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in_lab -



Quote:

we've even seen samples of the new ABC one, and for various reasons we don't think that's going to
meet our needs

Not what I wanted to hear. I thought ABC could do no wrong. Any details?



Quote:

If someone offered a 100,000+ entry English-to-Chinese dictionary with Pinyin transcriptions,
simplified + traditional character support, and good coverage of American + British English,

I think any EC dictionary whose example sentences actually correspond to the Chinese definition
entries should be under very strong consideration.



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adrianlondon -

To be honest, I think I'll just start doing reverse-lookups each time I want to translate
something from English. The Chinese-English dictionary is excellent.

I've also had a few people look at me in class, scribbling away and getting good lookups based on
my poor character writing, and go "ooooo - me want!". I keep meaning to use my Palm TX for
something else, in order to make that purchase better value for money, but at the moment I use it
for Plecodict, the time planner, and nothing else.

I wish they'd bring out something, looking just like the TX (i.e. with no keyboard and a screen no
smaller) which was also a mobile phone.










roddy -

Not sure how the screen size stacks up, but something like this - not Palm, but as I understand it
Plecodict for PPC will run on one of these. Any Windows Mobile based smartphone would do, no?

As for other stuff to do with your palm - download Chinese podcasts over wireless and listen to
them, read the news using Pleco's Instant Access, decipher the signs on Signese.com - plenty of
stuff to do, and that's just Chinese based.










mikelove -



Quote:

Not what I wanted to hear. I thought ABC could do no wrong. Any details?

Well I'm not technically under NDA about this, but I still shouldn't say anything specific until
it's released - it seems fine for what it's designed to do, but it's not quite right for our
purposes, and I don't think it'll be the same sort of blockbuster title that the C-E Comprehensive
Dictionary has been. I'll be happy to go into detail about why we weren't that big on it after it
hits bookstores. But even if we'd been more enthusiastic about licensing it, I don't think we
could have come to mutually acceptable terms with Wenlin/UH (we had some less-than-promising
discussions on that front), so it's kind of a moot point anyway.

By a surprising coincidence, though, we've actually just gotten a few leads going on some other
E-C dictionary licenses; these are of the comprehensive but simplified-only and Pinyin-lacking
variety, so they wouldn't replace the NWP but rather would fall into the same "advanced" category
as our new Chinese-Chinese title. Once things get a little further along I'll post a message here
and on our own site asking for opinions on the specific titles.










randall_flagg -

mikelove: This is probably rather sensitive information, but I'd really like to know how many
units you've sold thus far? I know so many foreign learners of Chinese, but unfortunately, none of
them seem to know plecodict.










mikelove -

That is a little too sensitive, I'm afraid. But we certainly haven't tapped out the market yet, so
we'd love to find some ways of getting the word out more effectively.










Shadowdh -

Hi Mike,

2 Things.. when will pleco 2 be ready...?? Cant wait to upgrade and get all those lovely new
features... and with christmas coming it will be easier to make the excuses for the purchase of
the upgrade to the wife...

Secondly as for a way to get the word out, perhaps offer incentives for those who use it now to
spread the word... for eg if they get three referrals then they get a prize or something... just a
thought... cheers










adrianlondon -

Yes, I like the incentive idea, too










mikelove -

2.0 won't be ready by Christmas, but there should be a Preview Release out within a month or so.
Which will be missing some big features, like flashcards, but should contain most of the
improvements to the core dictionary (full-text search, length-based result sorting, ARM
acceleration, hyperlinks, etc) and on Pocket PC should also contain our new, fast, efficient
replacement for Microsoft's painfully buggy font rendering system.

And we've looked into an referral system, but we can't come up with a way to make it work that
doesn't require a huge expense of money and time on our part to maintain - at best we'd break
even, and it's more likely we'd be spending significantly more money on the referral system than
we'd be getting in additional sales. It's not just the prizes / commissions / etc, it's the
support, people complaining because they don't get credit for a referral, losing their commission
checks, tax/accounting issues, etc, not to mention the significant fraud potential. And farming
this out to another company that specializes in referral/commission systems is a no-go because of
our extremely international customer base.

The continuing flow of free upgrades constitutes a sort of incentive though - if we weren't
expecting to make up our development costs in increased sales of the new version there's no way we
could afford to give away (most of) 2.0 for free, so by referring people to our software you're
helping to preserve our free-upgrade policy. It's a reasonable trade, we give you this cool new
software and all you have to do is show it off to your friends










Shadowdh -



Quote:

The continuing flow of free upgrades constitutes a sort of incentive though - if we weren't
expecting to make up our development costs in increased sales of the new version there's no way we
could afford to give away (most of) 2.0 for free, so by referring people to our software you're
helping to preserve our free-upgrade policy. It's a reasonable trade, we give you this cool new
software and all you have to do is show it off to your friends

Oh and show off I do mate... I plug as much as possible...

I didnt know that about a referral system... sounds a right nightmare... And its a shame that 2
wont be out by christmas but I still look forward to it and you can be sure I will be buying the
upgrade... (after all theres birthdays and fathers day too... hmmm maybe I can talk her into
believing its a romantic valentine day gift too...lol...)












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