Please be aware that we have implemented a new naming convention for ChinesePod podcasts. We hope that this will reduce the confusion caused after we began offering podcasts at several different levels of difficulty. This change should not impact your ability to receive podcasts. However, podcasts that you have already downloaded may appear as new files in iTunes, Odeo, Yahoo, etc.
Let’s look at an example to see how it works:
“chinesepod031_A27_20051110.mp3″
” 031 ” means it is the 31st podcast we have released.
” A27 ” means it is 27th in podcast group A.
Podcast groups:
A = Cai niao (Basic level)
B = Chu ji (Elementary level)
C = Zhong ji (Intermediate level)
D = Buzzwords
E = News
20051110 means it was released on the 10th of Nov.
We apologize for any inconvenience, and we are taking steps to keep our listening audience better informed in the future.
Kind Regards,
ChinesePod
Word Bank, Flash Cards–can’t see buttons
I can’t see the buttons on the Flashcards, I’m assuming they say “Next, previous” as the ‘link’ works.
Any ideas? I’ve tried on an XP machine and a MacOS X box.
The file names are very descriptive. What I have done is use one of the fields on the mp3 file properties to assist me in “grouping” the lessons automatically into their respective levels…used the album field for 菜鸟Newbie, 初级Elementary, 中级Intermediate, 流行 (liú xíng)Buzzword. The news i usally listen at home so I leave with Chinesepod.com in the album field. This allows me to have all the Newbies in one “group” instead of scrolling through all of them in my new Ipod. I am both a new ipod user and new Chinese student. Since I am a techie…I thought the available field properites could be put to a better use……Found your site from a fellow Intel employee in California. Annie has been my local teacher here in Chengdu. We are sharing your site with fellow workers here at the new factory site. I really enjoy those with ideas that “lead the way”. I have been using books, CD and other tools and your site is in touch with the real world……stuff to use right now and some fun with the delivery…thanks.
[PDF file conversion]
I’m trying to use some of my ‘legacy’ equipment, a Palm device running Japanese OS with no problem displaying English. I have a Acrobat Palm Reader on the device. When I try to import/transfer your pdf file into the Palm it says it is unable to convert ‘tags’ for the file. Any ideas? I also tried converting the file to Word.doc format and then importing it to the Palm with DocumentsToGo, but then I lose all the chinese characters. Suggestions out there?
..trying to go truely portable in China.
Lantian
Have you tried asking Mike Love of Pleco? My wife is bringing a brand new Palm with her for me. As soon as I get it I will order/download the Pleco software. Then I can write characters on the screen as I see them walking about Taiwan, get a pinyin text (at this point) as well as definition. Since it has a built in mp3 player as you know you can listen to chinesepod. I have written on Pleco’s forum and supposedly pdf files should not be to heard to imput. ( I am definitely a newbie) when it comes to software. So easy is sometimes hard to impossible for me.
Pleco (Mike) just responded to me about the way chinesepod is doing flashcards and possibly with audio and beleives it should be compatible with an upgrade they have in the development stage.
Mike in Jubei
Hi Mike,
Mike of Pleco is an outstanding guy. I think he’s a one-man shop and I don’t know how he handles the support as well as he does. Anyway, the Pleco dictionaries work great, I’ve installed the latest version on a Palm Z22, although there was some effort with that, and the old version Oxford dictionary works well on my Sony Clie which is quite an aged machine now a days.
Hopefully you’ll have no problem with pdfs on your new Palm, espcially if it comes with, or you add a new Adobe Acrobat pdf reader. Please let me know if you’re successful. If there are any other Cpod 迷 that have the pdfs successfully show the Chinese on their portable devices, please let me know!
BTW, the pdfs are fine for my pc, just the pc doesn’t seem to fit in my ‘pocket’! And darn it nobody has given me a snazzy iPod. I’m not expecting it from Ken b/c he won’t even give Jenny any hongbao!
Hi,
Just a friendly suggestion. It might be worth adding an extra zero to the lessons that are only one digit (like 1 through 9). So, when they’re like 01, 02, … , 09, then they line up and sort consistently on an iPod. That is, they’ll sort like 01, 02, 03, … , 09, 10, 11, … , 18, 19, 20, 21, … .
Otherwise, when the single-digit lesson numbers don’t have a zero in front of them, the lessons tend to sort like 1, 10, 11, 12, … 19, 2, 20, 21, … .
Thanks for the good work!
Barry
If I could make a suggestion to help organize lessons in itunes - Adding the lesson level somewhere in the mp3 id-tag would allow lessons to be sorted by level when itunes manages song files for you. What happens now is itunes changes your nicely encoded file name to the track (lesson) name, and then all information about the lesson level is gone! Maybe instead of putting www.chinesepod.com in the “Album” field of the tag you could use that field for the lesson level e.g. Nubie. Now an example ID-tag might look something like this:
Name: Baby-Talk 2
Artist: ChinesePod
Album: Nubie Lessons
Grouping: Education
Etc…
Thanks and Great Job! -Tom
Hi Tom
Most of what you are requesting is already there or can be achieved.
First, in Itunes - Podcasts, go to the ChinesePod podcast header, right click and select Get Info. Input Education to the Grouping field. The header, all previously downloaded podcasts and future podcasts will then have Education in the Grouping field.
Right clicking anywhere in the field headers will give you the option to select addtional fields to be displayed, select Category and the lesson levels will be revealed.
Artist is already ChinesePod.com
The podcast name contains three elements e.g. 中级43 How’s Business?:
1) Lesson level, in Chinese characters, in this case intermediate - 中级, which can also be copied and pasted into smart playlists contain/not contain fields for selecting or sorting
2) The lesson’s sequential number in that level, in this case 43
3) The lesson’s title, in this case How’s business?
The only problem is the lesson numbers being 1,2,3, not 01. 02, 03 for the first 9 lessons at each level. However these can easily be edited in the podcast name. Infact we’ll soon have a problem in Newbie level when lesson 100 arrives and then all previous 99 lessons will need to be changed into 001, 002 etc. Maybe CPod could do something about that?
Hope that helps.
Phil,
Thx for the help.
Ken
Phil, I was just going to say that… hahaha. Actually the mp3 tag info is something I’ve been hearing a lot about and I’ll make sure the issues are heard to see if we can be doing it better.
Hi Rian
For a few lessons, I thought maybe CPod was starting to prepare for data mining with content after Function and Grammar. But then the last two lessons had “no tags” Was this the idea? If it is may I suggest we ALL figure out what the tags might be ? There are now 200 lessons still not an insurmountable amount of data to go through to figure out what those tags should be.
For instance in the future I would love to be able to query and get Intermediate Lesson high in adverbs of frequency to restudy. Other people, as Ken has suggested, may want lessons on doing business in China. Two very different purposes.
Maybe I am dreaming. I sort of thought those categories were the start of preparing for the future.
BTW I am looking for an anti-PWU gizmo or thingy . Maybe we should seek Bazza’s help if we can only get him away from The Devil Beside You show.
Mike in Jubei
Mike,
Media tags — good suggestion, I’m on it. Anti-PWU gizmo — as I hinted to here, http://www.chinesepod.com/blog/?p=251 , I’ll wager a guess that a full blown grammar checker may be a bit much to ask. Besides, I think people kind of enjoy your amusing relationship with the PWU patrol.
OK Guys, I’m not an itunes expert (and don’t want to be) so I’m probably using the features improperly or at least inefficiently but what I think would be reasonable is for CPOD to code the lesson mp3 tags as follows: Song title = Lesson Title (same as now), Artist = www.chinesepod.com (same as now), Album=ChinesePod X (X=A,B,C,D… to match the lesson level), comment field = CPOD filename plus whatever else CPOD wants in there). The advantage of doing this way is it displays/sorts just like other albums/tracks. I actually hand recoded all the mp3s I’ve downloaded it works great for me.
Cheers, tom
P.S. I always see the following error below the message entry box. I have no idea what it means:
A GARBAGE ERROR has occured!
Go to the Contact section and notify to me!
Tom,
The garbage error has to do with a failing SPAM catcher. We will eventually get a new anti-SPAM thing and that message will go away. As for the ID3 tags, the issue has been discussed and we are addressing it. When we do it we want to be sure to consider new features that may be coming up in the future so that we don’t have to redo it again later. We will post about it soon.