Pleco Desktop

[numble]

I'd like a Desktop version and improvements to current Pleco.

What I really think a lot of money could be made is if a developer out there made a really newbie program for people (or maybe even just focused on kids) to learn Chinese. Seeing this program (http://laughingsquid.com/a-2-5-year-old-uses-an-ipad-for-the-first-time/) and the kid play it makes me feel like there's a big market for this stuff, especially amongst the upwardly mobile that makes up a big part of the Apple demographic. I know Pleco doesn't do anything similar, but I don't know any other Chinese language developers!

Any new platforms you put it on, I hope there won't be a flood of messages for customization options. I just want features and content, like RSS, improved reader/editor, reading lyrics data, and a crowd sourced dictionary/encyclopedia.

 

[Sarevok]

Desktop, I suppose...

Apart from classic desktops, I would be able to run Pleco on Windows powered tablet devices like HP Slate (I'm curious how this one ends up and whether they have taken a lesson from Project Origami, which wasn't very successful - Asus R2H ended up lying on my shelf collecting dust) or touch netbooks, if those become popular... if not, then classic desktop PCs/laptops/netbooks will still be there...

 

[Azabu]

Desktop for sure.

 

[gato]

Seriously, it might make sense to do a survey of some kind on this - we'd limit it to paying Pleco customers (do it through My Orders) to avoid any hijacking, but just ask the single question of whether we should invest our non-iPhone development time into Android, desktop, web-based, BlackBerry, etc.

If you do a poll, it might be best if you can include a description of major features and a price range for "Pleco desktop" because it could range from a simple desktop companion used only for accessing/editing flashcards to a full-fledged dictionary/reader/flashcard system.

 

[mikelove]

So 4 votes for desktop, 0 for Android, though I did kind of stack the deck by asking this question in the desktop thread - definitely need to do a survey on this, yeah.

numble - educational content development is decidedly Not Cheap, though this does seem like it might be an interesting area to explore - it's the sort of thing that makes me question my continuing refusal to go out looking for VC money.

About the only major customization-adding project on the horizon is user-configurable toolbars, and that actually isn't likely to take very much time - the reason we've held off on it for so long is because the Settings screen really needs a big overhaul (perhaps even eliminating some lesser-used options) first. But the reader is long overdue for improvements, certainly, and we really ought to offer an downloadable version of Chinese Wikipedia (if we can do so without running afoul of the Great Firewall, anyway).

gato - good point on the poll, but I don't think we have a clear idea what the desktop version would look like yet. At least initially (in the next-couple-of-months timeframe) we'd probably just do a recompiled, lightly-redesigned version of our Windows Mobile software and see how that sold / what people thought of it; the WM / desktop Windows overlap is significantly greater than iPhone / OS X. Neither Android nor desktop is likely to get more than a few months' worth of programming effort until it actually demonstrates it can bring us new customers and not just cannibalize iPhone sales / generate a lot of free platform transfers.

 

[numble]

What exactly would exploring educational content development entail? What would you explore?

 

[mikelove]

We'd look at segments that aren't being well-served by publishers right now, and that we could develop products for at a reasonable cost (perhaps taking advantage of our expertise in Chinese language data extraction / processing). There's a general dearth of products for the intermediate-to-advanced market, for example; everybody seems to start their fancy new series at Level 1 and peter out around Level 2 or Level 3. But I haven't investigated this well enough to give an exact proposal, just a few ideas getting tossed around - there's definitely opportunity out there, though.

 

[numble]

I don't even think the lower levels are covered well, but perhaps I'm not even really paying attention there. If you look at the series of books by Chih-p'ing Chou, he's seemed to be very popular amongst intermediate and advanced learners, and they've mostly been just reposts of interesting Chinese news articles with vocabulary lists and exercises thrown in. Maybe something like that lowers the cost of content creation. This is why I have interest in RSS feeds, but something a little more selective and guided could work well with learners, maybe even lower level learners (there are Chinese language youth/children newspapers, I assume).

 

[Zeldor]

Tablets would still be best for things like learning Chinese, you'd really want touchscreen for drawing characters with stylus on it. Licensing is always a problem, so it may be even easier or cheaper to write a whole new book/software for learning Chinese. And if you could make it easy to translate [it should be fairly easy] into many languages, you could get into markets that are not even covered by books [for example there are almost no books about Chinese in Polish]. Translating dictionaries is way too expensive, but just learning app would easily justify the cost. You could maybe even cover it with some free copies etc for volunteers willing to do the translation.

 

[mfcb]

in the meanwhile, considering the WM7 situation (had a different word in mind), i am a full-version-desktop voter. forget my previous posts about "just need a companion". until it gets into work and first betas there might be also some worthwhile devices to buy :lol:

 

[MALAILI]

Maybe this will help.

Many people studying Chinese have PDA's and a lot have i-phones, but EACH and EVERYONE has a desktop!!!

 

[character]

Many people studying Chinese have PDA's and a lot have i-phones, but EACH and EVERYONE has a desktop!!!

And many people studying Chinese already have software to help them study it on their desktop.

 

[MALAILI]

Yes sir they do, but given a choice, New and some existing learners would certainly choose Pleco over what's already out there.

My point is/was there are so many more desktop users than anything else, a desktop makes sense.


When I purchased Pleco, I already had other software, but not as good as Pleco. The market is very very large and should be sought after.

 

[numble]

Many people studying Chinese have PDA's and a lot have i-phones, but EACH and EVERYONE has a desktop!!!

And many people studying Chinese already have software to help them study it on their desktop.

I do use Anki, and have no use for Pleco flashcards on desktop or phone because Anki is available for that--I've got nearly 2 years of testing data stored away on that and it doesn't look like all of that data would import into Pleco.

I've been considering purchasing Wenlin for the past 2 years, but I've always been waiting for a Pleco version because it seems like Pleco offers a better value proposition--7 dictionaries for the price of 1 Wenlin dictionary. But I would mostly use it for word processing or reading.

 

[Azabu]

In additional to the education market, I think a desktop version would be very useful to those who do translations via the reader function. I could think of a few people who would use it.

 

[numble]

In additional to the education market, I think a desktop version would be very useful to those who do translations via the reader function. I could think of a few people who would use it.

Yes, translation would be really nice. I remember back when I was doing some translation and relying on copying and pasting everything into mdbg.net (I still sometimes do that).

 

[phyrex]

I'd kill for an OS X desktop version! Come on, name your target, and then get to work on the desktop version!
No really, I NEED IT!!! Isn't there some humanitarian convention that should force you to give us a desktop version?

 

[mikelove]

numble - it's not so much that the lower levels are covered well as that they're covered heavily; it's harder to rise above the fray when you're there amidst a zillion other beginner-oriented Chinese titles, and you're selling to an audience that by its very nature doesn't really know how to tell the good ones from the bad ones.

mfcb - and indeed the first desktop Windows version would probably look a whole lot like the Windows Mobile version, so it should be if anything an easier transition than WM to iPhone.

character / numble - that's the problem exactly; between Wenlin (which I'm sad to say is so heavily pirated that it's effectively free for a lot of people), Anki, and the ever-growing array of other free tools, not to mention all of the web-based offerings out there now, it seems like we may have an even tougher time getting people to actually pay for Pleco on desktops than we do on iPhone. But we already have one of the best pools of dictionary licenses out there, and we have the means to potentially make it even better, so that may indeed help us offer a better value proposition than most of the other paid titles out there at least.

Azabu - the reader would certainly be key, yes; particularly cool if we find a way to integrate it closely with a web browser, if we did it right in the browser's source code (possible with an open-source WebKit or Gecko core) we might be able to go far beyond normal web browser translation tools and start, say, highlighting all of the words on a web page that you're already supposed to know, or tone-coloring them, or other wacky things in that vein.

 

[numble]

I'd admit that those free tools are probably "good enough" for beginners, but they're still pretty poor for higher level learners. I don't have the data you have on iPhone sales of Pleco, but maybe they can give you an idea of a paying market on desktop--I'd imagine App Store purchasers are less likely to pirate on desktop, and it feels to me (just as a guess) that many small developers thrive on at least Mac OS, with the popularity of MacHeist and things of that sort.

Another part of my avoidance of WenLin is that it looked really ugly on a PC, and I bet it's also ugly on a Mac.

I part of me still thinks content is king in the web era, and guided education, with new content coming in on a regular basis to keep customers returning, can be successful--but of course very expensive.

 

[radioman]

I fully agree the iPad will be great for learning Chinese, but not for all aspects of study. I still believe flashcards and an "on the street" dictionary belong on the portable device as "the primary" device - the device that's always with you. With that said, reading an article or story I just do not like on the iphone because it is a bit too confining. Character writing is useful on both.

Tablets would still be best for things like learning Chinese