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Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

memordo.com

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Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#51

Post by mvind »

hansitomani wrote: post #47

I'm always curious on what type of feedback the author really is looking for or if it is just cheap ad. $5 for unlimited and basically 25 cards for 'free' makes it quite obvious that this tool does not provide anything the market already offers. Aren't people analysing what is already out there? Anki/Ankiweb is free. What student will every pay $5/month for your service? No one. I assume that you will visit your subs…

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! This was a proof of concept of the idea of creating cards through a chrome extension. There is still a lot of crucial features missing, and I know that now. But from my experience Anki is not an easy tool to use for non-technical users, so the aim for memordo is to have the easability of quizlet but the functionality of anki.

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#52

Post by adsjhdashkj »

tasogare wrote: post #13
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #9

Theory / 2 Cents: don't just work on a GUI for spaced repetition cards, invent an open file format for spaced repetition (perhaps an XML plus an schema, or a JSON based file format, a subset of HTML or markdown, etc...). The idea is that you create a file format spec, perhaps even some open source libraries to operate on the file format. And then you sell a really nice GUI for editing that (perhaps a web page, perhap…

I created a file format designed for sharing data in-between language learning apps (JSON based + signature). It’s not released yet but if someone is interested please reply below. It would be great to have software other than mine using it.

I'm interested, though primarily because i'm duplicating the work you're describing - hah.

I'm interested in writing two main components:

1. Information storage, with retention / etc. My initial feature scope is likely going to focus on retention (spaced rep) and storage (archiving sources), long term i want to dog food a general purpose knowledge base.

2. Data storage. Unfortunately every time i start working on the schemas for the information storage i end up reinventing so many features of general purpose data storage, like versioning, data deduplication, etc - i end up with a clone of Git :(

So i'd love to hear some words of wisdom on this subject. I imagine you - sanely - focus more on #1, but that's not an area i've obsessed about yet too much.

This whole topic does interest me though - part of the reason i'm writing the data layer is because i want a git-like behavior to be able to slice other sources of information up with the ease and safety of git. So the idea of information source interop is close to my hear - but the idea of IO with external formats has not been big on my radar.

As i make progress with the information side of things, i'll have to keep that in mind. My model embraced self-hosting and i really want to avoid information hostage. So this convo has already been valuable :)

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#54

Post by rsanek »

rdslw wrote: post #35
mvind wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a valid point. What do you think would be respectable amount of free cards? - or is having a card limit even the right way to of differentiate between free and premium? Very interested in hearing your points - i'm totally new to this.

I appreciate you responding. I would say 250+ and no more than 1000 should be more than enough. Usually doing 20..40 new DAILY is a max if you are doing anything bigger. I would allow users bigger db (1000..5000) but would limit to the moment they will reveal (open) 250 new cards. You want them to create habbit. This needs more than few weeks. Completly dont worry about them using 200 or 500, if habbit do not kickin,…

I think your math is off by a factor of ten: $5/month * 12 months/year * 10 years = $600, not $6,000. I do agree with the general point, though, it seems like education is a really tough market to monetize as people are very price-sensitive.

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#55

Post by rsanek »

I think you'll need to offer something significantly better than what is already available for free on other apps to really get traction. This space is already pretty crowded -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flashcard_software -- but I still think there's plenty of room to improve on what current services offer.

Agree with the others that your pricing doesn't make sense. You want to get users to the hook point of SRS. Very few people reach this point [0], and having an arbitrary card limit will only make this worse. I would provide a very generous free trial period that has all the features of the full version -- perhaps something like 60-90 days. If someone is actually still using the app at the end of the trial, they'll be really easy to convert because they see the huge benefits. The reality is, the vast majority of your sign ups will not reach that point, but a bigger proportion will if they don't have the arbitrary card limit that prevents them from seeing the real value of SRS.

Best of luck to you!

[0] There's a blog post out there from an author of free SRS software that laments how awful the conversion rates were because users just don't stick with SRS, but I can't seem to find it.

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#56

Post by imdsm »

mvind wrote: post #51
hansitomani wrote: post #47

I'm always curious on what type of feedback the author really is looking for or if it is just cheap ad. $5 for unlimited and basically 25 cards for 'free' makes it quite obvious that this tool does not provide anything the market already offers. Aren't people analysing what is already out there? Anki/Ankiweb is free. What student will every pay $5/month for your service? No one. I assume that you will visit your subs…

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! This was a proof of concept of the idea of creating cards through a chrome extension. There is still a lot of crucial features missing, and I know that now. But from my experience Anki is not an easy tool to use for non-technical users, so the aim for memordo is to have the easability of quizlet but the functionality of anki.

If I can just add a slightly less critical point to the above — yes, the $5 price turned me off, but I think it's a great concept. As I read this, I had physical revision cards in front of me, filling them up with formula prior to joining a lecture, so I could use them for reference.

Would I use this for book marking formulae and research? Potentially. But would I pay for it? Sadly not.

It's a great idea, but there have to be two things to make this successful I think: a useful concept, and a tool valuable enough to be worth money.

Good luck, and don't give up!

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#58

Post by DecayingOrganic »

mvind wrote: post #51
hansitomani wrote: post #47

I'm always curious on what type of feedback the author really is looking for or if it is just cheap ad. $5 for unlimited and basically 25 cards for 'free' makes it quite obvious that this tool does not provide anything the market already offers. Aren't people analysing what is already out there? Anki/Ankiweb is free. What student will every pay $5/month for your service? No one. I assume that you will visit your subs…

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! This was a proof of concept of the idea of creating cards through a chrome extension. There is still a lot of crucial features missing, and I know that now. But from my experience Anki is not an easy tool to use for non-technical users, so the aim for memordo is to have the easability of quizlet but the functionality of anki.

I take advantage of that complexity though. For example, I practice intentional vocabulary acquisition by adding cards in my own custom note type called 'Vocab.'

I installed AnkiConnect add-on which allows me to communicate with Anki over a simple HTTP API and complimented it with a CLI tool which automatically fetches the audio or whatever is needed to fill in the fields for the card and adds it to Anki.

So all you have to do is open the terminal and write "add [word]". And the magic happens:

1. A card which the agent is prompted to pronounce the word, followed by the correct pronunciation.

2. A card which the agent is prompted to write down the word after hearing the pronunciation.

3. A card which requests a random example sentence featuring the word, served by a local server. (https://i.imgur.com/11E3IqE.png)

The last card is the most helpful, it provides comprehensible input in the form of unique sentences that uses that word, so you get acquainted with the word's collocations, the context in which it is used and etc.

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#59

Post by allenu »

hansitomani wrote: post #47

I'm always curious on what type of feedback the author really is looking for or if it is just cheap ad. $5 for unlimited and basically 25 cards for 'free' makes it quite obvious that this tool does not provide anything the market already offers. Aren't people analysing what is already out there? Anki/Ankiweb is free. What student will every pay $5/month for your service? No one. I assume that you will visit your subs…

I'm working on my own flash card app [1] and I agree with you that charging a monthly subscription is too much. I think to make a new flash cards app or service viable, you need to have an open ecosystem. This means an open file format, easy to share cards, and no subscription fee. If the service goes down, then what are you supposed to do with your cards? I think this is one reason why Anki is so successful. Obviously it's free, but the file format is understood and decks are easily shared.

The plan for my app is just to charge a one-time fee to get the app and not charge a monthly fee or anything. On top of it, the file format will be "open" (i.e. you can peek at how it works easily). Obviously that means I can't rely on a service, but there are still ways to allow people to sync their data or share decks with each other.

[1] https://www.ussherpress.com/freshcards/

Re: Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool

#60

Post by HenryBemis »

hansitomani wrote: post #47

I'm always curious on what type of feedback the author really is looking for or if it is just cheap ad. $5 for unlimited and basically 25 cards for 'free' makes it quite obvious that this tool does not provide anything the market already offers. Aren't people analysing what is already out there? Anki/Ankiweb is free. What student will every pay $5/month for your service? No one. I assume that you will visit your subs…

Silly idea, but hear me out/please answer:

Who owns the content/material? Are you (the dev/owner) planning to collect these, go through them, vet them, improve them/resell them?

Are you building a knowledge base/library were you can sell to others the memory/flash-cards, and share the revenue with the creators?

What is the end-game? Is it just the hope of the $5 per month?

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