Hi

I've just released a new slightly experimental Leitner box based flashcard app for iOS8. It's free (at time of writing) and available on the Apple App Store:

Goldfish Flashcards

I have developed Goldfish Flashcards based on my own experience of using an SRS, in which I created recognition cards, going from words & phrases in my target language to translations or definitions in my native language. I made a number of observations studying in this way:

- When reviewing I rarely needed to look at the answer to know if I was correct.
- I spent too much time creating cards.
- I felt (a little) like a slave of the SRS and got stressed taking trips and missing reviews.
- When adding cards with phrases, the same vocab often appeared on multiple cards making advanced SRS algorithms a little redundant.

With Golden Flashcards I aim to create an app where cards are cheap: they can be created fast, reviewed fast, and deleted without attachment. It thus has a few quirky features:

- Cards are single sided.
- Cards are displayed for review in a list. Swipe right to pass a card or left to fail it.
- Cards are automatically deleted when passed after an interval of 30 days. This may be controversial but my thinking is that if the contained vocab / grammar is important it will be seen again in a new context.

The current release is usable but is not yet efficient. I plan too add the following features in the following order:

1. Create cards from outside the app. At present the only way to add cards is in app by typing, or pasting text. A user should be able to browse Facebook on their computer, highlight a target language sentence they come across and tap a browser extension button to create a new card in the Goldfish Flashcards app.
2. In app pop-up dictionary. This will remove some of the limitations of a flashcard being single sided.

I realise that this app may be a little opinionated which is why I say it is experimental. I hope it's useful.

Interesting concept.

I too have been feeling that exact feeling you described, of being a slave the SRS, of stressing about trips or even hanging out with friends. I also have the experience of almost always knowing whether the answer is correct or not.

One question though, what do you recommend doing when we don't know the answer? Since they're one sided, one can hardly have the answer visible on the card.

Darn. Just remembered my iPod is a brick right now, so it'll be a few days before you hear back from me on what I think. I'm very interested in this though.

One thing I'd like is the option to extend the interval. I tend to want something at a 6 months interval at the very least before I'm happy deleting or suspending it to free up review time, though I'd probably settle for 3. 30 days is definitely too short for my liking though, but if not, I'm willing to try it and see what results I get.

Hi NinKenDo

Thanks for your interest in the app! The current version is still lacking in features so isn't really that useful, but once I have implemented the features in my first post, this is how I see the app being used:

The aim of Goldfish flashcards is to encourage users to read their target language. Creating flashcards is a secondary goal to aid with getting familiar with a word / grammar point etc and it's usage. I envisage users on a computer reading tweets, or Facebook posts or other content, highlighting interesting phrases and using a browser plugin (which will initially be a bookmarklet) to send the highlighted phrase to the Goldfish Flashcards app. I want to make this process as streamlined as possible, hence the flashcards being single sided.

NinKenDo Wrote:One thing I'd like is the option to extend the interval.

Because I see this process as continuous and imagine cards to be phrases rather the single words, and that the process is mainly about getting familiar with the content I do not think it matters that the maximum duration is 1 month. It is hoped that the user will come across other instances of the words being learned through the process of reading more target language content. However if many people start using Goldfish Flashcards and its a popular request I will probably add some very basic scheduling options to the setting menu.

NinKenDo Wrote:what do you recommend doing when we don't know the answer? Since they're one sided, one can hardly have the answer visible on the card.

The planned popover dictionary should help in that situation. For me personally this would be adequate for 95% of situations. This obviously doesn't help if you like to add notes about sentence structure etc, in which case Golden Flashcards might not be useful.