The number of people seriously studying Chinese outside China is tiny. Unless you can sell the product within the educational system, there's no market for it.
There are other issues with the demo (drawing characters on a laptop mousepad is very painful and slow compared to practicing on paper). But even the perfect app would struggle given the tiny market, and the fact that drilling characters with flash cards is a pretty good substitute.
I'm in my second year of studying Chinese and endlessly drilling hanzi, so I think I am somewhere in the target market for this thing.
Before posting I did a quick search and saw that Chinese was said to have about 200 Million "second language" speakers.
Clearly those aren't people inside China?
That was the extent of my "market research" and haven't claimed any authority on the subject, but my feeling was that the audience here would be smaller, but focused. If I'm serious about learning Chinese it's going to require such an investment of time that I wouldn't be shy about throwing some money at the problem if the CW held that this would be a good way to learn.
The demo impressed me. And in my head I made the connection to learning how to type.. I can learn just as well on a typewriter, but PC software can give me feedback and instruction that wouldn't be possible on a typewriter without an instructor watching over my shoulder.
Hey idlewords, since you are indeed in our target market and you didn't dig Skritter, would you mind sharing why exactly? Perhaps you could give us some information about how to make it better. Feel free to email me personally (george at skritter.com) or post here. And no need for censoring your response to polite banter. Maybe you just don't think it's a worthwhile service at all, but if you had some specific ideas, we'd be keen to hear 'em!
The basic problem is that it takes forever to draw any character using a laptop trackpad. If I could trace with finger on trackpad, or draw with my finger on a mobile device, I would consider evaluating the app further. But the massive slowness and discomfort of the input method is what throws me. It's like trying to write your signature with a mouse.
You should try to bundle or partner with a tablet maker like Wacom. Or get bulk discounts of their cheap 'bamboo' tablets and sell a package on your website.
We just finished getting the reseller license for this, actually, and plan to do exactly that once we can set the billing page up to support it. We do want to encourage people to buy and use them, because it makes them much better, so we were planning on selling them as cheaply as allowed; good idea?
Comments
The number of people seriously studying Chinese outside China is tiny. Unless you can sell the product within the educational system, there's no market for it.
There are other issues with the demo (drawing characters on a laptop mousepad is very painful and slow compared to practicing on paper). But even the perfect app would struggle given the tiny market, and the fact that drilling characters with flash cards is a pretty good substitute.
I'm in my second year of studying Chinese and endlessly drilling hanzi, so I think I am somewhere in the target market for this thing.
Before posting I did a quick search and saw that Chinese was said to have about 200 Million "second language" speakers.
Clearly those aren't people inside China?
That was the extent of my "market research" and haven't claimed any authority on the subject, but my feeling was that the audience here would be smaller, but focused. If I'm serious about learning Chinese it's going to require such an investment of time that I wouldn't be shy about throwing some money at the problem if the CW held that this would be a good way to learn.
The demo impressed me. And in my head I made the connection to learning how to type.. I can learn just as well on a typewriter, but PC software can give me feedback and instruction that wouldn't be possible on a typewriter without an instructor watching over my shoulder.
Hey idlewords, since you are indeed in our target market and you didn't dig Skritter, would you mind sharing why exactly? Perhaps you could give us some information about how to make it better. Feel free to email me personally (george at skritter.com) or post here. And no need for censoring your response to polite banter. Maybe you just don't think it's a worthwhile service at all, but if you had some specific ideas, we'd be keen to hear 'em!
The basic problem is that it takes forever to draw any character using a laptop trackpad. If I could trace with finger on trackpad, or draw with my finger on a mobile device, I would consider evaluating the app further. But the massive slowness and discomfort of the input method is what throws me. It's like trying to write your signature with a mouse.
You should try to bundle or partner with a tablet maker like Wacom. Or get bulk discounts of their cheap 'bamboo' tablets and sell a package on your website.
We just finished getting the reseller license for this, actually, and plan to do exactly that once we can set the billing page up to support it. We do want to encourage people to buy and use them, because it makes them much better, so we were planning on selling them as cheaply as allowed; good idea?