But, casual studiers might turn into serious learners, and if you can get them hooked on Anki with a low cost (cut down) app, then they might upgrade to the full blown app when they start the serious stuff. Just a thought.

Also, I think a 'try before you buy' freebie version gets people using an app and understand the benefits, making them more likely to buy the full app.

CJ

Is there free trails with itunes? Like 30 days free, then pay?

Apple discourages developers from adding time locks to their code. I'm certainly not ruling out a cut down demo version in the future - it's perfectly understandable for people to want to try before they buy, especially at this price tag. But I was more trying to make a quip at some of the other tools on the market that are beautifully polished but a pain to actually study with.

Considering you need the desktop client (which is free) to set up the iPhone app, I think that's plenty of "Try before you buy" right there. It definitely got this forum and other forums in a tizzy when Resolve unleashed it upon us in it's 2 field glory.

Still, Anki is nothing without decks, and seeing a well made deck that truly helps memorize these important items will help sell it more. Did anyone in the anki wiki ever categorize the more popular/useful Anki decks. Certainly a student taking a comparitive anatomy class would be sold after seeing image flashcards for his subject.

resolve Wrote:Apple discourages developers from adding time locks to their code. I'm certainly not ruling out a cut down demo version in the future - it's perfectly understandable for people to want to try before they buy, especially at this price tag. But I was more trying to make a quip at some of the other tools on the market that are beautifully polished but a pain to actually study with.

Like StudyArcade? Zinga!

To Zane's credit, he was open to the idea of open sourcing SA later down the track, and SA at least has SuperMemo-esque spaced repetition, compared to some of the other apps out there. Anyway, I wasn't trying to single anyone out in particular - let's keep things positive. :-)

Yeah, alright, that is true. I guess I'm still bitter about the promises of it being just like Anki for the iPhone and then... well, not being like Anki at all.

I agree with Nukemarine, I don't think there is any need for a trial version of any sort. We got the desktop application, we got Anki Online, we got iAnki. We know exactly what the app will do. If official offline support in your pocket isn't worth paying for then stick to other methods.

Since I don't have a day job, $25 is a bit out of my price range right now. So I'll stick to my other solutions until I can afford it.

Nukemarine Wrote:Still, Anki is nothing without decks, and seeing a well made deck that truly helps memorize these important items will help sell it more. Did anyone in the anki wiki ever categorize the more popular/useful Anki decks. Certainly a student taking a comparitive anatomy class would be sold after seeing image flashcards for his subject.

I'm really interested in this myself. This summer I will be looking at this as part of the SRS university project I will be doing. I'm hoping to organize with faculty in different departments, who are interested in developing decks, or looking at/editing some of the current shared decks. And I may be creating a deck for my professors psy 101 class, and hopefully doing a test with it using 2 classes (one gets anki one doesn't - suprise test near the end of term to see who's "learned" midterm stuff - or something like that).

Anyhow - hijacking..... but that is a good point Nuke -

Nukemarine Wrote:Still, Anki is nothing without decks, and seeing a well made deck that truly helps memorize these important items will help sell it more. Did anyone in the anki wiki ever categorize the more popular/useful Anki decks. Certainly a student taking a comparitive anatomy class would be sold after seeing image flashcards for his subject.

I agree, the great thing about Smart.fm is the number and variety of 'decks' that are available. I love browsing this site and seeing what is available, and if I see something interesting I use the Anki plugin to create an Anki deck. So, I think a decent website/page dedicated to show-casing shared Anki decks would certainly get people interesting in the app.

As far as a 'try before you buy', I was thinking more like a 'Lite' version with limited functionality (maybe one small deck, no media, ...?) to let people try it before paying the full price. We all know how great it is, but we need to spread the word further!

CJ

People shouldn't be encouraged in using other peoples decks. Individuals should create their own decks to improve their techniques.

Mimicking someone else's study methods is decent. Making your own is priceless.

Tobberoth Wrote:People shouldn't be encouraged in using other peoples decks. Individuals should create their own decks to improve their techniques.

Mimicking someone else's study methods is decent. Making your own is priceless.

Like most things, I only agree with this in part. Look at this site. Is it not a "pre-made" deck? Isn't it what led many here to go on to a couple of other "pre-made" decks in addition to making their own?

Now, I put pre-made in quotes in that, yes, there's a structured deck one can use out of the box. However, you tailor it with your own stories. In Anki, you can even go further and tailor how you review. Same goes with pre-made grammar and vocabulary decks. You can just study what is there, but one can add definitions and explanations, extra example sentences, card types, etc. The deck becomes your own.

Give someone that's not sure on what to do something to do (Anki, detailed instructions, pre-made deck), and then as they get comfortable they can change it to fit their needs. Throwing Anki at them and saying "here you go, good luck" will catch very few. Explaining Anki catches a few more. Explaining and giving good examples catch even more.

On the other hand, there's the problem of too many decks to choose/weed from. That was a big drawback of smart.fm in that EVERY STUPID DECK was made public by default. Just too much noise.

Anyway, a great SRS (anki) combined with a deck that's immediately useful to a person to sell Anki is a great combination. Just based on all the "how do I" questions that pop up on this forum is enough to tell me I'm not far off base here.

The problem I have with "Anki should have great shared decks!" is that it's really difficult to get good shared decks that don't have copyright problems - image or audio licensing, textbook licensing. Smartfm were able to hire professional voice actors for their Japanese series and were very generous to give their content away to the community, but that's a rarity. Yes, we have a free Heisig in English, but the authors of the foreign language translations refuse to allow flashcards of their work to float around. I'm not sure the situation will really improve until I make some way for flashcard authors to sell their content to users, and it's going to be very difficult to convince them to sign up for an open source program where DRM is not feasible.

Resolve,

If all we're talking about is Japanese, then yes, we're limited by the decks but there's some good open source material out for beginners/intermediate levels. To be honest, I don't know if there are good decks for other areas of study that happen to be open source (Math, Physics, History, Law, Biology, etc). Still, if those are available, then it's useful to have them as a selling point.

On the other hand, is there a way to lock down a deck? Someway so that the data cannot be exported in a usuable manner nor can be shared among computers (ie must be sync'd with a user account every so many days). Now, I don't know if Univ. of Hawaii Press, CosCom and UBJG sold more copies because of an SRS (Anki in particular), but if they will admit that such a system helped boost sales then other publishers would take notice. They might be willing to publish a difficult to distribute Anki deck, which is just one more way to sell Anki apps.

Hell, most college books come with a CD that has the material on it, so why not an SRS of the material? This is potentially a multi-million dollar concept. The "member account" authorization is a code on each CD/textbook. Imagine every CosCom cd book that allows user's access to that wonderful material, with you getting a certain cut of each sale because your SRS system is encouraging more to buy the book.

Or you can hope for just app sales to those that know how to make their own decks.

You make it sound like I'm willingly ignoring the market. As I said, DRM and open source software is not compatible. I can build a nice platform for providers to sell their decks to people, but there are few content providers that will bite without protections in place. Yes, we all know that any DRM will eventually be broken, but without some promise of security, you just don't have the publisher's ear.

Guess it gets into areas dealing with GPL more appropriate for the other thread. Still, I'm not sure how having an ability to secure data is not compatible with open source software that uses that data. Do none of the GPL covered products allow for password protections and encryption of data, cause that's all I'm talking about.

Besides, I don't think we're talking about DRM. Unless I'm mistaken, there's not super security being put on items that's being released with text books. It's just token protection to make distribution more annoying that it's worth. Plus, I'll assume that what's on the Anki decks are not as useful if you don't have the text books to go along.

Apple just sent me a message to say the app's been approved! Should show up in the app store within 24 hours.

Woot- that took ages First one to see it up in the store, report back.

Will future updates be free? I want that media support!

Of course, all updates are free.

Then I'll definitely be buying right away!

Nice - I've been checking this thread hoping to hear it was out - I'm super excited - this app will change the way I study!

I'll be buying this as soon as I find a way to pay for it! I hate Apple.

Is it possible to make a US itunes account, buy anki, and then sync with my Japanese iphone (and my Japanese itunes stuff)?

By the way, is there a reason the price for the app is so different? $24.99 vs 2900 yen.

resolve Wrote:Apple just sent me a message to say the app's been approved! Should show up in the app store within 24 hours.

Awesome. Keep up the good work with anki and future projects with it.

Grinkers Wrote:I'll be buying this as soon as I find a way to pay for it! I hate Apple.

Is it possible to make a US itunes account, buy anki, and then sync with my Japanese iphone (and my Japanese itunes stuff)?

By the way, is there a reason the price for the app is so different? $24.99 vs 2900 yen.

I have both a Japanese and American account, and everything I download shows up in the same place and syncs to my iPhone together just fine. So, that shouldn't be a problem.

Can't wait for the Anki app to show up.