I know some of you don’t like Anki as much (and then there are those who already liked Anki better, and have been emailing nonstop trying to get me to switch over since forever), but I hope you give it a fighting chance. First off, it’s a little different in how it tests you. Instead of choosing a correct answer, you have to come up with the right answer in your head, display the answer, and then tell it how well you actually knew it. If you’re honest with yourself, then this method is actually way better for long term retention. If you’re not honest, and you keep telling it you know things you don’t… well… I think you’ll know what will happen (so be honest!).

That being said, Anki is different. It has things that are (in my opinion) way better than Smart.fm, but it has some issues as well (Smart.fm did too, if you remember back). All in all, though, I think it’s a bit better, especially since I have more control over how I create study lists (I think all the study lists are better now because of this, but that’s for you to decide), I have more control over distribution (which means TextFugu members get exclusive access to a lot of the lists), and I know it’ll never disappear or go paid, because it’s an open source project (gotta love the open source!). So, although it was a hectic week, I think things are better, at least overall, because of it, and I hope you think so too (just give Anki a couple weeks if you aren’t sure about it yet, you’ll learn to love it!).

Still, there’s some things that need to be done, and that’ll happen over the next few weeks. Those things include:

• Getting those revisions done so the Anki lists fit better with lessons that originally had Smart.fm in mind.
• Creating more Anki lists for current / future lessons (more flexibility in deck creation means I can actually do a lot more in terms of giving you tools to help remember things that I couldn’t do before).
• Putting up something that will help you to find all the new lists without having to cycle through all the pages. Alluded to this in this tweet.

Anyhoo, thanks for all your patience – I know there’s a ton more to get done, but at least it’s back to where it was before Smart.fm decided to disappear. Definitely if you run into any Anki lists that don’t work or something, too, let me know. Email or Twitter are both fine. Thanks!

That being said, there are a couple of other schedule have changed as well. Here they are in easy-to-read bullet mode:

• New Season 2 estimated completion date: January 20
• January 20 – January 31: I’ll be spending time looking at Season 1 & 2 lessons, adding new worksheets, submenus, more organization, and more. I think 10 days to go through and improve the lessons will be well spent, and make sure there’s a great framework to build future lessons on. Thanks to your feedback I have a good sized list of improvements I want to make that will make TextFugu easier to use. I’ll be working on:
  • Sub menus
  • “Vocab-focus” Worksheets
  • Lesson checklists
  • Addition of “big picture” takeaways throughout lessons to help organize and highlight the important things you need to learn
  • Audio for Japanese text so you can practice speaking / listening almost anything
  • Copies of flashcards on Anki (for backup or if someone prefers using Anki over Smart.fm)
  • Complete “Vocabulary,” “Worksheets,” and “Tools” pages.
  • Search functionality for members
  • Figuring out how to hide “buy now!” buttons, etc., from signed in members
• February 1: TextFugu’s price will go up until the completion of Season 3. New price starting February 1 is $75, i.e. around 25% off the final price of $99.
• February 20-25: Completion of Season 3.
• February 21-29: Go back and do fixes – make improvements based on feedback up until this point.
• March 1: TextFugu goes to full price ($100) and Season 4 work begins.

That being said, 4 new lessons are up, with a couple more almost ready to go up. I’ll still be making tweaks to new lessons, through the 20th, though, so you may see some (small) changes between now and then.