New "Language Mentor" app - Android version

[dmccarroll16]

Hello All,

I'm posting to announce that my company, The Language Collaborative, has released a new smartphone app called Language Mentor.

While Language Mentor works with any language, the first modules that we've created are for Mandarin Chinese.

Language Mentor is a simple, "mainly audio" app that is designed for people to use when their hands and eyes are busy doing other things. It's kind of like the CD-based language learning materials that we're all familiar with but, because it's software, it does much more than a CD can do.

Here's an overview:

• Free, audio-based, smartphone software for busy people
  
• Android now, iPhone in early 2012
  
• An open platform:
  
  • Module creators can create modules for any language
    
  • Users can download modules hosted anywhere on the Internet
    
  • Open source
    

  [*]Five different learning modes

  [*]Record/Playback for pronunciation practice

  [*]"I Know This" button allows users to concentrate on unlearned content

We've released Language Mentor as a public beta* version, downloadable from our website. We plan to release it on the Android App Store by the end of the year, but we'd like to get some feedback from users before we do this. We invite the readers of this forum to give it a try and let us know what you think.

We have a 6-minute video demo on our home page that provides a good overview of how Language Mentor works.

Instructions for downloading and installing Language Mentor can be found here.

Thanks,

Douglas McCarroll

The Language Collaborative

http://www.languagecollaborative.com

* "beta": software that works well enough to be usable and useful, but probably still has a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

[cababunga]

Thnank you, Douglas, it looks very interesting. Unfortunately, being built on Adobe Flex, it requires Adobe Flash to be present, which regrettably can't be installed on some devices.

[dmccarroll16]

Hi Cababunga,

Thanks for your response.

> it requires Adobe Flash to be present

Well, I guess that it depends on how we define 'Flash'.

Currently, Language Mentor requires Adobe AIR, which is certainly part of the Flash family. AIR can be installed on most recent Android phones - i.e. one year old or less.

The newest version of Flex (currently in Beta) allows one to include AIR in one's app, so that the user doesn't need to install AIR separately. We'll do this with Language Mentor soon - probably by the end of the year.

On iPhone the picture is a bit different. iPhone doesn't allow Flash plugins for browsers, but it does allow 'AIR included' standalone apps. Adobe has made it possible to do this with both Flash and Flex apps for a number of months now. The important distinction to understand is that one can create standalone apps for the iPhone and iPad with this approach, but web-based Flash content (which runs in the browser) won't work on the iPhone, iPad etc. We'll be using this 'AIR included' approach when we release Language Mentor for the iPhone next year.

The great thing about Flex is that it allows a developer (in this case, me) to write an application once and publish it for multiple platforms. Besides Android and iPhone, Flex apps can currently also be exported to the Blackberry Playbook tablet and the Barnes & Noble Nook, and Adobe is working to extend this list to other devices. The alternative - writing one's app several times in the native language of each platform - has some advantages but is much more time consuming.

Douglas