tai4ji2x Posted September 4, 2011 at 10:42 PM Report Share Posted September 4, 2011 at 10:42 PM currently back in the states, and recently (past week or so? don't remember the last time i used it before then, could've been a month or more) nciku.com and nciku.cn seem to show up as invalid domains. i'm using verizon fios. anyone else have any luck? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koxinga Posted September 4, 2011 at 10:48 PM Report Share Posted September 4, 2011 at 10:48 PM Both .com and .cn work (and worked) for me. Maybe you should try to use a different DNS server. OpenDNS is quite good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eranee Posted September 5, 2011 at 04:19 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 04:19 AM Both seem to be working fine for me. hmmm!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:01 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:01 AM Any chance you had a VPN turned on? I'm finding a lot of requests to Chinese servers from my VPN (Witopia) are getting blocked - turn the VPN off and it's fine. I would have thought Nckiu would be hosted outside China, but just tried with and without the VPN, and sure enough it didn't work with it on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest realmayo Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:14 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:14 AM Both .com and .cn were down for me yesterday and still are today, I'm in the UK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:18 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:18 AM Hmmm, can't get it with ISP DNS, can get it with Google's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest realmayo Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:24 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:24 AM If by that you mean you can get it by clicking on a link returned by a Google search (?), well, I can't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:40 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:40 AM Nope. You could try these instructions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest realmayo Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:50 AM Report Share Posted September 5, 2011 at 07:50 AM Oh I see. Well, I can live without nciku, found jukuu.com yesterday which was a fine alternative for my purposes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
googed Posted September 6, 2011 at 04:34 PM Report Share Posted September 6, 2011 at 04:34 PM It's been down several times a day for the past few weeks now. I'm looking for a good alternative myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daofeishi Posted September 6, 2011 at 05:03 PM Report Share Posted September 6, 2011 at 05:03 PM I use http://www.iciba.com as an alternative whenever nciku is down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manuel Posted March 31, 2012 at 06:42 AM Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 at 06:42 AM Broadly speaking I haven't had much luck with nciku since I came to China. When it works it's a great source of example sentences. However, the handwriting recognition tool is irritatingly sluggish. I am also often unable to access the the website at all. Today the website is genuinely down for maintenance, as is the case today, but some times I can access it only via proxy because either our friends the censors or the primates who run IT in my school routinely limit bandwidth and randomly block and unblock websites. We already had a dispute last year over random and severe limiations that were being imposed to get us to sing up to China Mobile to obtain a more reliable service. As it turned out, the school had a cheeky agreement with China Mobile to get comission for every student that signed up. Eventually about 50 of us started to complain about this and exposed the dirty landry, which resulted in the limitations being lifted and a couple of greedy individuals in the International Students Office being very embarrased. Thanks Daofeishi for recommending iciba, I wasn't aware of it but I've just checked it out and it was both fast and useful. For example sentences I usually turn to Google, Baidu or even Taobao (reading product descriptions is a great source of vocabulary). For handwriting recognition I find that nciku was too sluggish to be usable, so I use Sogou's built in handwriting recognition, which is just a tiny .exe that will run stand-alone if you don't want to use Sogou input method. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiana Posted April 16, 2013 at 12:55 PM Report Share Posted April 16, 2013 at 12:55 PM I don't seem to be able to access nciku.com in the last week or two. I wonder if it's gone or it's just my connection or me. Will appreciate it if someone could try it and let me know. I'm in the UK. Thanks, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
li3wei1 Posted April 16, 2013 at 12:58 PM Report Share Posted April 16, 2013 at 12:58 PM I'm getting it fine, also in the UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liuzhou Posted April 16, 2013 at 02:25 PM Report Share Posted April 16, 2013 at 02:25 PM Working fine here in China - with or without VPN. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiana Posted April 16, 2013 at 09:50 PM Report Share Posted April 16, 2013 at 09:50 PM Thank you for replying. I've got no luck. I've cleared the cache but still no luck. My browser is IE8 and I don't know if this has to do with it in any way. Only when nciku is unavailable, it's worth is appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AucklandLove Posted April 17, 2013 at 02:57 AM Report Share Posted April 17, 2013 at 02:57 AM I could not access it two days ago when doing my homework, very annoying. It works today though (from Beijing) without VPN. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tominchina Posted April 17, 2013 at 07:29 AM Report Share Posted April 17, 2013 at 07:29 AM sometimes yes sometimes no, I'd also like an answer to this one. I don't have a vpn here so its not that for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted April 17, 2013 at 07:45 AM Report Share Posted April 17, 2013 at 07:45 AM FWIW, I can get .com, but not .cn. In the UK. I notice on their blog they've recently shut down services to reduce server load - if their hosting is struggling then it wouldn't be too surprising if you can't get their site sometimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiana Posted April 17, 2013 at 08:55 AM Report Share Posted April 17, 2013 at 08:55 AM I think it has to do with my internet connection. I could not connect to nciku via my main bt broadband line but I've just now tried the free "bt wifi", I access nciku ok. What this means is I'll have to switch internet connection every time I want to use nciku. It's a pain...! Updated: Having been able to access, I now can access normally via bt broadband. So it seems that the connection is made through the cache. This is the message for the problem I had: dns error Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.