About the Website and Blog

As you may have noticed, our website has been pretty plain since its inception.  This blog is using a pretty standard theme.  All in all, the AccelaStudy web presence is a bit lacking.

So we wanted to announce that a new website and a new blog is coming very soon!  We’ve been working with award-winning designer Tony Geer for several weeks and a gorgeous and intuitive design is getting close to being approved.  We’re very happy with the work and are looking forward to seeing it come alive here soon.

Having a new website will allow us to provide a lot more information to potential customers, as well as better support and help for existing customers.  We hope that you will find it useful.  As always, we look forward to any feedback you want to share.

We Love Good Criticism

In case you were wondering, we watch the reviews in the App Store almost 24 hours a day.  There are only a few early morning hours where a review might get in that we don’t immediately catch.  And right now, so far appearing only on the iPhone App Store (not visible on the computer-based iTunes App Store yet) we have a fantastic 2-star review coming in from G. Mutato on AccelaStudy Japanese.  Yes, that’s 2 stars, which is pretty bad, actually.  It’s a long and detailed review and as soon as we can, we will copy and paste the review right here:

[2-star review to be inserted here shortly]

However, what we love most is when a user gives us feedback that helps us take our products in the direction of improvement.  This review, albeit somewhat scathing with regard to some key interface choices we have made, is exactly that.  It is excellent feedback on what turns out to be a bad user interface for learning Kanji and Hiragana.  G. Mutato has made it clear that the fonts we render the Kanji and Hiragana in are too small.  They are difficult to read.  Given the complexity of the Kanji a user is trying to learn, this is – in G. Mutato’s words – an “absolute sin“.

We agree.

In retrospect, it doesn’t take too long to realize that the fonts are too small.  The characters are too hard to read.

So we are already working on making those fonts bigger and more readable, even “easily readable”.  In fact, you can depend on it that we will get the job done and deliver vastly improved readability in the AccelaStudy Japanese product very soon.  We’re aiming for a release within 7 days.

Thank you, G. Mutato, for this invaluable feedback.  As you may know, Apple has not yet come up with a way for developers to release their software in a beta form for users to try out and provide feedback.  The App Store is the ultimate proving ground.  There is no warm up, no practice run.  We submit what we think is a good product and hope others think so too.  But until someone posts a review like this, we really don’t know what other people think about our products.  So this review, even though it hits hard, is really what we needed.  Again, our thanks.

If anyone else has anything to say – good, bad, or ugly – please let us know.  Feel free to post wherever you like but we highly recommend our forums at http://support.accelastudy.com.

Oops, We Made a Goof

We introduced a minor defect in the AccelaStudy applications which have been updated to v1.0.3:

The issue is that the application won’t let you deselect more than 20 or so categories.  Once it gets to this number, it thinks that you are deselecting the last category and won’t let you deselect any more.

The defect occurs only to users who are upgrading from v1.0 and only AccelaStudy Spanish and AccelaStudy Japanese are affected.  If you just purchased either of these applications, the issue will not affect you.

There is a simple workaround which permanently fixes the issue.  However, we have also made an additional permanent change to the application which fixes the issue and have already submitted a new v1.0.4 to Apple for review, hopefully posting in record time to the App Store (but the average has been 5-7 days).

The workaround is to temporarily delete the application from your iPhone (or iPod Touch) and resync the application back to your device.  Detailed steps are available here:

1. Start with your device disconnected from your computer.
2. Uninstall the application from your device. To do this, hold your finger down on the Home screen until the icons start shaking. Go to the AccelaStudy application you are having issues with and hit the “X” to remove the application. You will be presented with a confirmation box. Go ahead and confirm the removal.
3. Connect your device to your computer and resync the AccelaStudy application to the device. After the application is reinstalled to your device, all categories will be able to be deselected, down to the last one.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.  Please contact support at support@accelastudy.com if you need further assistance.

How Countries Were Added to the Vocabulary List

A number of people have raised the question, “why are countries in the vocabulary list?” and a few have wanted to know how we selected countries to add to the list.  Quite simply, the countries in the list are the countries in which Apple is selling or planning to sell the iPhone.  We went to the Apple website, looked at their list of countries, and sent that list to the translators.  The idea is that if you are an iPhone owner and want to say “I am from the United States”, you will find the name of your country in the list.

We’re always looking for feedback so if you think of words that aren’t yet in the list that you think should be, let us know.

Some Common Concerns

I want to take a moment to address some concerns that have been raised in various venues:

1.  AccelaStudy German is useless without the article die, der, and das. I wouldn’t say “useless” but this was definitely an oversight on our part.  So we are fixing it.  In fact, we’ve already fixed it. We sent the entire vocabulary list back to the translators and had all of the correct articles added.  Unfortunately, due to Apple’s delays in getting updates into the App Store (as described in an earlier post), we have been unable to get this out to our customers, present and future.  We will get this done as soon as we can.

2.  The quiz mode is too easy. We agree.  We are working on improvements to the quiz mode which will make it more difficult and, thus, more useful as a vocabulary learning tool.  With all of our AccelaStudy products, and particularly with German (since many words are perfect cognates), certain quiz questions require are “no-brainers”.  Some of the ways of increasing difficulty include matching nouns with only other nouns, verbs with verbs (200 infinitives will soon be added), adjectives with adjectives, and so on.

Please recognize that the development team has been under tremendous time pressure these last few months to get these products out the door on Apple’s schedule.  Some things we got right – the UI is excellent – and some things, not so right – missing German articles.  The beauty of software is that it is easily “fixed”.  It is not like a car where a defect causes a global recall.  Fixes in software can be applied quickly and easily and pushed out to everyone for free.  New features can be introduced just as easily.

We appreciate all of the constructive feedback we receive, even the criticism.  We look forward to hearing more and will be incorporating your ideas into the products as we move forward.