Vocab Lists

I've written the Learning Center and FAQ pages, and am interested to know if there are more questions to be asked or more resources to be learned of. Also, we're working on adding vocabulary and character lists for textbooks now, in addition to our comprehensive HSK lists. Let us know what textbooks you're using and would like to see added.

Hudson Kitty

Two newsworthy items today: First, the time is now and the kitten is active. Yes, our little scheduling algorithm is up and running, and squig collecting is turned off. This means that the spaced repetition algorithm should be taking its first crack at user input and helping everyone learn more characters. It's worth noting however, that the kitten's eyes, which will determine user skill level, are not yet turned on, so everyone visiting the site for the near future will be treated like a newb by a blind kitten. Hopefully we'll have the kitten's eyes completed in the not-too-distant future..

In other news, we will be gone tomorrow to visit the foundation underwriting our business, the Burton D. Morgan foundation in Hudson Ohio. After our visit to the foundation we are scheduled to talk through a possible site for beta testing with a third party. Because nothing is decided, that's all we can say for now. We're hoping to enlist as many beta testers as possible so that we can perfect and hone Skritter until it's sharper than a razor that's as sharp as two razors.

Rats!

Looks like we introduced a bug with the alpha comments sometime after the afternoon of the 8th. If you sent anything using the textbox on the practice page, it was eaten by a grue. Ouch!

I'm very sorry for not catching this earlier. If you happen to remember any feedback you sent, I'd be grateful if you could resend it.

On the brighter side, we're very close to turning off squig-collection and unleashing the kitten upon the realm. Once the kitten's eyes are in place, yeeessss...

Login System

We now have a user authentication system! We're hooked in through Clickpass, and through them you can authenticate with Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft or any OpenID you would like. So you won't need to (or be able to) store a password with us, instead just use an existing account.

It's not completely done though, you cannot yet have multiple OpenIDs associated with your user account. But that will be soon.

Now that we can tell who is who, the next thing to do is make all the pages for changing preferences and checking progress and everything else unique to each user. That's for tomorrow.

Oh yeah, what do you think of the new logo?

This is just the system we built while we were building our other system

Recognition is getting a lot better, thanks to all the Squigs. George has created 1050 characters now with the Chef, although we're still squigging so you won't see that many yet. Scott has the kitten going in test at last, so as soon as we've gotten all the squigs from this next round of characters, it'll start tracking your progress.

Please let us know if any of the stroke orders are wrong (the program pulses the stroke it thinks should be next when you do one out of order), or if you draw a stroke and it just looks bad. Perhaps it's angled poorly. Perhaps it's really squished. Perhaps its straw hat and its combat boots just don't match. Regardless, submit a comment.

Tone practice is in, but its recognition is bad at this point. Draw what you think the tone looks like and don't bother trying to get it to recognize -- we need your Squigs!

Throw some Squigs on it

We're getting lots of good squigs, awesome. Keep up the good work. We need yet more Squigs, however. Even if you don't know Chinese at all, you can do some -- it's easy. The more different handwriting styles we get into the system, the more accurate the recognition will be.

Once we get enough Squigs and the recognition's going well, we'll throw in the kitten, and you can start learning with spaced repetition goodness. Until then, thanks for your patience.