate to find this kind of app for Chinese. Stuff like Duolingo and the like are all great, but no Chinese :( But good job, this app looks great!
- jfoster 12y ago
  You might be interested in trying Chinese Tutor (http://fastchinese.com/flashcards http://fastchinese.com/flashcards). (I'm the author) It doesn't have pretty photos, but it does use a spaced repetition algorithm and have the flashcards ordered based on how commonly they will appear.
- alxndr 12y ago
  Check out Skritter, it's for-pay spaced repetition which also has you practice writing the characters. (Also has Japanese) Edit: oh yeah, they were previously turned down by YC and then accepted by YC, or something. Don't know the details.
  - jfoster 12y ago
    Hadn't heard of them being turned down, but they were accepted for their new project, CodeCombat. (http://codecombat.com/ http://codecombat.com/)
    - alxndr 12y ago
      Whoops, yeah that's all I'm thinking of.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  Try: Pleco (it has flashcards as an in-app purchase) Memrise (there are pre-made decks for HSK levels) Anki (try the 'Mastering Chinese Characters' deck)
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  Pleco is definitely the #1 app for learning Chinese vocab. The OCR functionality makes it easy to scan the word lists in your Chinese textbook, and the example sentences in the free dictionary are pretty good. Pleco doesn't really teach you Chinese in the way that Duolingo teaches languages, but I don't think that CleverDeck can do that, either :)
nicpottier 12y ago
This looks great, would buy if it was in the Android Play store. :(
pragone 12y ago
Is this a language learning app or a spaced repetition studying app? I'd be interested in something with a smoother UI thank Anki, but that seems to be the established app for med school
- jliechti1 12y ago
  Have you tried Mnemosyne? http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ It may not have as many features as Anki, but it has a good plugin architecture and the UI is very simple.
saiko-chriskun 12y ago
I was so excited... then saw the ios only :/ EDIT: then I even realized there are only specific languages supported? we can't add our own? this is useless..
- joshdotsmith 12y ago
  This comment deserves to be downvoted into oblivion. You must come from a very special place where you deserve so much more than this. This guy busted his ass to release something. Yes, it's on a single platform (for now). Yes, it only has three different languages (for now). Woe is you that he hasn't built precisely what you want on the platform of your choice. Give me a break. Makers and makers-to-be, don't be dissuaded by this kind of garbage attitude.
azinman2 12y ago
Really nice work! I don't know about the market but given I'm about to go to Paris it's here just in time for me to bone up on my french! I like the 'learn a little everyday' approach, and I found even putting those cards back not only easy from a UX perspective but effective in that I had already forgotten 'drapeau'!
confess_ly 12y ago
China is a huge market and people there are crazy about learning English, so definitely add English and then you can expand to international market
gurkendoktor 12y ago
I think you should consider adding a newsletter sign-up form to the website. I would love to use this for Japanese, but there is no way to 'subscribe' to your apps. (You've posted a link to your blog below, so I think I'll just add it to my RSS reader, but I wouldn't have found it without the HN comments.)
__m 12y ago
Why didn't you create a single app with all card sets as in app purchases? I use Mental Case which allows you to share sets and download sets from other people.
tvanantwerp 12y ago
As someone trying to use SR to learn new things, I'm always tempted to build my own software. Congrats for doing it! The one gripe I have--about this and every other SRS--is that it seems geared ONLY for language learning. While SRS works very well for that, I suspect it works well for much more than that.
rdlecler1 12y ago
I learned 850 chinese characters over a 3 week period one summer using this technique. It's amazingly powerful.
jeromegv 12y ago
Congrats! Amazing job. I'm learning Spanish and I'm a big fan of flash cards. I use FlashCards++ (for words that I add myself), but it's good to have another app that can bring me new vocabulary (I went over all Duolingo and done with it), seems like you have advanced vocabulary which is great. I've used Memrise in the past, but the UI, the offline caching, and the difficulty to know which deck was high quality turned me off. Great job and add Tagalog(Filipino) if you can one day!
khiddy 12y ago
Looks marvelous, very handsome UX, wonderful idea to have native speakers to help with pronunciation. I've been using Duolingo to learn Italian, and I'd love to see an Italian deck!

305 points by jmcannon 12y ago

Hey HN - a little background, which might be interesting to some. I went through YC twice, the second time with a company called EveryArt. After working on that for two years as a solo founder, I decided to close it down. I moved from San Francisco to Istanbul and started a niche business (actually, just renamed EveryArt, Inc. in fairness to investors) that has done well enough to support me. I started teaching myself objective C in January to eventually build CleverDeck, which was motivated out of dissatisfaction with the available spaced repetition apps available (Anki, Memrise, etc.) I'll be hanging around if you have any questions. Thanks!

lordlarm 12y ago
What especially were you dissatisfied with using Anki and Memrise? And how do CleverDeck do them better?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  There's a lot to talk about, much of which I wrote about in detail here: http://cleverdeck.com/blog http://cleverdeck.com/blog But to name the big two: 1. I just wanted something I could pull out of my pocket and tell me what to learn. Of course I want to be able to customize it (and you can in CleverDeck), but I found myself spending so much time in the others creating and managing different lists. With CleverDeck, the app is the list. If I don't have time to add words that I'm encountering in the wild, then the app will pull from a default ordering that's sorted by "usefulness." 2. I didn't really like the user experience of others. Too many confidence levels led to cognitive fatigue; I had to tap through menus to find which lists had which number of cards I needed to review. With this, just open it and swipe. It just tells me when cards come up for me to review, and automatically presents 10 new cards the next day (or whatever I have the setting adjusted to).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- beering 12y ago
  It seems like a slicker UI specifically for language learning, as well as "curated" decks for each language. I doubt anyone can replicate everything that Anki can do, but there's probably some gains to be had by cutting out complexity.
  - qznc 12y ago
    I use Anki for everything except language learning. It helps me remember books I've read, people, certain numbers, facts, etc. I am really grateful for a lot of the complex features Anki has.
- jurassic 12y ago
  My main beef with Anki is the developer's unwillingness to open up the API. Card creation is currently a pretty unpleasant experience, but I can't currently build a browser extension without doing a lot of hacky bullshit because the the developer won't expose any public endpoints.
  - Blahah 12y ago
    AnkiMobile developer here. Are you referring to the mobile app or the desktop app? Because the desktop has API endpoints you can hook into with extensions [0]. If you're talking about the mobile app, I believe we originally decided not to provide an extension API because Apple forbids it. [0]: http://ankisrs.net/docs/addons.html http://ankisrs.net/docs/addons.html
    - jurassic 12y ago
      I am talking about a REST API that hooks into your AnkiWeb infrastructure. I believe I asked about this in one of the google groups and was told you aren't interested in doing that because of the additional load it could put on the service. I would love to put together something like the Evernote webclipper for creating cards right here in the browser without doing this awkward alt+tab+click+click+click+etc dance to create cards on the desktop client. I admire the work you and others have done on Anki and its extensions, but if I'm going to use Anki as my primary learning tool it needs to be delightful and effortless to create/delete cards as needed.
      - Blahah 12y ago
        Ah OK, in that case I can see both sides. From Damien's perspective, AnkiWeb is a free service, so development/support time and server load have to be considered for any new feature. From the user perspective, web clipping tools would be really nice. Is there anything to prevent interacting between the desktop app API and a web clipping browser plugin, in the same way that the Zotero connector plugin does with the Zotero app API for example?
  - metaleks 12y ago
gwintrob 12y ago
CleverDeck looks great and I've been looking for something to use alongside Duolingo. Do you have plans to expand from vocab to grammar? Duolingo can be too flexible and I'd love some more rigorous lessons on conjugation, etc.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Thanks! Right now, we just want to make the best piece of technology possible for learning thousands of words. I don't think grammar is learned very well through flashcards (though, every word does have an example sentence, so you could pick up on some through pattern recognition). But, for sure, CleverDeck is just one tool in a language learner's toolbox. I have DuoLingo on my phone. It's great. But not ideal for learning tons of vocab.
  - gwintrob 12y ago
    Awesome. Please add German!
    - louthy 12y ago
      Yes, German would be great!
      - jalanb 12y ago
        Für mich auch!
joshdance 12y ago
What was your niche business? How expensive is Istanbul to live in?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  I'm a Turkish teacher! I make podcasts to help people learn Turkish. Supplemental material costs a monthly subscription. It's here: http://turkishteatime.com http://turkishteatime.com Istanbul doesn't generally feel much cheaper than San Francisco, except for rent. I pay $500 to live in a gorgeous apartment with a sea view in downtown Istanbul. That has really added up over time.
  - will_lam 12y ago
    Wow, that would be a great case study over at bootstrappers.io ... Would love to read about your bootstrapping / lifestyle business experiences.
    - akbar501 12y ago
      Absolutely. As another story to back this up, I moved to India when I was bootstrapping my first business. I got down to $2/day for food, and found free rent. This low personal burn rate massively extended the amount of runway available. Of course, Bangalore is no longer low cost, but there are plenty of places that still are.
  - jczhang 12y ago
    "Except for rent." I LOL'd.
  - gerhardi 12y ago
    Off topic: I recall talking about this last year and I believe we have met quite randomly over some beers when I was travelling in Istanbul in July 2013! Good luck for your business!
  - brusch64 12y ago
    Isn't the cost of living there (eating) cheaper than in San Francisco ? I am from Austria (Western Europe) and have been in Istanbul some weeks ago. If you are not going to eat at tourist traps I had the feeling that eating was cheaper than in Austria. Buying clothes and shoes was cheaper than in Austria too - so I guess the cost of living there is less than in Austria. Beer and alcohol is / can be pretty expensive - but other than that I thoughts it is pretty cheap there (as a tourist)
will_lam 12y ago
I find the Anki software to be perfect for my purposes of spaced repetition learning. I've invested a lot of time in creating my decks. Because I don't want to recreate those decks again, is there anyway to import those decks I've already created onto CleverDeck?
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Not right now - I'm sorry. If Anki is perfect for you and you've made all your decks, that's great! Keep using it! If you ever decide to learn another language, we'll be here with a bunch of content ready for you :)

kevinherron 12y ago

Signed up to be notified, awaiting German :)

icholy 12y ago

Looks good. Any plans on allowing custom decks (for stuff other than learning langauges)?

jmcannon 12y ago
Yeah, definitely. Learning languages seems to be the largest use-case for spaced repetition apps, so building in lots of good content for language learning seemed like a smart way to differentiate and target ourselves at first. One of the biggest annoyances I had using the others was how much time I spent building my own decks - when, really, I just wanted to learn common, useful words. It's true that some apps include user-created content you can share, but the quality was pretty hit or miss - and usually didn't come with pre-associated images, sound, and example sentences.

dubcanada 12y ago

Awesome, I signed up to be notified of new languages. But the field border just turned green. Does that mean it went through? Looking at the network it seems the return value was success, but it says "We'll just need to confirm your email address". Shouldn't there be some text or something besides a green border? Either way this looks awesome...

jmcannon 12y ago
Shoot - I knew this was going to happen. Sorry about that. I'll go take a look.

ashishk 12y ago

Congrats Justin!

callumprentice 12y ago

I can't install it right now as I am upgrading to iOS 8 but why is the app free and the 3000+ cards mentioned in the description cost $15? Is it because the App store doesn't support any form of trial? It may be unfair, but I always feel like I am being tricked when a purchase is set up this way?

jmcannon 12y ago
Oh no, I really hope it doesn't give that impression. I'm open to suggestions on how to avoid that perception. It's freemium. You can download the full-featured app with a deck size of 50 (also enough to learn just enough words for a short trip for free). If you like it, you can add different increments to the total deck size through in-app purchases: 99 cents for +100, up to 14.99 for 3000. Didn't mean to be tricky. I thought this was a good way to price it so everyone could try it, tourists could get what they needed for free, and every gradient of language learner could only pay for the amount they needed.
- callumprentice 12y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to reply. I apologize if my comment was rude or insensitive. It looks really nicely done and I can't wait to try it once the iOS 8 install has finished breaking my phone.

tehwalrus 12y ago

German and Mandarin are my two requests (even just 300 or so Mandarin cards would be great! I'll help!). Just started on French while I wait, looks great! :)

ryanjodonnell 12y ago
There is an app called Skritter for mandarin that will allow you to practice writing the characters too.
jmcannon 12y ago
Thank you! The German list is done and we actually finished recording yesterday. I think we'll be able to release it within a month.
pimlottc 12y ago
There is a fantastic dictionary app for Mandarin called Pleco that includes a SRS-based flashcards feature as an in-app purchase (around $10-15 if I recall). The base dictionary itself is free. While of course you can just program your own cards into Anki or the like, being able to create new cards from dictionary definitions with one tap is very handy.

alexchamberlain 12y ago

Android version in the pipeline? Should I sign up for email updates?

jmcannon 12y ago
Ah man - one of the things I've learned from my launching my first iOS app is how painful it is to answer this question. Painful because yes, I would LOVE to. Let's see how people like it on iOS, then I can decide the best way to go about getting it in the pipeline as quickly as possible.
- gknoy 12y ago
  That was a very tactful way of saying "probably not soon". ;)
- alexbecker 12y ago
  I for one would definitely buy this app if there was an android version. So that's one person out of the few thousand you need...
- arbitrage 12y ago
  I concur with the other post; I would buy this app if there's an android version. While I understand that porting and maintaining two applications is difficult, you're ignoring half your potential market. Good luck, I hope to see the droid version soon.
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    Thanks! I appreciate the nudge. :)
    - ZoFreX 12y ago
      Is there a way for me to be notified if/when the Android app is available?

sethbannon 12y ago

I almost hate to ask this question here because this seems like a really nice product, but does anyone know of any similar apps? I ask because I'm learning Polish, a language not yet available on CleverDeck.

jmcannon 12y ago
I'll answer! Check out Anki and Memrise. They, in my opinion, are the best SRS alternatives out there.
- Tossrock 12y ago
  What's your opinion on Mnemosyne?
abecedarius 12y ago
I once wrote https://github.com/darius/spaced-out https://github.com/darius/spaced-out which is certainly not serious competition, but came from a similar idea: build the deck from the most common words in the language (automated using an aligned parallel corpus), and replace the Anki interface because I didn't like it. It's probably a better starting-point than starting from scratch, I'll say that for it. (I wasn't interested enough in language-learning to take it further.)
adambyrtek 12y ago
Give SuperMemo a try, it's a Polish company. http://www.supermemo.net/ http://www.supermemo.net/

soneca 12y ago

Nice UI. I would love if you add a "Advanced English" deck. I have a 11 years old vocabluary (according to some online test I forgot the name). There is a place for people learning english as a second language where you know enough to be able to communicate, but you don't have a good enough vocabulary to express more sophisticated ideas, or express simple ideas more elegantly. I am at this place and I am sure there are lots of others here.

jmcannon 12y ago
Yes, when talking about the language learning market, English is the whale. We're going to get there as fast a possible, but it means we'll have to be prepared for everything that comes with having non-English speaking customers. Though, having an Advanced English deck - so people have good enough English to tell us all the problems we have - sounds like a terrific way to start :)
- vtail 12y ago
  As a non-native English speaker myself, I agree with GP. I have a bunch "English Vocabulary in Use" books of various levels which I almost never open because, you know, it's hard to carry it around with you. $14.99 seems to be a right price, too.
hnriot 12y ago
you don't need an app for this, you need to read more books. Not about expanding your vocabulary, but just quality fiction novels. That's how native english speakers broaden their vocabulary and your ability is clearly far enough along that most books will be within your grasp. From what you wrote your vocabulary is fine, it's the nuaces of grammar where your English would be improved by reading copiously.
- teach 12y ago
  Books will really, really help. But targeted practice will also help. For the original question, there's an Anki deck for English idioms with sentences.[0] [0] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/846593111 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/846593111 Edit: It seems Anki is mentioned quite a bit further in the thread, so I'll skip defining it here.

3JPLW 12y ago

One thing that's unclear in the app description: does the free app come with 3000 words? And then is the $15 purchase is for an additional 3000? That would be amazing! Are all the words nouns? Or are there verbs/adjectives/adverbs, too? Is there a way to create a set of flashcards via a file upload? That'd be a wonderful feature!

jmcannon 12y ago
Good questions! The free app (there's only one freemium app, actually), has all 3000 words built-in. We charge based on how many you swipe into your deck (i.e. you decide to actively learn). The app comes with a free deck size of 50, then you can increase that incrementally with in-app purchases. There is a healthy mix of nouns, verbs, adjective, and adverbs. There isn't currently anyway to add your own content outside of creating individual cards within the app. It's something that I'd like to get to (if people find the SRS system useful, I'd like people to do whatever they want with it).
- jschuur 12y ago
  I was genuinely confused about this too, and am still not 100% sure I get it after your comment. So the deck size means it's 50 concurrent cards, but I can add/remove card sets to my deck as much as I'd like using the free version? If I remove cards from my deck to make room, does this mean any training on how well I've told it I know those words is lost?

ajsharma 12y ago

You won me over immediately with the fox in a lab coat

quadfour 12y ago

Looking great, just a small pet peeve, in the coming soon section, above portuguese you have the brazil flag, feels kinda weird being portuguese and seeing that :)

jmcannon 12y ago
I know, I know - I'm sorry. Despite some of the objections, I just think flags do make great language icons. I do understand that complaints, though. In that particular case, we chose the Brazilian flag because the list and audio is target at Brazilian Portuguese. We should probably explicitly write "Brazilian." Interestingly, we couldn't find a flag icon for Arabic that was neutral enough. So we just chose the green color from the Arab League flag (which I guess could itself be controversial) and wrote "Arabic" in white text.
- alexbecker 12y ago
  I would write "Portuguese (Brazil)" rather than Brazilian, similar to how you often see "English (US)" or "English (UK)". If I saw "Brazilian" my first thought would be "whoever wrote this doesn't know that Brazil speaks Portuguese".
  - jmcannon 12y ago
    Haha, right - I was thinking "Brazilian Portuguese." Though, we will be launching Mexican and Canadian soon as well!

joshdance 12y ago

Looks great.

LeonidBugaev 12y ago

Looks great, but does it have pronunciation?

jmcannon 12y ago
Absolutely. All 3000 included cards have native-speaker audio. We recorded it ourselves.

adriand 12y ago

Looks and works really, really nicely. I am currently in the midst of cramming Spanish (trip to Barcelona in two weeks, trip to Cuba in four months, woo hoo!) and I've been using these two trips as a motivation to finally learn the Spanish I've always wanted to know. I've been using Duolingo a lot, as well as Memrise. Memrise has been quite good so far, but it is certainly not very polished, whereas this seems extremely well-done. Congratulations on the launch, this looks like a superb product and if it works for me I'd be happy to pay for it. That's a clever idea for in-app purchases too, by the way.

jmcannon 12y ago
Thank you. That means a lot to me.
simonswords82 12y ago
Hey, I lived in Barcelona throughout March this year and Catalan is the dominant language. I felt (and perhaps I was too self conscious) that when I spoke Spanish they worked out pretty quickly I was English and defaulted back to that. Either way, learning Spanish is definitely an advantage as there's crossover to Catalan. Hope you have a wicked time :)
- adriand 12y ago
  Well hey now. I can't believe I never came across that piece of advice before, but you're right! I knew that Catalan was spoken but did not realize it was the dominant language. I guess I better learn some basics...as if I didn't have enough to learn already. ;)

thanatropism 12y ago

How does this compare to Anki? Duolingo is nice, but it's not as good for cramming as for low-intensity, long-term learning. Anki is awesome for just "I'm going to memorize this speech like a poem"

jmcannon 12y ago
I agree with you on DuoLingo - great app, not good for vocab learning. Anki was my main SRS app for many, many years. I didn't like managing all my own lists (and was often buggy). I didn't like the UI. Adding pictures and audio was awkward. It didn't have some basic features like reminders or notifications built-in. Also, I had to add all my own stuff to Anki. If you want to learn Spanish (for example), we've already done all the work of picking the 3000 words we think you should learn, added high quality images and audio to each one, and gave each an example sentence with translation. I think that's what's most exciting to me.

kpennell 12y ago

Good work, Justin. Hope Turkey is fun.

brandonmenc 12y ago

Looks great! I cast my votes for Hebrew and Japanese.

coldcode 12y ago

Very nice, I wish I'd done this :-) Maybe I can finally learn Spanish and relearn all the German vocabulary I've forgotten.

shamney 12y ago

How did you decide on the vocabulary list and where did you get the example sentences?

jmcannon 12y ago
We wrote in detail about how we picked the words here: http://cleverdeck.com/blog http://cleverdeck.com/blog. Most of the example sentences were hand-picked from tatoeba.org. That covered about 2700 of the words - our teachers wrote the remaining 300 or so.

omarish 12y ago

This is amazing. I've been using Anki for a few years now and have been looking for a better app. Congratulations. I can't wait to use it.

frankdenbow 12y ago

Would love this on Android. Currently I use Duolingo, which is great, but many of the words they teach seem irrelevant for common conversation.

techpeace 12y ago

Thanks so much for building this! Just purchased the full 3k Spanish deck. You've saved me a ton of time vs. my plan of writing a script to build my own Anki decks. One question: is there a recommendation on whether to go with English-first or target-language-first when studying? I prefer to go with Spanish-first, but I don't know if there's any data on which is more effective. Thanks again!

jmcannon 12y ago
You're welcome! :) In building this app, we didn't survey the research addressing that question specifically (though googling "L1 vs L2 flashcards" pulls up some interesting sites). For me personally, speaking from 15+ years learning French, Chinese, and Turkish, it's native --> target. Learning that way helps me recall faster when I need to construct my own sentences. If you're looking just to learn to read, I think target --> native is easier and might be a better approach. I've also had success starting with native --> target to familiarize myself with the word, then quickly switching to target --> native to solidify my ability to produce it on my own.
- jmcannon 12y ago
  Sorry, switch native-->target and target-->native in my last paragraph.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hfsktr 12y ago

Everyone seems to be focused on languages but is there something like this for music? Especially instrument specific, for example a card for finger placement? Would something like that require me custom adding every card? and somehow figuring out how to get pictures/symbols on the cards instead of just text? FWIW I don't know how hard that is with existing apps, maybe it's gotten easier. Sorry if it is a derail.

jmcannon 12y ago
Anki is a spaced repetition app that would allow you to create your own cards for this sort of thing (add arbitrary images to one side of the card).
- qznc 12y ago
  Anki basically generates cards from a table of fact and a HTML template. You can include pictures and sounds. It takes a little to get used to it, though.
ThomPete 12y ago
The thing is though that you need to build muscle memory not just memorize the finger placement (thats the easy part)
- hfsktr 12y ago
  That's a good point. Something I hadn't really thought of. I had been thinking of this (flashcards/learning) for a while and I ended up buying physical flash cards[1] that I can keep at my desk. At the time though I couldn't tell one note from another and like learning anything it seems impossible and pointless to start (and I'm not THAT old). I sometimes wish I had the feedback (stats) that the apps have but I have learned and that was the goal. I will probably end up coming back to this app when there are more languages though. [1] I had downloaded Anki but got discouraged at the thought of building every single card myself and figuring out how to import it all. I tried to find some online that were premade but with no success I moved on. I don't consider myself lazier than the next person but this kind of made me feel like it.

z3ugma 12y ago

Going through the French deck, I've noticed some errors, especially with gender and homonyms - is there a built-in, effective way to report these kind of problems to the devs?

jmcannon 12y ago
Really? I'm really sorry about that. We checked those lists so many times. If you can be bothered, please email me at justin@cleverdeck.com and let me know what you found. We'll push an update fixing any errors ASAP.

serkanh 12y ago

I have been using Anki for a while now and i love it. I wish there are more spaced repetition apps out there that are not limited to learning a language.

ZoFreX 12y ago

> "We can email you when we launch new languages." How? Presumably I'm being slow because others have managed it, but I can't figure out how to sign up to be notified...

jmcannon 12y ago
Oh, is there not an email input there? Sorry about that. Feel free to email me at justin@cleverdeck.com.
- ZoFreX 12y ago
  Ah-ha, Adblock was to blame!

rxdecoster 12y ago

Great work Justin. As an intermediate/advanced Turkish speaker, I find a lot of value in being able to learn new vocabulary easily and in a manageable way. Thanks for building this.

saganus 12y ago

Does anyone have an idea why I get a McAffee Web Gateway error with: Alert: This website has a Security Reputation Rating of High Risk URL: http://cleverdeck.com/ http://cleverdeck.com/ Category: Site Reputation: Medium Risk Code: Reputation Coaching How is "Reputation coaching" a bad thing? I don't even know what it is but unfortunately I also don't want to risk getting a red flag in the system because I'm trying to find out. Anyone have any ideas?

spacefight 12y ago
No, no idea why you're running McAffee Web Gateway, sorry :(
- saganus 12y ago
  I'm browsing from a work computer, and the network has the gateway enabled. I would never do that by choice. But it struck me as weird that they had this site blacklisted.

wf 12y ago

This looks really cool, definitely going to download it and give it a shot. (btw I didn't know what spaced repetition was and your wikipedia link is missing the colon on your about page)

jmcannon 12y ago
Thanks! All fixed.

dannylandau 12y ago

Who is the designer? Did you outsource this part to a freelancer?

jmcannon 12y ago
I did all the UX design myself then passed it to the very talented Yoshini who made it pretty. yoshinig.com

splatcollision 12y ago

Really great apps just downloaded them all. I've picked up turkish from my wife but it's still great to get more practice. Only suggestion is the right-ward swipe on cards to dismiss them as well-known should trigger earlier - I find myself having to swipe further than I feel I need to in order to dismiss the card. Otherwise great work & thanks for sharing

fataliss 12y ago

I'm desperate to find this kind of app for Chinese. Stuff like Duolingo and the like are all great, but no Chinese :( But good job, this app looks great!

jfoster 12y ago
You might be interested in trying Chinese Tutor (http://fastchinese.com/flashcards http://fastchinese.com/flashcards). (I'm the author) It doesn't have pretty photos, but it does use a spaced repetition algorithm and have the flashcards ordered based on how commonly they will appear.
alxndr 12y ago
Check out Skritter, it's for-pay spaced repetition which also has you practice writing the characters. (Also has Japanese) Edit: oh yeah, they were previously turned down by YC and then accepted by YC, or something. Don't know the details.
- jfoster 12y ago
  Hadn't heard of them being turned down, but they were accepted for their new project, CodeCombat. (http://codecombat.com/ http://codecombat.com/)
  - alxndr 12y ago
    Whoops, yeah that's all I'm thinking of.
rahimnathwani 12y ago
Try: Pleco (it has flashcards as an in-app purchase) Memrise (there are pre-made decks for HSK levels) Anki (try the 'Mastering Chinese Characters' deck)
gurkendoktor 12y ago
Pleco is definitely the #1 app for learning Chinese vocab. The OCR functionality makes it easy to scan the word lists in your Chinese textbook, and the example sentences in the free dictionary are pretty good. Pleco doesn't really teach you Chinese in the way that Duolingo teaches languages, but I don't think that CleverDeck can do that, either :)

nicpottier 12y ago

This looks great, would buy if it was in the Android Play store. :(

pragone 12y ago

Is this a language learning app or a spaced repetition studying app? I'd be interested in something with a smoother UI thank Anki, but that seems to be the established app for med school

jliechti1 12y ago
Have you tried Mnemosyne? http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ It may not have as many features as Anki, but it has a good plugin architecture and the UI is very simple.

saiko-chriskun 12y ago

I was so excited... then saw the ios only :/ EDIT: then I even realized there are only specific languages supported? we can't add our own? this is useless..

joshdotsmith 12y ago
This comment deserves to be downvoted into oblivion. You must come from a very special place where you deserve so much more than this. This guy busted his ass to release something. Yes, it's on a single platform (for now). Yes, it only has three different languages (for now). Woe is you that he hasn't built precisely what you want on the platform of your choice. Give me a break. Makers and makers-to-be, don't be dissuaded by this kind of garbage attitude.

azinman2 12y ago

Really nice work! I don't know about the market but given I'm about to go to Paris it's here just in time for me to bone up on my french! I like the 'learn a little everyday' approach, and I found even putting those cards back not only easy from a UX perspective but effective in that I had already forgotten 'drapeau'!

confess_ly 12y ago

China is a huge market and people there are crazy about learning English, so definitely add English and then you can expand to international market

gurkendoktor 12y ago

I think you should consider adding a newsletter sign-up form to the website. I would love to use this for Japanese, but there is no way to 'subscribe' to your apps. (You've posted a link to your blog below, so I think I'll just add it to my RSS reader, but I wouldn't have found it without the HN comments.)

__m 12y ago

Why didn't you create a single app with all card sets as in app purchases? I use Mental Case which allows you to share sets and download sets from other people.

tvanantwerp 12y ago

As someone trying to use SR to learn new things, I'm always tempted to build my own software. Congrats for doing it! The one gripe I have--about this and every other SRS--is that it seems geared ONLY for language learning. While SRS works very well for that, I suspect it works well for much more than that.

rdlecler1 12y ago

I learned 850 chinese characters over a 3 week period one summer using this technique. It's amazingly powerful.

jeromegv 12y ago

Congrats! Amazing job. I'm learning Spanish and I'm a big fan of flash cards. I use FlashCards++ (for words that I add myself), but it's good to have another app that can bring me new vocabulary (I went over all Duolingo and done with it), seems like you have advanced vocabulary which is great. I've used Memrise in the past, but the UI, the offline caching, and the difficulty to know which deck was high quality turned me off. Great job and add Tagalog(Filipino) if you can one day!

khiddy 12y ago

Looks marvelous, very handsome UX, wonderful idea to have native speakers to help with pronunciation. I've been using Duolingo to learn Italian, and I'd love to see an Italian deck!