Get out more!

OK, do you guys get a premium?

Sigh. But it definately is a nice toy.

Hank,

much appreciated!

Thanks Hank, not sure how I missed that...could be that the new text size is making me go blind ;)

@henning,

They stayed late last night to get it done. All of our mobile phones here support Chinese - being in China - so I guess that is how we overlooked it. Glad it solved your problem.

@boran,

Good idea on a support page. We will try to put something together.

@calkins,

On the Resources page we have a 'Go Mobile' module in the side column. I suppose we could just make it an additional tabbed page in the same section.

I think some others have mentioned this, but there should be a Support Page for the mobile site, detailing what devices are compatible, instructions for character compatibility (if necessary), etc.  PlecoDict has a great page with suggestions on what devices work best with its product.

I have a Palm TX, and although the mobile site looks good and works fast, I can't view characters or mp3's.  A help page would be a great resource for us.

Also, aside from John's mention of the mobile site in his New Features post, I don't see mention of the mobile site anywhere (unless I missed it).  Once John's post gets buried, how will new users even know there's a mobile site?  Maybe a link under Resources?

Hank,

My concern is that the mobile site is labeled as an iPhone version.  What other devices has it been tested on?  For example, I tried accessing the site using my Palm Treo (running Palm OS) and I could not get any sound when playing the podcasts.   I like to know if this is a known issue.  If not, then it is a problem on my end that I need to investigate.  Either way, I would like to see a little guidance in the help section on what mobile OS's are supported by the mobile site and any known issues for each one.

Also, I thought the mobile site was for premium subscribes only.  I'm a basic member and could access it (where as before this release it would fail while trying to log in).  Perhaps, that's why sound is not working for me (since I'm only a basic member)?

It works! The META-tag did the miracle!!!

Thanks for adding it.

Aha! Now we can see all your mistakes! :)

But seriously, yeh I have had troubles with trying to edit my posts too.

Now, it won't let me edit my last post... I am trying to change the background and font colors, but the editting isn't working. Perhaps I am just not waiting long enought before trying to edit. Hmmm....another bug?

@azerdocmom,

That is a very good point. The ChinesePod mobile site works equally well on both the iPhone and iPodTouch. The difference being that the iPodTouch can only access the site via WiFi (at home, at the office, at Starbucks, etc.)

I am only a basic subscriber, so can't speak to the ease of functionality of higher level of subscriptions, but I found my iPodTouch responds really fast. It loads the podcast and it searches the glossary in just a few seconds. I am really impressed at how easy and user-friendly m.chinesepod.com is through the iPodTouch, and assume it is just as easy on the iPhone

Cool! Colors!

Thanks!
:)

@henning,

I will forward the request to the tech team and let you know when it is updated. Hopefully it will solve your encoding issues.

Hank,

interestingly the regular site works on my mobile browser (although this eats up my 30 MB monthly download volume pretty fast).

I could imagine that the characters were displayed properly if you added the following meta-tag to the HTML-pages:

 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

@boran,

To be clear the mobile browser site is designed in UTF-8 XHTML which means that it is by no means closed, proprietary or only can work on the iPhone. It is simply optimized for the iPhone in terms of screen size, functionality (e.g. using MP3's instead of Flash for audio playback), etc. In fact, taking a browser-based approach over an OS-only approach is a more open way of doing things.

It is absolutely true there are other mobile device in the US, but right now certain functions require browser access. For example, the most popular mobile function is flashcard review on-the-go. In terms of mobile browser surfing the iPhone is clearly a step above the rest.

To further improve mobile usability, we are looking at ways that we can also bring specific functions (e.g. glossary lookup, flashcard review) locally to the student's phone via a Symbian-app, iPhone-app, etc. When we get closer to the planning stages for these app's we will definitely ask for wishlists on functionality.

I also don't understand designing the mobile site to work strictly on the iPhone. Most business people in the U.S. are using Blackberrys, Windows Mobile and Palm devices.  The iPhone seems to be more popular with the folks who like having the latest high-tech toys.  Question: who's more likely to be one of your premium subscribers?  Maybe both types are but discounting the large number of business people is not wise.

No doubt, you will have a more feature-rich and plesant Internet experience on the iPhone but I, foremost, want the ChinesePod mobile site to get the basics right first.  That is, convenient access to the lesson podcasts.

Maybe if you wanted to add some extra bells-n-whistles that only the iPhone supported then fine but leave that for another release.  I really think you are doing a disservice by focusing too narrowly on just one platform.

@henning,

I definitely do sympathize with where you are coming from. Again, this is the challenge of designing a mobile experience across various platforms, networks & devices. Our paying customer base is very similar to our general user base with 2/3's being located in the US. Since the iPhone is the dominant mobile platform there, we tried to optimize the experience for those users. In our tests the previous mobile site performed very poorly for those users.

We are absolutely committed to trying our best to support ALL of our users, but sometimes we have to make decisions that involve trade-offs (e.g. limited support of traditional characters).

A side question on portable devices and chinesepod. i'm looking at buying a new mp3 player. Which brands and models will show the transcripts imbedded in the audio? I'm assuming a 3rd gen ipod nano would do it, am i correct?

All I need on a mobile version are basic text (simple HTML) pages with

- the lesson dialoges

- the conversations (reading & posting).

No popups, no graphics, no gimmicks, but including the characters.

From June 08 the iPhone will be a 3G phone!

As your mobile site is for us paying customers only anyway - shouldn't the platform decision be based on device availability in your paying audience instead of some rather vague statistics on overall US mobile traffic? Isn't that even more problematic when considering that more than 30% of your customers reside outside the US?

What is the logic behind providing "the best user experience" to 0.1 % of your audience while the rest cannot read characters or browse comments?

I know there are many Windows-Mobile users around here and those smartphones are *definately* state of the art. The iPhone is an overly expensive, prorietory solution that still lacks several basic functions like UMTS (3G) support.

At least try to bring back some sort of basic mobile support for "the rest of us". Ideally you set up a parallel "general mobile site" next to that proprietary "iPhone site". Until those other platforms "catch up"

@Moloch,

I am a Canadian myself (Vancouver) and definitely sympathize with the lack of iPhone availability in Canada. The fact is though, 66% of ChinesePod users are from the US and quite frankly the iPhone provides the best learning experience right now. As the other platforms catch up (BTW, we are starting to work with Nokia here in China) we will definitely port the app.

@frenchpoddy01,

The mobile site is only available to paid users because the functionality that is available on the mobile site is only available to paid users (e.g. personal lessons feed, personal vocabulary lists). I am sure there is room for improvement in the design of the site, but I will try to write up a full post describing why we designed this version of the site they way we did, as well as breaking down the design decisions behind he mobile site.

Yeah, characters work for me.

Just tried it on my mobile, Nokia 6680 using Opera, and it doesn't work at all. I get "XML parsing failed: mismatched tag (Line: 11, Character: 2)".

I also liked the mobile site on my Palm TX.  Looks great and loads much faster than before.  The only problem is that I couldn't view characters.  Bazza, how do you view them on your TX?  CJKOS?

I tried this on my Palm using Blazer and it works pretty well except there's no audio or popup translations.

Why is m.chinesepod.com open only to paying users? How can I check it out?

Hi Hank

I spent a little time on m.chinesepod.com on my iPodTouch and like the mobile site very, very much. Really easy to listen to podcasts through it. The glossary is a terrific teaching tool for listening comprehension. The font size is perfect for my middle-age eyes, but I am wondering if it intentionally disallows changing size (pinching the screen) or is that a bug?

Great work, Hank. Keep it up, keep leading and innovating. It's inspiring.

What's with CPod's obsession with iPhones? I use a blackberry at work and an ipaq at home. Only 2% of smartphones are iPhones, and they have yet to be released in Canada, but are coming sometime this year however only on 1 provider. According to another article posted a few days later, that surge in iPhone traffic was brief, and is now second behind Symbian OS phones.

Hank,

if this matches the internal statistics drawn from your very own user base (--> logfile of the old mobile site) this is indeed a wise move.

Sigh. That old site sure had some glitches, but for the most part worked fine for me. Used it on a daily bases. Bye, bye, mobility.

It is definitely not our intention to shut out users, but we are trying to create the best experience for the largest number of users. This is especially difficult for the mobile context! We based our design decisions on articles like these:

• link 1
  
• link 2
  
• link 3

I wonder how many users indeed have an iPhone. If the new site shuts out Windows Mobile users it does not help me that it brings along new features.