Gister ontving ik een brief (1, 2) van Mitros met daarin de uitslag van de draagvlakmeting voor het gebied rondom de Camera Obscura. Nouja, uitslag? Voorlopige uitslag…
Voor het renovatie gedeelte is een meerderheid van 70% van de bewoners, dus niet perse van de stemmen, nodig. Tot nog toe hebben ze slechts 62% gehaald. 20 mensen hebben niet gestemd en het plan van Mitros is nu opnieuw contact op te nemen met die niet-stemmers.
Ik vind het het een vrij dubieus democratisch expriment. Read More
A few days ago I made iSimplifiedChinese free so that more people would download it and hopefully spread the word and provide reviews. So far the good news is that it resulted in lots of downloads, but the bad news is that nobody bought any teacher feedbacks and downloads are dropping exponentially. Let’s look at the data. Do let me know if you have any thoughts on what’s going on.
The application was downloaded 881 times in 5 days. Of those 415 started the application and listened to the first phrase. 91 submitted one or more pronunciations and only 17 listened to the feedback they received from the teachers.
Zero in-app purchases of new feedbacks, zero iTunes reviews, zero emails with questions, comments or bugs.
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Using the ingredients from Part 1 I created three draft lessons for iSimplifiedChinese. In this post I analyse them in order to learn how to improve and expand the course.
All lesson material is shared under CC-SA. A Chinese speaking friend of mine was kind enough to check the material for errors, but as usual use it at your own risk 
| English | Chinese | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|
| Hello | 你好 | Nǐ hǎo |
| Thanks | 谢谢 | Xièxie |
| Excuse me | 请问 | qǐngwén |
| I'm fine | 我很好 | wǒ hěn hǎo |
| We are | 我们是 | Wǒmen shì |
| He wants | 他希望 | Tā xīwàng |
| You need | 你需要 | Nǐ xūyào |
| One, two, three | 一，二，三 | Yī, èr, sān |
| I drink tea | 我喝茶 | Wǒ hē chá |
| Are you hungry? | 你饿吗 | Nǐ è ma? |
I just watched Erasing David, a documentary about a man who tried to hide from two private detectives for a month.
Amazing; you just can’t hide unless you sacrifice pretty much everything.
And this was all relatively low-tech and with almost no access to the sort information a government can use (e.g. cellphone locations, passport registration at borders, ATM withdrawals, CCTV). Not to mention the stuff that’s coming in the next few years: mass facial recognition, CCTV online, everyone on Facebook, dirt cheap and ultra fast DNA sequencing, chip based public transport, better (international) interconnecting of databases, pattern/signature recognition in arbitrary (anonymous) data and accidental/ deliberate massive leaks from central databases. And last but not least: abundant cheap (online) labor to do all the work that can’t be automated.
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The goal of iSimplifiedChinese is to teach people how to pronounce Standard Mandarin Chinese. For that I need words and phrases for students to practice. But which?
The goal isn’t to teach vocabulary or grammar; there are other apps, books and teachers for that. In theory you don’t need to understand a word you’re saying in order to pronounce it correctly. However I believe it’s useful and good for motivation when you learn something that you can see yourself using in the real world.
How big should a course be?
For practical and philosophical reasons, I’d like to turn that question around and ask how short it can be. My hypothesis is that after practicing X words, you’re able to pronounce most new words correctly as you encounter them. All I need to do is figure out what number X is. My initial guess is a few hundred.
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Apple gave me a really nice birthday present on December 2nd, when they approved my iPhone application: iSimplifiedChinese. For those who don’t know it, it allows you to practice your Chinese pronunciation by sending your pronunciations to a real Chinese person for feedback.
I expected waking up filthy rich the next morning, but unfortunately it turns out I need to do a bit more work for that. There could be many reasons why only one copy was sold in the first week, but I figured that the most import reason was that nobody knew about it. Time to reread the 4HWW chapters on Marketing.
My goal for January is to sell 120 copies or the equivalent in other revenue. If that fails I want to at least obtain enough data and insight to know what to do next. My remaining budget for this is about €50 and 50 hours.
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In aanvulling op mijn tweets (1,2) van net over het artikel “Niemand weet raad met het falende UWV” in de NRC van vandaag (31-7-2010). Ik kan me altijd mateloos ergeren als zowel de media als de politiek niet even de moeite nemen basale statistiek toe te passen voor ze van alles gaan roepen.
Neem de titel: “Niemand weet raad met het falende UWV”
Hoezo falend? Ze zijn over budget gegaan en ze functioneren intern niet, da’s waar. Maar het gaat over het re-integreren van werklozen. De enige relevante vraag is of ze hun re-integratie rendabel doen.
Het is heel simpel: een werkloze kost x per maand. Als die werkloze dankzij het UWV n maanden sneller een baan vindt, dan moeten de kosten daarvan minder dan n * x zijn. Als dat niet zo is, dan is er duidelijk sprake van falen. Als dat wel zo is, dan is er hooguit sprake van (dramatische) inefficiëntie en gebrek aan financiële discipline.
Utrecht 15 juni 2010
Betreft: Opzeggen abonnement en verzoek tot terugstorting teveel betaalde deel
Geachte heer / mevrouw,
Ik wens mijn abonnement voor Vodafone telefoonnummer 06-xxxxxxxx per onmiddellijk of zo spoedig mogelijk op te zeggen. Dit verzoek doe ik slechts om eventuele schade te beperken en ik erken hiermee niet dat u het recht of toestemming had het abonnement stilzwijgend te verlengen.
Mijn contract eindigde per 28 maart 2010, maar u heeft sindsdien meerdere keren geld afgeschreven van mijn rekening. Ik verzoek u hierbij opnieuw om dit terug te storten.
Ik heb dit verzoek reeds eerder per email ingediend; zie incident 100613-000255. Ik kreeg de volgende afwijzende reactie:
Ik heb uw gegevens bekeken en ik zie dat uw data- abonnement niet is geannuleerd. Het contract is wel contractsvrij maar er is geen schriftelijk annulering bij de desbetreffende afdeling binnengekomen.
Dit is ook de reden waarom nog steeds wordt geincasseerd.
Oh my… I still can’t believe it. There are actually good people in this world. Or the bad guys aren’t as smart as I feared. Either way, I thought I fell victim to a super sophisticated social engineering attack. But I didn’t! Let me explain…
I arrived at Xi’an train station this morning on the night train from Beijing. The hostel offered to pick me up for free, which of course I couldn’t refuse. So as promised three people were waiting for me with a sign that had my name on it.
Such a sign is crucial, because of course dozens of people will greet you with “Hello my friend, do you need taxi / hotel”. My name is not very common, so I don’t have to worry about the kind of folks who hold up a “Mr Smith” sign every day waiting to catch one. So far so good.
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I installed the Sleep Cycle iPhone app about a month ago, so I thought it was time for an update.
Let me share some data:
 December 25 |
 December 26 |
