February 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Read the Kanji: Love
You’ve shared so much love with Read the Kanji, we wanted to share the love too. So we’re offering a special promotion just in time for Valentine’s Day:
1 month free for any new user activating a monthly Read the Kanji subscription between February 8 and February 14, 2012, when using the discount code: SHARETHELOVE
Now go, share the love.
3 tags
Share Your Stats!
Many of you already find unique ways to share your kanji stats with each other, but now you can easily share your stats on Read the Kanji!
How do I share my stats?
Your Stats Overview page will provide a shareable link to your public stats page - you can post it to Facebook by “liking” it (allowing your friends to “like” your progress too), or tweet about it to your...
January 2012
2 posts
3 tags
New Feature: Notes
Hello again! We’re on another feature roll this week and we’ve got a new one to debut today on Read the Kanji: Public Notes.
Learning words using dictionary definitions alone can sometimes be a little vague. Although a word may embody a particular meaning, learning when and how to use it is not as easy. Most dictionaries or word listings, however, don’t offer any extra...
3 tags
New Feature: Leveling System
We’ve added a new feature to Read the Kanji: A Leveling System.
Now your experience finally adds up. With every correct answer you earn points (wrong answers do not count against you), and as you earn more points you level up! It’s all contained neatly in your Session Bar at the bottom left corner of the quiz.
Let me break down the Session Bar.
Your Details
Your avatar (which...
December 2011
3 posts
5 tags
New Billing Process and Monthly Subscriptions
We’ve been working hard to improve the billing process and some inner-workings of Read the Kanji. We are pleased to announce a much smoother billing process, and a switch to a convenient monthly subscription.
The monthly subscription will be a recurring subscription at $5 per month. This roll-out, scheduled for the beginning of next week, will also be accompanied by some new features,...
5 tags
N1-N5 Have Arrived!
We’ve finally updated from the old JLPT levels to the N1-N5. Our decks follow the basic requirements provided by the JLPT.
The JLPT has five levels: N1, N2, N3, N4 and N5. The easiest level is N5 and the most difficult level is N1.
N4 and N5 measure the level of understanding of basic Japanese mainly learned in class. N1and N2 measure the level of understanding of Japanese used in a...
3 tags
Functionality & Feature Updates
First off - a big thank you for bearing with us as we quickly worked through the hiccups of rolling out the new version of Read the Kanji. Over the past few days you may have noticed some issues with performance and functionality, but we’ve been hard at work resolving them. We’re back in action.
Secondly, we wanted to share about a couple simple but useful features we added based on...
November 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Announcing the new Read the Kanji
The new version of Read the Kanji has finally arrived and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with you. We’ve taken a huge step forward in bringing a truly immersive experience.
Read the Kanji’s new interface and algorithm allow for smarter streamlined drilling, so you get plenty of exposure to the kanji you haven’t mastered yet. Let’s take a look at some of...
4 tags
Down for Maintenance
Read the Kanji will be down for some upgrades & maintenance for a few hours today, starting at 10:00am CST. We aim to be finished by 2:00pm CST.
Update: Sorry for the delay. We encountered circumstances that are making this take longer than expected.
Thanks,
The Read the Kanji Team
October 2011
1 post
3 tags
Change Plans At Any Time
Some users have been understandably frustrated by the inability to downgrade a paid subscription to a Trial subscription without losing access to the full term of the paid subscription. We realize this is an oversight. You should be able to change subscriptions as needed to fit your desired usage of the site.
In light of this, we added the ability to downgrade accounts without losing access to...
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Reset Your Stats
Ever felt like starting over on your Kanji quizzing, but realized that you had to create a new account or email support to clear your stats? Well, no more. We recently added a feature that let’s you reset your own stats as you want.
Click PREFS in the main menu on the top right to access your account settings. You will see the Reset Stats button on the right.
Clicking this button will...
3 tags
Small downtime tomorrow for server maintenance
A heads up to all our users: ReadTheKanji will be down from 9:00am to about 10:00am Thursday, September 15th CST for server maintenance. During this time users will not be able to access ReadTheKanji or their accounts.
This update is to do a some server upgrades to hopefully improve the speed of the site for users site-wide, so although we are really sorry for the inconvenience, we know...
August 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Annnnnnnnd We're Back!
Read the Kanji is back online!
We’ve made some big changes that will mostly go unnoticed, as they are entirely on the backend of the system. To allow for easier implementation and greater scalability of future improvements, we refactored the entire system. This will allow us to improve the algorithm (more on this to come), add new features, and introduce a new interface over the coming...
6 tags
Server Down August 22 for Massive Update
ReadtheKanji.com will be down from 8:00am Monday, August 22nd, to 8:00am Tuesday, August 23rd CST. We plan on it taking a day, although we will try to have the system up and running as soon as possible. During this time users will not be able to access ReadtheKanji.comor their accounts. We will be updating the entire site to a new system on the backend that will pave the way for future...
February 2010
2 posts
1 tag
自己紹介＆日本語習得についての考え方
はじめまして！ My name is Jonathan and I’ve been studying Japanese for about five years now, as difficult as that is for me to believe, and I’m thrilled to be a part of the grand relaunch of Read The Kanji’s blog. We’re looking forward to introducing you to a lot of useful and interesting information that will help kick your Japanese study into high gear.
About Me
My...
2 tags
Introducing The New Read The Kanji Blog!
Today, we here at Read The Kanji would like to announce a re-launch of our new blog, which along with some more functionality than Tumblr used to offer us, comes with a new goal and direction in mind.
While so far, we’ve mainly just been using our blog for system updates and upgrade notices, this new blog’s goal is to start diving deep into the Japanese language and see if we...
January 2010
1 post
1 tag
About
Read The Kanji is a web based application designed to help those studying Japanese to learn kanji reading patterns through context. In other words, it helps you learn to read kanji by asking you to read actual Japanese sentences and type in the correct answer (no multiple choice).
Many students of Japanese often complain that learning kanji is the most difficult part of studying...
December 2009
1 post
1 tag
Website Maintenance
We will be performing routine maintenance on the site this Wednesday, December 9 at 10:00 am CST (16:00 GMT). The site will be down during this time, but it should only be down for a couple hours at the most. We apologize for any inconvenience.
November 2009
4 posts
1 tag
Read The Kanji Support
We have recently set up a support email account to address any issues or questions you might have using the site. Whether you need help understanding a specific function of the site or are having trouble using a particular part of the site, please send us an email at support@readthekanji.com.
And, as always, you can continue to post questions to us at our Twitter account (@readthekanji) or on...
1 tag
Control Kanji Repetition
We have received a lot of questions asking how to control the repetition of certain kanji during a quiz. Most people would like to lessen the repetition of kanji that they feel they have a good handle on. So, how do you do this?
The answer is simple. Under the PREFS link on the menu, you will see a Repetition Factor setting about half way down. You can set this factor to any integer between 1...
1 tag
Facebook Fan Page
For those that are not aware, Read The Kanji has a Facebook Fan Page. Please become a fan on Facebook as we will use that in addition to this blog and our Twitter account to post news and updates.
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Read The Kanji Goes Subscription...Kind Of.
Hi everyone,
While all great things must come to an end, we here at Read The Kanji must announce the end of our free beta test. Read The Kanji has come a long way, and we feel it has finally reached a point where we feel comfortable charging money to help fund for our server and development costs. Our goal is to reinvest money earned back into Read The Kanji in order to create the best possible...
October 2009
2 posts
1 tag
Apologies For The Downtime
Hello everyone,
Apologies for the downtime yesterday, we were trying to implement some new fixes and database changes yesterday, but things did not go as smoothly as planned. We ran into some unexpected problems and ended up just rolling back to the old code while we try to figure out what the issue is. We’ll try to push these updates over the next couple of days in separate pieces to avoid...
1 tag
Downtime This Friday
Hello everyone,
This Friday, at 8:00am CST (1:00 pm GMT), we will be taking the site down for some code and server maintenance. We have been working on the backend this month to both create a more speedy, error proof version of the quiz, and to set up the database so we can expand into the new features and suggestions we’re getting from the uservoice forums and emails.
I hope this downtime...
September 2009
1 post
1 tag
Manually increase strength - feature update!
Hi all! I just wanted our users to know that we’ve added a small feature to the bottom of the quiz today to allow you to manually inflate the strength rating of a word.
From your feedback in mails and on the Uservoice forum, we noticed a number of experienced users getting tired of having to constantly answer over and over words that they already knew. We thought to add this feature in to help...
August 2009
2 posts
1 tag
About Bug/Word Reports
Just a small notice that I’ll be away for a couple of weeks, so I won’t be able to fix any errors or problems with database for a little while. But please still feel free to keep sending your reports, as I plan to go through them all as soon as I get back!! Thanks!
1 tag
JLPT Word Reclassifications
Thanks to the help of Andrew Slater, we have adjusted a large number of words at Read The Kanji and reclassified them to their correct JLPT levels. You might find the number of words in each level changed, some very large quantities. For example, we noticed that over 200+ JLPT 3 words changed to JLPT 4, and many JLPT 2 words have now changed to JLPT 3.
This is part of our ongoing quest to...
July 2009
6 posts
1 tag
Keyboard shortcuts added!
We have another small update for Read The Kanji users today!
We took a great idea from the Uservoice forum and added some keyboard shortcuts for those people who hate having to use their mouse when they want to see kanji information, reveal hidden quiz elements, etc. Hopefully this addition will help speed up the quiz overall!
Take a look at the shortcuts and see if they help improve your quiz...
1 tag
Stat word/kanji grid update!
Hello all,
We just pushed a little update to our word and kanji grids on the stats page on Read The Kanji.
First, we’ve expanded our kanji database from around 3,000 to over 13,000 kanji characters. This will give us a lot more room and leeway to create and add more complicated decks in the future (e.x: Kanji Kentei decks, Yojijukugo decks, etc).
On the word grid page, you can now sort the...
1 tag
0.7.1 update!
Hi all, I just wanted to tell you about a small update to Read The Kanji today.
Probably the thing you’ll notice that’s different the most is the stats page has been rearranged slightly. We’ve eliminated the Best/Worst Word/Kanji sections (as they were inaccurate and not so helpful) and replaced them with a much more useful kanji tracking per level color bars. We thought making these stats...
1 tag
Read The Kanji Twitter Account!
I’ve finally just got around to setting up a Twitter account for Read The Kanji to make it easier for users to follow recent updates and easier for me to post current progress. So if you’re a twitter user, follow us over at http://twitter.com/readthekanji !
1 tag
Maintenance Notice
Hi! This is just a notice that we will be doing a small amount of maintenance at 1:00 PM GMT (that’s 10:00PM in Japan, 9:00 AM US Eastern) to speed up the server and tune a few database settings to speed up queries. Sorry for any interruptions it causes!
1 tag
0.7 progress!
We’ve smashed a lot of bugs in the new version so far, some big and some small. Very few were real show stoppers though, which is great news. Thanks to everyone who has been submitting reports so far, every bug fix just makes Read The Kanji better for everyone!
June 2009
1 post
1 tag
0.7 Update!
Hello, everyone! We have finally been able to push through the new 0.7 update of Read The Kanji, which has many new features and changes from 0.6.5 . The list of new features is pretty long, but here goes:
Algorithm update - Algorithm now uses a word’s strength as the main factor in determining which word is next. One great thing about this is that the algorithm will always constantly test...
April 2009
1 post
1 tag
0.6.5 Update
Sorry for the slightly delayed blog post, but here is the list of what’s new with version 0.6.5. It was mainly bug fixes and background work, but we’re slowly setting the stage for a strong 0.7 to come through!
The main changes in 0.6.5 are:
Multiple deck support added! Just click on “change decks” in the right menu and check the ones you want!
Tons of database fixes! Thanks to everyone who...
March 2009
4 posts
1 tag
Multiple reading fixed uploaded
We just upped a small fix to the system to accept multiple readings for words. The hints will still be there as they are necessary for certain words, but in the cases of 行く（いく／ゆく）or 毎月 (まいつき/まいげつ), the system will now accept both answers as valid.
1 tag
Database errors fixed and some future thoughts
We’ve just upped a bunch of word and sentence fixed to the database based on use feedback from the “report inaccuracies” feature. Thanks to everyone who sent some in! We’re surprised how well this feature is working, better than expected even! From just basic reports, we can see exactly which areas are confusing people and how to make the app better.
One example is that we realized that many...
1 tag
Weird downtime
Sorry about anyone getting an error page when trying to access readthekanji.com. Apparently there was an error with tumblr’s RSS feed that Rails freaked out about. I’m taking down the feed on the front page for now until I can get it resolved.
1 tag
Version 0.6.1 released, bug fixes and a small...
Howdy! We’re releasing a point release to address some small bug fixes and a couple of small features before we start the heavy work on 0.7 (which we have a small request from some users but we’ll get to that in a minute). Here’s what’s new:
‘report inaccuracies’ link is added back in to help fix database problems. It will report the last word done, along with all the information and a comment...
February 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Few quick fixes
We upped a few quick CSS and HTML fixes for various browsers today (including an Opera bug not allowing the remember me checkbox to be checked!) If anyone is experiencing other formatting issues, just let us know!
1 tag
To those having quiz errors when starting...
Anyone having troubles starting the quiz, try logging out (click here: http:///www.readthekanji.com/logout) and logging back in again. If some session variables aren’t set on login, it throws an error. If this still doesn’t fix the problem, please let us know, you can email directly to joe@squarefour.net
1 tag
Version 0.6 released!
We were able to release 0.6 today, with a brand new design backing it up. Hopefully this makes the interface a bit clearer and more attractive to newer users, and maybe it will help inspire other ideas as well. Along with it, a slew of changes in 0.6 (from the changelog):
Kanji words in the answer (both correct or incorrect) now can be clicked to display kanji information
Completely new...
January 2009
1 post
1 tag
Upcoming version notes
Just wanted to let everyone know that we had our holiday break and are looking to push version 0.6 within this month. We’re really aiming to get a lot of new features in by the next test, which I believe is now in July, as they have changed the JLPT rules. Also, we’re hoping to finally nail down the basic quiz structure so that we can start making databases for other lists as well, such as...
December 2008
6 posts
1 tag
About the reporting feature
We decided to take out the reporting feature for now, and rework it a bit. Probably what we will do is move it down to the result box after an answer is given, and also add some way to add an extra comment about whichever sentence you are reporting. Sorry for the confusion about it though. And thanks to everyone who submitted comments / mails about it!
1 tag
About the reporting feature
We decided to take out the reporting feature for now, and rework it a bit. Probably what we will do is move it down to the result box after an answer is given, and also add some way to add an extra comment about whichever sentence you are reporting. Sorry for the confusion about it though. And thanks to everyone who submitted comments / mails about it!
1 tag
v0.56 release!
We just released 0.56, which, along with some minor bug fixes, added the following:
An easier way to report bad sentences. Just click the “bad sentence / definition?” link below the word, and it’ll send all the relevant information to us for review. Hopefully this will save you some typing. We are going to rework this, and put it in the result box, along with some way for the users to enter...
1 tag
Please Excuse the Mess - Ad Experiment
The site is starting to grow, which is a good thing. But, as a result, costs of maintaining the site unfortunately grow, too. So, to keep the site running smoothly and have time to continue making updates, fixing bugs, etc, we needed to start adding advertising to help cover some costs of operation.
Please excuse the mess as we experiment over the next few weeks trying to find a solution that...
1 tag
Hi everyone, we just released a quick update for the stats page, bringing Read the Kanji up to version 0.55. This one now shows some more detailed stats as well as makes the kanji grid it’s own page (which looks much better overall I think).
Here is a complete list of changes, thanks to everyone who submitted bug reports!! I think we were able to get to most of them!
Fixed many definitions and...
1 tag
New layout!
We just uploaded a new HTML layout in order to fix a few things usability wise, but mainly to have an introduction about the site for new users. This way it’s a little bit more clear about what the application can do for first time visitors. No big changes underneath, but it’s more pleasing to the eye now, don’t you think?
November 2008
2 posts
1 tag
Apologies for the downtime
Sorry about the unexpected downtime recently, the server has been getting overloaded recently, so I’ve gone ahead and upgraded the server. Hopefully this will make everyone’s experience faster and keep the server going 24/7. I’ll be closely monitoring it this week to make sure it’s handling the traffic properly.