Originally published at Sjors Provoost. Please leave any comments there.

It’s been a great experience and experiment, but it’s time to close this chapter. You can still play with the app, but you won’t get any feedback from teachers. Perhaps I will pivot the idea in the future, sell the underlying technology, we’ll see.


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A few days ago I made iSimplifiedChinese free so that more people would download it and hopefully spread the word and provide reviews. So far the good news is that it resulted in lots of downloads, but the bad news is that nobody bought any teacher feedbacks and downloads are ( Read more... )

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Using the ingredients from Part 1 I created three draft lessons for iSimplifiedChinese. In this post I analyse them in order to learn how to improve and expand the course.

All lesson material is shared under CC-SA. A Chinese speaking friend of mine was kind enough to check the ( Read more... )

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The goal of iSimplifiedChinese is to teach people how to pronounce Standard Mandarin Chinese. For that I need words and phrases for students to practice. But which?

The goal isn’t to teach vocabulary or grammar; there are other apps, books and teachers for that. In theory you ( Read more... )

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Apple gave me a really nice birthday present on December 2nd, when they approved my iPhone application: iSimplifiedChinese. For those who don’t know it, it allows you to practice your Chinese pronunciation by sending your pronunciations to a real Chinese person for feedback.

I ( Read more... )

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I installed the Sleep Cycle iPhone app about a month ago, so I thought it was time for an update.

Let me share some data:


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Dit is een eerste opzetje van mijn gedachten rond dit onderwerp. Het is niet een officieel standpunt van welke organisatie dan ook, maar wie weet wordt het dat ooit.
Frisdrankautomaat of platform?

Tim O’Reilly - uitgever en bedenker van de term “Web 2.0” - zette begin 2009 een ( Read more... )

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Ik vond het leuk om vorige week in de NRC-Next een artikel van Bjorn Lomborg tegen te komen, dat een vertaling is van zijn artikel in The Guardian. Hoewel enigszins overdreven - ik heb sowieso niet zoveel met kinderen - komt zijn betoog erop neer dat de klimaathysterie in ( Read more... )

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I just read an interesting and funny blog post that compares two well known - among certain people - productivity systems: Getting Things Done by David Allen and The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. I left a comment there that - in all my modesty - I’d like to share with you ( Read more... )

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I’m going to TED India! My application has been accepted (you have to apply in order to attend) and I’ve booked my flight. Only one minor detail remains: paying for the conference ticket.

I “should” be able to “afford” this conference, since I’m a software engineer in a fairly ( Read more... )