Flashcard/bundle pricing question

[gato]

Mike said by end of the first quarter....
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2151&p=16710&hilit=early+2010#p16710

[radioman]

Yes - gato, it would seem you are correct... Thanks.

[mikelove]

That's the goal - going to be pretty tight but I'm hoping we can do a really quick beta-test starting late next week and have it stable-enough-to-be-better-than-not-having-flashcards-at-all a week or so after that; fortunately, all of the hard stuff is cross-platform and already working beautifully on Palm/WM.

[darvil]

mikelove,

Is the beta something you do in-house or do you need volunteers? If its the latter then I'm in for it.

[mikelove]

We already used up a lot of our tester slots for the original iPhone beta, so we'll only be able to include a few new people for the flashcard one - I'll send out a note to our email list when we're ready to do the beta, though you'll need to have a lot of free time the following week to put it through its paces.

[eligh]

yea just like misterorange, i'm soo dependent on flashcards! however starting this new quarter i just havent had the time to do it the traditional way anymore! dying for the flashcard system but i know its gonna be ready when its ready.

i got the bundle recently and i think its absolutely terrific. Before this, i was using one of the electronic dictionaries that a lot of the chinese students use but it just wasnt really working or meeting my needs. Pleco, by far, is an amazing product and once a flashcard system is incorporated, i cant even imagine how much easier studying chinese is going to become.

so yea, having it be stable-enough-to-be-better-than-not-having-flashcards-at-all in like two weeks would totally be terrific hahaha

[darvil]

Hey Mike,

Is this email list something that I'm suppose to sign up on? I don't ever recall, unless its the email that was used to send payment? umm

My finals are done next week so I have a fair amount of time. I'm highly anticipating this release.. as carrying around a few hundred flashcards just isn't cutting it anymore.

Either way spring break/free time will give me time to dabble with it. If we don't get a chance to try the first beta, I suppose we will get to play with the 2nd release?

This release is for the touch too right? since that's what I have. Probably a poor question there.

[mikelove]

You can sign up for the mailing list at the bottom of the page at http://www.pleco.com/company.html, though we're only going to be able to let in a tiny % of the people who ask to be included, and the beta's really not going to last very long - any bugs that are minor enough that they go unnoticed after a week or two of testing are probably minor enough that most people would rather have flashcards earlier and put up with them for a few weeks than not have flashcards and wait for us to find / fix them. Particularly given that the big, low-level, ruin-your-data type stuff has already been (for the most part) extensively tested in the field on Palm/WM. And yes, the flashcard release should support iPods along with iPhones, just like our current software.

[ciaocibai]

Just want to say, I second the idea that ever so slightly buggy flashcards are still better than no flashcards, really hanging out for them!

From what I've read on the internet, Apples app approval time is the same as usual so hopefully no hold-ups.

[darvil]

Has there been a first beta run yet?

[mikelove]

No, but there will be very soon - we decided that our original design for the test session screen was too ugly to ship, so we redesigned it (looks kind of like a combination of the iPhone in-call status screen and the Pleco website now) and we've got a couple more days of work to get that to run smoothly before we can do the beta. Here's a screenshot.

BTW, we're about to submit a minor update which fixes a few major iPad bugs (not an iPad-optimized version, just a version which runs correctly in the blown-up iPhone emulation mode) along with a bug with Pinyin searches - we were going to hold off and release those fixes in the flashcard version, but we want to make sure it comes out before 4/3 because of those iPad fixes. (the flashcard version might be submitted to Apple before then, but with all the other iPad submissions it's doubtful it'll be approved before then) But nobody start jumping up and down too much when you see something in the Updates tab in App Store in a few days.

[dcarpent]

Can you tell us roughly what text and characters will look like full screen in the iPad emulation mode, PRIOR to an optimized version? Really jaggey or blurred, or reasonably clear?

[mikelove]

Won't be 100% sure about that until we have an actual iPad to test on, but at least in the emulator the screen is simply pixel-doubled - won't be particularly blurry / fuzzy-looking, but it'll be kind of blocky. But a lot of the blockiness we really can't do anything about until we release an optimized version. (that should certainly be coming, though)

[hairyleprechaun]

Looking great Mike! After transferring my Pleco license to my iPhone nearly 5 months ago, I am getting excited at the opportunity to finally get back to the flashcard regiment again. Keep up the good work mate!

Darrol

[mangochutney]

I don't quite get the meaning of the symbol above the lightbulb, but the interface looks nice.
I'm looking forward to using it.

Although: Is there a way to create lists of words on a bigger machine (Mac/PC), transfer that list to the iPhone and let the Flashcards part build a exercise from it?