Speedanki developer blog launched

2009年 9月 26日 by Vili | 13 comments

Dear Speedanki users,

I’m Vili Lehdonvirta, owner and webmaster of Speedanki.com. Since I took over the management of the site almost a year ago, I have introduced some small changes and bugfixes that most of you have probably not even noticed. From now on, some more notable updates are starting to be on the horizon, in large part thanks to Péter Kasza, who has joined me in developing the site. We have set up this blog to communicate with you about these improvements and to hear what you think about Speedanki.

We’ll get back to you with more information soon. Thanks for using Speedanki!

  1. Jamie MacG’s avatar

    Jamie MacG on 2009年 9月 30日 at 03時 45分

    Hey, Yea I think the site is great, and it is really usefull!

    But there are maybe 3 things I would like to see.

    1) A Random order option.
    2) the example/meaning/flip buttons all closer together.
    3) maybe when you flip it could still show the kanji?

    But I can’t comlpain it’s a great free service!

    Thanks,

    Jamie MacGregor.

  2. Alex Yau’s avatar

    Alex Yau on 2009年 9月 30日 at 19時 16分

    Besides the already suggested random order option, I think a printer friendly version of the list view would be useful. Printing out a list and folding it in half is great for studying on the go.

    Thanks for all the time and effort you’ve spent on the site.

  3. Daniel Whiteman’s avatar

    Daniel Whiteman on 2009年 9月 30日 at 22時 10分

    This is an excellent site and I’ve been using it for over 2 years. I think it’s great that you guys are looking to improve the service even more!

    I agree with Jamie that the best improvement would be a randomizer option.

    Although, even without that it is still an amazing site that I love using.
    Great job on the blog!

    Thanks,

    Daniel Whiteman

  4. Jamie MacG’s avatar

    Jamie MacG on 2009年 10月 1日 at 00時 29分

    hey guys! I was actualy just checkign around for other sites, and not to be rude to speedanki, but I found this site called kanjikuma.com but it only had the JLPT 1… which is no use to me… but it has random order, and it seems you can use the arrow keys to flip between stuff, it’s pretty cool. maybe the speedanki team should check it out too!

    but anyway, thanks again speedanki!

    Jamie.

  5. martin’s avatar

    martin on 2009年 10月 1日 at 01時 44分

    i was never able to study kanji, tried everything but i could never remember how to write them (and i have 2 kyuu) now with this website i just follow the levels and i can practice writing also. its great, keep up the good work

  6. Michèle Ouellet’s avatar

    Michèle Ouellet on 2009年 10月 1日 at 07時 03分

    Hello Vili and Peter!

    I have been using speedanki for 3 years and I am happy the site finally has a face (or 2 faces!)

    I love speedanki and you get all the credit for whatever kanji ability I have developed so far. I agree with the suggestions above, in particular the one about placing the buttons closer to one another.

    My pet peeve is that there are a few wrong entries among the lot, generally a wrong vowel which turns the correct English translation into something else. It would be good to offer a button called Corrections, or something like it, as part of each entry. Or even just one global link somewhere to submit corrections.

    Many, many thanks for your work.

    Michèle Ouellet, Tokyo.

  7. Somashekhar’s avatar

    Somashekhar on 2009年 10月 1日 at 16時 12分

    Hello Vili and Peter!,

    I am one of the greatest benefiter of Speedanki , because of this site I am able to clear my JLPT level 2, thank you for your gr8 work.

    At present I am preparing for the level 1 I think for the level 1 preparation point of view this site is not benefiting me much as it does to levl 2 because of following drawbacks

    1. Examples for many of the kanjis are missing.
    Example are crucial to remember and memorising kanjis.

    2. Not enough kanjis covered for level 1.

    3. Please provide Phenotics option for the dificult kanjis in example perticularly for level 1.This will make more readable and better understanding of the meaning of the sentence.

    4. User own example editing/Adding option .

    you people are putting lot of effort in this site at free of cost These are my few suggestions to make this site more beneficial to reader point of view.

    Somashekhar,Bangalore

  8. Gareth Allan’s avatar

    Gareth Allan on 2009年 10月 1日 at 21時 15分

    Hey team,

    Thanks for the great work to date. I have been a regular for the last 6 months or so and working towards finally getting JLPT1 this December.

    Only major gripe is site performance.. can be painfully slow at times!

    Otherwise, following what others have said – further development of the material in level one would be a plus, completing the examples… and as much as I wish the Speedanki list was exhaustive… sadly, finsihing off the rest of the Kanji on the level 1 list too would be fantastic.

    Best of luck with the project.. look forward to updates, and let us know if users can be of assistance in any way.

    Regards,

    Gareth. Saitama/Tokyo

  9. danni’s avatar

    danni on 2009年 10月 2日 at 07時 18分

    I’m also a great fan of speedanki. I discovered it by accident a year ago and was dead sure that the site had been abandoned.

    I love speedanki for two reasons: 1 the folders for cards are so wonderful for gauging my own knowledge of the cards. i really like the control it gives me. 2 the simple nature of the cards makes learning really straightforward. almost every other kanji flash card site, program or package offers kanjis with all of their readings and many examples. this is good for a dictionary, bad for learning. the simplicity is what keeps me coming back to this site.

    i agree, though, with the calls for a randomizer. from a development perspective i think it could be as easy as adding a script to the card # selection field which would draw a random card from within the specified folder. currently i do exactly this by picking a random number from http://www.random.org and then inputting it.

    otherwise, keep it simple and clean and great!

  10. Glenn’s avatar

    Glenn on 2009年 10月 2日 at 09時 53分

    I love speedanki and I’ve been using it for years! It’s one of the few tools that I owe my ni-kyuu to!

    The one and only feature I’d really like to see added is an option to play an audio clip of the word (or example sentence). Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC has recently added audio clips of Tokyo speakers reciting the words in his dictionary and it saves me heaps of time trying to look up where accents are etc.

    If Speedanki could offer a little play button on each flash card, I’d be ecstatic. Being a not-for-profit site, it might even be possible to get permission to link directly to his.

    Thanks again for the site!
    It really makes Kanji so much faster and easier.

    Glenn

  11. tracy’s avatar

    tracy on 2009年 10月 5日 at 17時 40分

    sir vili,

    thanks for the effort of constructing such a useful tool to learn and remember kanji…i never had the oppurtunity to pass the nikyuu last july but i guess this time zettai ni passu yo…

    if its ok would you like to make it bigger and broader for the readers with eye problems. and if its also possible if you could also develop each kanji with its proper kakusuu and lastly, can we download it?

    once more thank you very much.

  12. Nicola’s avatar

    Nicola on 2009年 10月 6日 at 05時 07分

    I was recently recommended speedanki and have found it really useful.
    It would be great if there were 2 tracking options – one for tracking which kanji have been mastered / familiar etc in terms of reading and a separate tracking system for those kanji that have been mastered in terms of writing.
    Thanks for providing this website. It’s really user friendly

  13. Ashman’s avatar

    Ashman on 2009年 10月 18日 at 18時 58分

    This site was recently recommended to me – and I love it. It’s easy to use and I’m hoping to get into it to pass JLPT 2 this year.

    But I had previously been studying off a list of kanji vocab for 2kyu that had about 4000 entries (whereas speedanki has only about 1092). So I’m wondering where you have obtained your list of 2kyu words? Have you narrowed down to the most common? Or is there some kind of official JLPT list with only those 1092 words?

    Cheers