One year ago today, on 29th September 2013, Lingopolo was born!
This is perhaps a good time to reflect on what has been achieved so far. I say so far, because there are many things I still want to do with the website to make it even better. But as I pause and take a look at what has been achieved already, I must admit that I am very happy with the progress so far toward the vision I have for Lingopolo.
Already the website has over 1700 words, over 500 phrases, and over 20 dialogues (as of today there are 1701, 557 and 22 respectively).
In the Online Lessons page, there are already 56 Themed Lessons.
I am very pleased with the basic structure of breaking down words or phrases literally into their component parts. This is great for single words like a mop or wellingtons, or for the breakdown of a more complex phrase like "Are you using your washing machine to wash the clothes". I think this method of breaking things down really does help the student of Thai to learn how words or phrases are made up.
As a programmer I am very pleased at a lot of the functionality which has been added. I love the summary section for each phrase or dialogue. It's all generated automatically, but to me it has a real beauty in the way it shows in a user-friendly (and search engine friendly) way what each page is about.
I'm very happy with the 3 dictionaries of recordings for words, phrases and dialogues.
Adding Thai script was a big deal, but now, even though my Thai is not good enough to read Thai, I love it as an addition, and it has gradually been added to every part of the site.
I love the Known words summary, particularly using Lingopolo as a student of Thai; it really gives me a satisfaction of progression in the language.
As a programmer and as a Thai student, I love particularly automatic quiz type. As a programmer, it was particularly challenging to get right for various technical reasons. As a student of Thai, I find it great that it eases me gently into the knowledge of a word, going gently from multi-choice questions, through the Thai to English quiz type and finally (though I admit I have not many of my words have reached this level) using the English to Thai quiz type.
There are many small things which make me very happy on the site; small usability features, each of which took a little time to add but make the site just that little bit more user-friendly.
The checkbox for use when you already know a word is small, and only occassionaly used, but when needed, I think is very helpful.
The recent additions page is also a small but useful nice-to-have for the site which I like. I'm often using it myself to see what the latest words have been added are.
Little things like the improvement to the recordings player make me very pleased too.
I already love the way the site is coming on. I hope you do too. I'm even more excited about the things I have in store for Lingopolo; for that you will have to wait and see.