I apologize for the site being down the last several hours. Turns out the website had been hacked into which caused some problems. Hopefully everything is resolved now and perhaps this post will make amends by introducing a potentially very exciting addition to the ChineseLearnOnline service.
This service is currently in beta. It's a regular forum with a twist.
1. It allows you to record audio messages using your computer microphone directly into your messages.
2. There is a tool to allow you to enter Pinyin tone marks into your text.
The idea here is for you to leave messages to each other (in Chinese of course) and perhaps even leave transcripts of what you're saying. I'm hoping this will give people a good chance to show off what Chinese they have learned to others, while getting a chance to know other listeners in the process.
You can try it out by going to the following website:
http://sagsys.mine.nu:8080/gong/
For now, click on the guest account which allows you to view, listen and post. Once the first round of testing is complete, I will be adding registration facilities.
Known Issues:
The website above launches a Java applet which requires the latest version of Java to be installed on your computer. I don't have enough test results from Mac platforms yet however on the PC side I have heard cases where Firefox seems to run it fine whereas Internet Explorer required the latest Java software to be installed. If you are in the latter case, you may need to download the the latest Java Environment from here:
http://gong.ust.hk/downloads/j2re-1_4_2_10-windows-i586-p.exe
I have also heard cases of users who were inside a firewalled network not being able to access this site so I apologize in advance if you're not able to access this site.
I appreciate any feedback you can provide me regarding what you think of this service. My initial idea is for this to be a place for listeners to share ideas and learning experiences with each other while of course being able to practice what you have learned. I will later be looking for users interested in helping moderate the service.
Enjoy!
