New Series - “Radical Thinking”

Greetings –

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on many things, one of which is a new, three-part blog series that I’ll be publishing very shortly. I call it “Radical Thinking”, and it will hopefully shed some light on the importance of understanding and using radicals to look-up Chinese characters.

Part 1 will be called “Radical Thinking: What is a Radical?” and will explain the history of radicals and provide some examples of radicals found in characters.

Part 2 will be called “Radical Thinking: How do I use a Radical?” and will show you how to use a radical index and a dictionary to find a Chinese word which you have no idea how to pronounce or know anything about its meaning.

Part 3 will be called “Radical Thinking: What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Radicals?” and will give some personal insight and experience that I have had using radicals in my personal study of Chinese.

It took me some time to really “get the concept” behind radicals, and I’m hoping that I can boil those learnings down to a few simple blog posts, loaded with examples.

You may be asking, “why is Bob so interested in radicals all of a sudden?” I am pleased to announce that our parent company has been approved by Apple as official iPhone Developers. This is a big deal, not only for our larger business but also for Global Talk. It means that I can now produce native applications for both the iPhone and iPod Touch. And, I have two new product ideas that I’ll be announcing and launching in the next few months. Not only has the iPhone itself been a learning curve from a programming point of view, but I’ve had to come up with unique methods to allow you to very quickly find the word you are looking for in Chinese. Computing has changed the way we can lookup Chinese words, but it also has required us to come up with new means of interacting with a Chinese dictionary that now contains over 70,000 Chinese words.

I hope this upcoming, three-part series is of interest and use to you, the student of the Chinese language.

Best,

– bk

Global Talk Goes Twitter

Hello Everyone –

Now that Global Word is available for purchase, I now have two major things to focus on. First, I am working to keep Global Word up-to-date with the latest entries to the CC-CEDICT Dictionary. Just today, I released another free upgrade to everyone, and Global Word now exceeds 58,000+ entries in its Chinese Dictionary. And, second, I have shifted more development effort into Global Talk.

As a student of the Chinese language, Global Talk is really what I need to study Chinese outside the classroom. Not only does it contain the entire Global Word dictionary, but it also allows me to build flashcard decks, print handwriting practice sheets, and print flashcards onto perforated, business card paper! Global Talk is still in Beta, but I’m anxious to get it out the door.

In an effort to keep everyone up-to-date on what I’m actively working on, and to encourage conversation with you on both Global Word and Global Talk, I am pleased to announce that I have created a Twitter account. Some of you are probably scratching your head - what’s Twitter?

Twitter is a simple, low-overhead means of staying in touch with friends, associates, and developers of Macintosh Chinese software. It is free! To create your Twitter account, simply go to Twitter’s home page, and sign up. Then, you can search for me - my Twitter account is called “globaltalk”. Add me as a friend, and whenever I am working or updating Global Word or Global Talk, you’ll be the first to know!

My Twitter page looks like this …

Whenever I release a new version of Global Word or Talk, you’ll hear it there first. And, when I’m contemplating some new & crazy idea (am I really going to integrate Global Talk somehow with an iPod Nano?!?), I’ll throw it out on Twitter to start a conversation.

See you on Twitter!

– bk

PS There are all kinds of great ways to participate on Twitter - try Twitterific, a Macintosh App designed for Twitter.
PPS You can see my live Twitter feed all the time on this website by going to my About Page.

Technorati Tags: Chinese Dictionary, Twitter, Macintosh

A New Look Is Coming To Global Talk!

I can’t wait to fill you in on all of the exciting things that have been happening “behind the scenes” with Global Talk! For now, I’ll give you some teasers.

First, this current website is not fit for distributing my Macintosh application. So, I have been working to figure out all of the “server side stuff” that it takes to support credit card transactions, license generation and management, customer support, beta tester management, and the like. It takes a lot of effort to do this stuff, especially for that elusive first application. Also (here’s a strong hint), Global Talk does some pretty interesting things from a code standpoint. So, wouldn’t it be great to have a “developer blog” on this website so that I can share detailed code learnings and snippets? Sounds like an idea to me …

Second, my “other” side business is booming! For the past four years, my business partner and I have been doing full-custom website design, and our client base is growing all the time. It’s exciting for us - we’re very close to realizing a big dream of ours that has been stoking now for years.

Third, as if I didn’t have enough irons in the fire, we are about to make a formal announcement about a brand new side of our business! The announcement should come within the next week, and I can’t wait to share it. For now, it’s hush-hush until we can get everything in place before the big announcement.

Fourth, and finally, I have completed my first formal training in Mandarin Chinese! Yessss! I have learned hundreds of characters, passed a dozen quizzes, and survived a mid-term and a final exam. The experience was great, the teacher was a blast, and my fellow students were very forgiving of how “green” I was this entire semester. I can’t wait to go back!

So, be on the lookout for some exciting changes to this website, the formal announcement of a new segment of my side business, and, finally, you’re going to hear the Beta Release date for Global Talk! It’s all coming in the next two weeks, so stay tuned!

Keep studying your Mandarin!

– bk