Hello everyone! Welcome to the new Announcement feed on Popup Chinese! We wanted a way to be able to stay in touch with you during all the fast-breaking changes around here, and waiting a whole month for our newsletter was just plain crazy talk.
In case you haven't noticed, we've got a shiny new logo, some great, irreverent new lessons, and a few rotating banners to help you learn more about the services we offer. We haven't always done the best job of making you aware of all the great features that come with a Premium subscription, and we're working to change that. No sense in hiding our light under a bushel, eh?
If you're not a Premium subscriber already (and we love you anyway), we'd like you to take a moment to ask yourself why. If the answer is price point or you just don't think you’d use all the features of a Premium subscription, then we've got great news for you! Starting May 1st, we'll be offering a Basic PLUS Account that gets you some of our goodies for a much lower price point. It's a limited-time offer, so make sure you're here when it goes live!
There's a ton of great innovations coming down the pike and this is where you'll hear about them first. New users to the site will be automatically subscribed to the Announcement feed, but if you're an old timer you can subscribe with a single click on your Account page if you’d like. Once you're subscribed our announcements will show up on your home page like all the rest of our lessons.
We're excited about what comes next here and hope you are, too. And, as always, we love to hear your thoughts, so drop in a word or two in the comment section and we'll respond in kind.
hotpotmike
said on April 24, 2009
The new banners, logo, etc, look great! Very attractive.I didn't notice the Announcement feed until accessing the site as a guest user through another browser that I accidentally loaded. I probably would have noticed it soon anyways, however perhaps it might be good that when a new feed becomes available, old timers will see a one line notice on their home page saying a new feed is available and to click to subscribe.
henning
said on April 24, 2009
For me the most important tool (besides the tests and lessons) is the "review question" which is still hidden deep in the "Account" section.There is lots of room for improvement regarding that little but effective function:1. it shouldn't mysteriously stop reloading new content after a random number of questions.2. It would be nice to be able to limit the levels (e.g. to exclude "Advanced" questions).3. The type of question should be indicated (e.g. "Find the mistake")..4. For "find the mistake" it would be helpful to have the mistake localized - as it is now done in the actual tests.5. There should be the option to manually go to the next question after the choosing the right answer - to digest it properly.6. Spaced repetition...7. Listening questions are still problematic. Maybe exclude those from the repetition.
toneandcolor
said on April 25, 2009
I second Henning on the review question function - it's very useful but seems like it could be expanded a little (with some of the functions he mentioned perhaps) and should be more prominent on the site for new users.
Echo
said on April 25, 2009
Hey Guys,
Really useful suggestions, thanks. Frankly, we didn't think that much about "review question" function before, although when I was a student I had a small notebook for reviewing questions, and I found it was unexpectedly helpful.
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
trevelyan
said on April 25, 2009
@echo - you didn't think much about review questions because you weren't building it! ;)The current review page was designed to have the simplest interface we could come up with. I'd like to port over our spaced repetition algorithms as well and think giving more control over control is a Good Idea. We should make the page more prominent and beef it up so it offers better progress tracking as well.Useful to hear this stuff. Frequent badgering actually does help us get things done!
imron
said on April 25, 2009
*cough* display times for previous tests on the progress page *cough*
imron
said on April 25, 2009
That was fast :-)
imron
said on April 25, 2009
I think it looked better with the times in red though.
trevelyan
said on April 25, 2009
ok, we'll go with red then.... ;)The problem Henning pointed out with it mysteriously just not working after a while should be fixed too.
orbital
said on April 25, 2009
agree with both henning and toneandcolor on the potential improvements to the review pages. making it easier to access would make it more useful to me as well.
