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Smart.fm to start charging | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 1 of 12 11 February 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey, has anyone heard the news about smart.fm closing its free services? Apparently they're going to start charging money, even to previously registered users, within a few months' time.
Is there a free alternative available? I haven't used this site much myself, but I hear that its technique is pretty special, not like your average flashcard site. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 2 of 12 11 February 2011 at 2:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh dear. I've been meaning to start going through their popular Japanese core 2000 and 6000 lists since last May, but still have not looked at more than 20 or so since then. I'd better get working if I don't want to pay... Thanks for letting us know!
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| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6915 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 12 11 February 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For people learning Japanese there is the iphone app Japanese Sensei which gets its vocabulary from the same source as Core 2000 & 6000 but goes up to 10,000 words. It's $15.99 for the deluxe app with 10,000 words, which is a lot better value than smart.fm's 1,000 yen a month (considering how long it would take to learn all 6,000 words).
There's a free lite version to try out to see if you like the teaching approach. I am now seriously considering getting an iphone just for this app... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| giok Newbie Poland Joined 5183 days ago 17 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 4 of 12 11 February 2011 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I downloaded all Chinese Media and Mastering Chinese Characters (html+mp3) a few years ago with HTTrack. I'm not interested in Japanese but if you tell me they are going to start charging for it I may as well download their Japanese Core.
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 12 11 February 2011 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Excellent! This is just what I need. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 6 of 12 12 February 2011 at 1:25am | IP Logged | |||||
giok, when you download flashcards etc. from the site using that app, can you still use them on your computer the way you do on the site? That sounds like it could be a really useful technique, but I had never heard of HTTrack until you mentioned it. Is it a free application? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| giok Newbie Poland Joined 5183 days ago 17 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 7 of 12 12 February 2011 at 10:18am | IP Logged | |||||
As for HTTrack, yes, it's a free application. I am not familiar with the site and the way its flashcard system works, I just downloaded the html and mp3 files of Chinese Media and Mastering Chinese Characters. The short answer is probably no, but you may add sentences and mp3 files manually to Anki or another SRS. Keep in mind that I did this a few years ago, the site has changed a lot and I don't know if it's still possible to download an entire course as easily as before. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 8 of 12 12 February 2011 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Damn, this is terrible news! While great as supplement I wouldn't pay a cent for makeshift, lightweight, unidimensional internet courses like this one or Livemocha, which is also moving form free to pay content.
If money is to exchange hands, much better printed alternatives exist to all this. To complement my main textbooks they were fine though, so I'm sad at the loss of iKnow and Livemocha. I was waiting before I reached a higher level in Japanese before starting with iKnow; I'll have to use it intensively for the remaining three weeks or so of free service. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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