November 5, 2008
As indicated in other posts, we keep an eye on the reviews posted in the App Store. One of the recent reviews questioned whether or not AccelaStudy would continue to be updated as promised in numerous posts and in the App Store itself. The answer, of course, is YES, and we’d like to take this opportunity to announce that audio support is coming in version 1.3. Version 1.2 has just been released to Apple for review and should appear in the App Store on or around November 7th.
The only new feature in v1.3 is audio support. Audio support is already present in the latest version of AccelaStudy Vocabulary Builder™ for GRE® and GMAT®. A short demo is provided in this post. The demo should give an idea of the kind of quality we are recording for pronunciations.
All languages are recorded by a native speaker who is also a professional voice actor. Our voice actors have done voice over work for television commercials, radio ads, corporate training videos, and so on. All voice actors have very pleasant voices and are able to pronounce words with minimal accent.
v1.3 will contain audio pronunciations in both English and the product language. The current vocabulary list of approximately 2,200 words will be used. Languages with masculine and feminine variants have recordings for both. In some cases, this yields a total recording count of 2,500 words or so. In total, with both English and the product language, the number of recordings is close to 5,000.
We believe this is an excellent addition to the product but, unfortunately, increases the product size significantly. v1.3 will come to the App Store at approximately 300 MB in size, up from less than 1 MB. However, this is necessary to provide customers with the highest quality audio possible. The recordings are clear and clean with no background noise or static.
v1.3 will begin to appear in the App Store at the end of November with releases continuing through December. As promised, we will be adding significantly more vocabulary words to each product in the future. All vocabulary additions will now be accompanied by audio pronunciations. We are looking to maintain a schedule of one update per month or so until the full vocabulary list has been achieved.
As always, we look forward to your comments and feedback.
November 5, 2008
v1.2 of AccelaStudy Vocabulary Builder™ for GRE® and GMAT® has been released into the App Store for review. There are a number of great new features in this application but the #1 feature is the addition of audio recordings for every single vocabulary word! Take a look (and listen!) to the following short video:
The other features in v1.2 include the following:
- FULL audio support! Each vocabulary word has been recorded by a professional voice talent. The result is a clear and effective pronunciation for every word.
- Total vocabulary increased to 600 words! Over 100 words have been added to the application since v1.0.
- Total example sentences doubled! Each vocabulary word now has TWO example sentences, creatively conceived and illustrative. With 1,200 example sentences, AccelaStudy Vocabulary Builder has more than double any other competing iPhone™ application.
- Other v1.2 improvements! See the following post for other changes to v1.2 of AccelaStudy Vocabulary Builder
v1.2 will be available as soon as Apple approves the update. We expect this on or around November 7th. The update is free for all customers who have already purchased a copy.
November 5, 2008
AccelaStudy™ v1.2 has been released to the App Store for review. All AccelaStudy products have been updated. There are quite a few changes to v1.2, mostly to improve the usability of the product, particularly around creating study sets. Here are some of the changes:
- Select All and Select None buttons have been added to the category list. You can now select all of the categories or none of the categories with one tap. This makes it very easy to quickly focus on one or two categories: simply tap “Select None” and then tap the categories you are interested in.
- A “Plan” tab has been introduced to the application. This tab contains all of the functionality for selecting categories, creating and managing study sets, and all of the general application options. This tab consolidates all of the application options which were previously only available by clicking the little info “i” button at the bottom right of a particular view.
- Tab icons have been refreshed. All of the icons shown in the tab bar at the bottom of the application have been updated to graphics we believe are slightly more intuitive.
- There are now sorting and display options for both Study and Flashcard mode. It is now possible to have the words in Study mode shuffled or in alphabetical order. Previously, this was only possible with Flashcard mode. Additionally, when the words are shuffed in either mode, a “shuffle” button is displayed which, when tapped, will reshuffle the words.
- Shuffled word order is now preserved between application sessions. Previous versions of AccelaStudy would reshuffle the words when the application was launched.
- Categories are now fully localized. The words in AccelaStudy foreign language products are currently grouped into 66 categories. Until v1.2, these categories were only shown in English. So even if you had your device localized in Spanish, for example, and all of the user interface was properly localized with Spanish, the categories would still show in English. With version 1.2, categories would now appear in Spanish as shown below.
- The “launch” image has been updated. The default “launch” image, which is shown while the application is loading and appears in earlier versions of AccelaStudy as a blank flashcard, now shows the word “Loading…” to clearly indicate that the application is loading and has not crashed or hung. The word “Loading” is localized in all of the locales supported by AccelaStudy.
These are the “visible” changes to AccelaStudy in version 1.2. Under the covers, so to speak, there are a number of architectural changes which have been implemented for upcoming features, mainly audio support and other language combinations for our non-English-speaking customers.
November 5, 2008
AccelaStudy™ Korean | English appeared in the App Store on November 4th! This new addition to the AccelaStudy foreign language product line includes over 2,100 Korean words.
For more information, please take a look at the product on the App Store or visit the product information page on this website.
