Latest development effort

I've gotten past the first tax hurdle and back to development. I have the edit window all laid out and all the art created and have begun the process of stitching it all together. Based on a new design of the home grown class library I use I had to make a pretty big change to the way the window works. I finished that and have been putting it altogether and getting the editor to work again.

I keep going back and looking at maybe rewriting this in C# or maybe doing something C++ .net with it, but either way it looks like it would be a complete rewrite and I thank that would just take a lot more work and I would rather move on to more projects. Technology is tough to keep up with. When I wrote Memorize-It for Window the first time it was done in cutting edge fashion. Since that time, there have been about 4 different APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces) pushed out by Microsoft and I'm sure if I chose .NET with XAML today it would be obsolete in a year just as if I would have chosen .NET with Forms last year. Memorize-It is actually layered very closely to Win32 which is at the lowest layer for all the other APIs that have come and gone over the years, so I'm happy with that decision even if it does cause some extra work. The good news is I didn't choose MFC a few years after I wrote the first Memorize-It because even though it got a recent update it is looking more and more tired and I'm doubting it will be supported forever. At least with Win32 I know they'll have a lot of problems ever dropping it completely since all their other technologies rely on it.

Tax time

Tax time has distracted me a little from development. I have to get my books in order before the 31st when I have to report sales tax numbers. Since I do all my business online and my vendor or reference is in Minnesota (Digital River) I don't pay any California sales tax so it is an exercise that doesn't make any difference, but it is still a hoop I have to jump through. As I've said before, this doesn't make me much money, I have been doing it for years because it makes a little bit of money, but mostly because I wrote this software for myself and it worked so I decided to share it with others. If you have any ideas on how to improve it, or how to improve sales I would love to hear them.

As I stepped away from development to do taxes I had just finished a new layout for the edit window and had begun to implement it in code.

Creative Capitalism

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080124/tc_nm/davos_gates_dc_1

You have to love Bill Gates for really changing the way he thinks about wealth. He used to be the Sam Walton Family (See: The High Cost Of Low Price to understand how greedy they really are) of the greed chasers and has really turned to making something good with his wealth. If you purchase Memorize-It, I promise not to hook you into some sort of revolving money machine to keep taking your money. I have always been about creating software that I sell at a reasonable price and use any profit to make new products and services that are also sold at a reasonable price (If only it were that easy and I could actually afford to quit my day job and make more products). I also have always given a lot of my time and money to various charities and that will always continue. Especially the work I have done in Santa Ana and Africa and we have been looking at doing some work in Watts and Mexico.

Anyway, I really like what Bill said, "The self-interest behind capitalism had driven multiple innovations but to harness it to the benefit of all required the system be refined. Greater focus on recognition for improving the lives of others could provide a spur for companies to focus more on making money out of providing valuable products at affordable prices to the world's poor."

Impressive from one of the biggest (past) abusers of the capitalist system in the last century.

Don't pay extra for extended downloads

There has been a trend lately in the software download industry to try and up-sell customers with an extended download service. This is the scam. You pay an extra $5-10 dollars when you purchase and then you can have your serial numbers resent to you later if you have a hard disk crash or something. I've seen a number of e-mails praising how well this works to increase revenue. To me it just seems like robbery or taking advantage of people. If you purchase Memorize-It and lose your serial number, send us an e-mail. We keep records (like everyone else) and it is pretty simple to look up and send you the serial number.

As for the download, you can always download Memorize-It from right here: http://www.memorize-it.com, including older versions in case you can't afford the $10 for an upgrade.

Extended download, just say no.

Windows Vista Compatibility

I've been getting a number of questions on Windows Vista compatibility. Yes, Memorize-It 4.0 works with Windows Vista. I have tested it and have also been developing the latest version using Windows Vista.

As for Windows Vista itself, I have a number of complaints, but overall it looks nice and seems to mostly work. Most of the problems I have had have been minor annoyances in the user interface. Especially in the constant popups that warn you when ever you seem to push a button that has anything to do with accessing the network or changing some application.

What's in the new version so far

Since I've announced that there is a new version in the works and has been in the works for a few years now, I'm sure there will be questions about the new features. Also, before you decide to hold off on your purchase I have given a FREE upgrade to anyone that has purchased in the 6 months previous to every other release. Also, upgrades are always only $10.

The biggest change that I'm the most excited about is the ability to use multi-byte Unicode fonts. It was actually the one feature that I get asked about most over the years. It was a tough change and touched nearly every file in the program. It took me a few months, but I'm really glad I finally got it done. This means that Memorize-It will finally work with Asian and Arabic fonts which is one of the biggest items on my list of features to add.

I've also redone the user interface and all the graphical elements in the application. The multi-file browse window was the biggest change since I keep getting requests to license Memorize-It, but have not really had a great way for people to show their cards outside the Memorize-It application. Hopefully this new system will lead to a better system for others to share their flashcards. Also I'm planning making better bundles of the flashcards we already have available.

Jpeg and Gif image importing. I've looked a little at PNG, but I don't think it will make it into this release.

A new card style. Random multiple choice will move the answer between A-E instead of the current way where the correct answer is fixed in a specific location.

ToolTips were added. It may seem like a simple thing, but Memorize-It is written on a home-grown application framework I call BareBones. This was written before MFC which has since become the most popular application framework for Windows. In general, I like BareBones because it doesn't have any overhead. It does the basics. The problem with this is when new technologies come along I have extra work to do to add them to my framework. In this case it was a few weeks work, but this will make the application easier to use because the buttons will now pop up a little tip on what they do when the mouse hovers over them.

I'm now starting work on the edit window, then the list window and after that there are probably another million tasks, but I am committed to getting this done. I have some ideas to add on card sizing that will help in one of the problem areas people have had and that is full screen editing and quizzing. I'm going to allow full window size editing of cards, but I am also going to have 4 fixed sizes for 3x5, 4x6 and 5x7 cards which will force the size of the card no matter what the window size is. This typically causes a lot of problems with printing and will be nice to finally have a better system for people that like to maximize the edit window.

The list continues, but I think that is enough to give you a taste of what is coming in the new version.

Behind the scenes

For the past few years I've been working on a new version of Memorize-It. Before you decide to hold off on your purchase I have given a FREE upgrade to anyone that has purchased in the 6 months previous to every release. Also, upgrades are always only $10. One of my biggest disappointments with the software industry is the cost of maintenance and yearly updates. It really gets my blood boiling: the yearly cost, the upgrades that are nearly the same price as the original and the crazy schemes that companies come up with the take advantage of you. I never started this venture to make a ton of money. I have a regular job and did this on the side for my own benefit and decided to release it as a product after a few years of refinement. Mostly just to share what I've done with others. Anyway, here is a screenshot of the latest quiz win.


I still have a lot more work to go, but it has been a consistent bit of progress forward for the past six months. Probably a lot longer to go, but I'm excited to finally get this done and have been putting much of my extra time on getting there.

Changing Analytics

I've changed my analytics engine I use to google. I originally paid for the Web Side Story site and they quietly went "free" when google analytics came out, but I decided to try the Google Analytics out on (yet) another blog I created, which I'll probably mention at some point. The Google Analytics seemed easier to configure and change so I decided to move all my analytics. I still don't get all the information I want out of it, like knowing when a click leads to a sale, but I'm working on it. Now if I can just get my commerce provider to come around and allow me to do this I will be very happy. I'm not holding my breath since it seems like people have been asking the RegNow folks about this for years now.

Flashcards for College Students

Memorize-It is targeted specifically for college students. It's main intention was to allow a busy person to quickly start studying exactly the information that they need to learn. No matter what that information is, if you could write it on a paper flaschard, you could more quickly create an electronic flashcards. That was the goal and that is the reality. I personally have used it in foreign language, GRE, acronyms, art history, chemistry and guitar. College student's don't have a lot of time to spare. If you are looking for a good gift for a student, this $25 software will be one of their best tools in getting better grades in college. If you are looking for the perfect gift for a college student, this is it.

Did you ever use flashcards?

I remember using flashcards to memorize the multiplication tables. My father wrote them out on 3x5 cards and would sit by the bed each night quizzing me on a different set of numbers. As I became proficient at various cards he would remove them from the stack. Once they were all in the proficient stack it would be time to read or go to bed. Since that time I have used flashcards many times on various subjects. When I wrote Memorize-It, I kept this in mind and even since then I have used Memorize-It for a number of topics. I made sure that the quizzing aspects included the ability to focus on the hardest information by giving more repetition on the hardest cards.

Testing with flashcards

Memorize-It has a feature to test yourself with using same flashcards you study with. This is only with the multiple choice, true-false and type-in style cards, but it actually hides the answers and allows you to self test on the information you are studying. This feature was added as a precursor to a full blown network testing system. That system was available for a time and is back in development.

Spanish Flashcards

I have created hundreds of Spanish Flashcards with sound. They are all vocabulary, but that is what Memorize-It Flashcards is best at since that is exactly what it was created for. I originally created it to learn German. I was living in Germany and would head out to the local Gasthaus and come home with a new list of words. I would plug them into Memorize-It and after an few times through them a couple days in a row I was ready for another list. It really made learning the language much easier.

Periodic Table Flashcards

Many years ago I created a complete list of flashcards containing all the elements in the Periodic Table. I was selling this on Flashcard Station, but only had the first 15 elements in the deck. Someone pointed this out to me lateley and I replaced the file with the complete list of elements. Who knows why I originally only uploaded the first 15 elements? I sent his person the deck free. If there is some subject that you would like flashcards created for where the data is readily available, just ask and I'll create the cards for you.

Flashcards with sound

One of the best things I ever added to Memorize-It was sound. I did this on the first computer that came with a microphone. It was a macintosh IIsi. I've since abandoned the Mac and have lately been trying to revive it with limited success due to other obligations, but that is a different story. I added the sound on flashcards while I was in Germany learning German. I would come home from the local Gasthaus and type in the words I had struggled with to for the evening. Later I would add the sounds and archive them for others to use. Sound on cards really adds a lot of potential to the value of flashcards.

Monitoring Works

I'm happy to report that the changes I made the flashcards site worked. I could see the results in my logs from yesterday. I could see that people were hitting the detailed file pages instead of just hitting the category pages. This is good because I would like people to have as much information as possible before leaving the site. I can't recommend traffic monitoring enough.

Monitoring Website Traffic

I monitor my website's traffic using WebSideStory and IndexTools.com. I don't do this in a big brother sort of way, but just to see where people are coming from and how they spend their time on the site. I want to see where people are coming from so I can see if the time I spend promoting my site is worthwhile. I can also see what people are looking for and target Memorize-It accordingly. Recently I have been watching our new Flashcards site and noticed that most people were only looking at the card categories and not the more detailed information on each deck. I went back and looked and the card category page did not clearly show that there was more information on each deck. I added the text "More Info..." to the link. Over the next few weeks I'll keep an eye out to see if this generates more traffic to the actual decks.

That said, if you are running a website, I highly recommend doing analysis on your website traffic. The two I recommend are WebSideStory and IndexTools.com listed on my WoodsGoods.com site. It is nice to know when and if all the work you are doing is worthwhile. In my case I can see more about what people are looking for in Memorize-It and make the software better for everyone.

Selling Flashcards

Over the years we have created a lot of flashcards. In the early 90's most of our sales came from local trade shows. We used to put flashcards on floppy diskettes and sell them individually. This only worked in person and we couldn't seem to find a cost effective way to sell them otherwise. CDROMS solved some of this, but they were still too expensive to manufacture. In the late 90's we swtiched completely to online sales of Memorize-It and I always dreamed of selling the cards again. This time the barrier were credit card fees. It seemed that the minimum you could charge for something was around $10. With the advent of Apple iTunes, it seems the credit card processors have changed their tune. Once it became apparent that the tide had changed I created a new site to sell the flashcards for as inexpensively as I could. In most cases they are $1.99, but I have gone as low as $.99 cents.

Would you like to make money selling flashcards? I'm willing to give you most of the proceeds. All you have to have is a bunch of flashcards that people will want to buy. Upload them to our flashcard website and direct people to buy them there. For each deck sold, I will take 15% plus $0.35. The $0.35 is the minimum fee I'm charged by the credit card company. It is just a way for them to keep the minimum sales item at $0.99. I'm just passing that cost on. You would make nearly 85% of the profit. These numbers are subject to change when my credit card processor changes their rates, but I want you to make money.

Printing Flashcards

Printing flashcards was a feature that came along much later. I had only envisioned an electronic quiz system, but it seemed that many people also wanted to print their flashcards. Not a problem, I'm always open to new features and added it to the 2.0 version. I do most of my printing on business card paper because they travel well and you get more per page of paper making them less expensive. I've added a lot more formats over the years and am always surprised (but quick to add) the many different formats that people are interested in.

Afrikaans Flashcards

This week I created some electronic flashcards with sound to learn Afrikaans. I'm going on a mission trip to Namibia, Africa and we were given some simple sentences in Afrikaans. Since Memorize-It was created specifically to learn languages, I thought it would be best for me to create the cards and give them to the team.

You will first have to download and install Memorize-It.

Then you can go to this link to get the flashcards.
http://www.flashcardstation.com/decks/viewfile.php?f=100
You just save the file to disk, then click open once the download is complete. Once you have the file open, just click the quiz button to begin quizzing the cards. The pronunciation on these (done by me) is questionable since I do not speak Afrikaans. Most seemed close to German, but more Dutch and I have a good handle on German. I think most of them are close, but I'm sure there are errors. As with all languages, close will get you a very long way into people's hearts.

Quizzing Formats - Honor System

The first version of Memorize-It that I wrote only had Honor System flashcards. Since that time, we have added multiple choice, true-false and type-in cards, but in most cases I still like the Honor system cards the best. Memorize-It keeps track of the hardest cards and allows you to focus on exactly the information that is tough for you. The Honor System card requires that you tell the computer whether you answered the card correctly or incorrectly. This is no different than when my dad created multiplication table flashcards (paper, when I was a kid) and helped me learn those by wrote. We had two piles, those that I got right and those that I got wrong. We continued using the pile that I got wrong until there were none left. The next night we would do the same thing over. This is the same thing you can do with Memorize-It, except that you don't need two people as the computer automates the process for you. Using the computer allows a number of added features which are far superior to the old method my dad and I used, but at the core is still the Honor System flashcard.