
Show HN: CleverDeck – I built the spaced repetition app I always wanted - jmcannon
http://cleverdeck.com
======
jmcannon
Hey HN - a little background, which might be interesting to some. I went
through YC twice, the second time with a company called EveryArt. After
working on that for two years as a solo founder, I decided to close it down. I
moved from San Francisco to Istanbul and started a niche business (actually,
just renamed EveryArt, Inc. in fairness to investors) that has done well
enough to support me. I started teaching myself objective C in January to
eventually build CleverDeck, which was motivated out of dissatisfaction with
the available spaced repetition apps available (Anki, Memrise, etc.) I'll be
hanging around if you have any questions. Thanks!

~~~
lordlarm
What especially were you dissatisfied with using Anki and Memrise? And how do
CleverDeck do them better?

~~~
jurassic
My main beef with Anki is the developer's unwillingness to open up the API.
Card creation is currently a pretty unpleasant experience, but I can't
currently build a browser extension without doing a lot of hacky bullshit
because the the developer won't expose any public endpoints.

~~~
Blahah
AnkiMobile developer here. Are you referring to the mobile app or the desktop
app? Because the desktop has API endpoints you can hook into with extensions
[0]. If you're talking about the mobile app, I believe we originally decided
not to provide an extension API because Apple forbids it.

[0]:
[http://ankisrs.net/docs/addons.html](http://ankisrs.net/docs/addons.html)

~~~
jurassic
I am talking about a REST API that hooks into your AnkiWeb infrastructure. I
believe I asked about this in one of the google groups and was told you aren't
interested in doing that because of the additional load it could put on the
service. I would love to put together something like the Evernote webclipper
for creating cards right here in the browser without doing this awkward
alt+tab+click+click+click+etc dance to create cards on the desktop client. I
admire the work you and others have done on Anki and its extensions, but if
I'm going to use Anki as my primary learning tool it needs to be delightful
and effortless to create/delete cards as needed.

~~~
Blahah
Ah OK, in that case I can see both sides. From Damien's perspective, AnkiWeb
is a free service, so development/support time and server load have to be
considered for any new feature. From the user perspective, web clipping tools
would be really nice.

Is there anything to prevent interacting between the desktop app API and a web
clipping browser plugin, in the same way that the Zotero connector plugin does
with the Zotero app API for example?

------
soneca
Nice UI. I would love if you add a "Advanced English" deck. I have a 11 years
old vocabluary (according to some online test I forgot the name).

There is a place for people learning english as a second language where you
know enough to be able to communicate, but you don't have a good enough
vocabulary to express more sophisticated ideas, or express simple ideas more
elegantly. I am at this place and I am sure there are lots of others here.

~~~
jmcannon
Yes, when talking about the language learning market, English is the whale.
We're going to get there as fast a possible, but it means we'll have to be
prepared for everything that comes with having non-English speaking customers.

Though, having an Advanced English deck - so people have good enough English
to tell us all the problems we have - sounds like a terrific way to start :)

~~~
vtail
As a non-native English speaker myself, I agree with GP. I have a bunch
"English Vocabulary in Use" books of various levels which I almost never open
because, you know, it's hard to carry it around with you.

$14.99 seems to be a right price, too.

------
adriand
Looks and works really, really nicely. I am currently in the midst of cramming
Spanish (trip to Barcelona in two weeks, trip to Cuba in four months, woo
hoo!) and I've been using these two trips as a motivation to finally learn the
Spanish I've always wanted to know.

I've been using Duolingo a lot, as well as Memrise. Memrise has been quite
good so far, but it is certainly not very polished, whereas this seems
extremely well-done.

Congratulations on the launch, this looks like a superb product and if it
works for me I'd be happy to pay for it. That's a clever idea for in-app
purchases too, by the way.

~~~
simonswords82
Hey, I lived in Barcelona throughout March this year and Catalan is the
dominant language. I felt (and perhaps I was too self conscious) that when I
spoke Spanish they worked out pretty quickly I was English and defaulted back
to that.

Either way, learning Spanish is definitely an advantage as there's crossover
to Catalan. Hope you have a wicked time :)

~~~
adriand
Well hey now. I can't believe I never came across that piece of advice before,
but you're right! I knew that Catalan was spoken but did not realize it was
the dominant language.

I guess I better learn some basics...as if I didn't have enough to learn
already. ;)

------
hfsktr
Everyone seems to be focused on languages but is there something like this for
music? Especially instrument specific, for example a card for finger
placement?

Would something like that require me custom adding every card? and somehow
figuring out how to get pictures/symbols on the cards instead of just text?
FWIW I don't know how hard that is with existing apps, maybe it's gotten
easier.

Sorry if it is a derail.

~~~
ThomPete
The thing is though that you need to build muscle memory not just memorize the
finger placement (thats the easy part)

~~~
hfsktr
That's a good point. Something I hadn't really thought of.

I had been thinking of this (flashcards/learning) for a while and I ended up
buying physical flash cards[1] that I can keep at my desk. At the time though
I couldn't tell one note from another and like learning anything it seems
impossible and pointless to start (and I'm not THAT old).

I sometimes wish I had the feedback (stats) that the apps have but I have
learned and that was the goal.

I will probably end up coming back to this app when there are more languages
though.

[1] I had downloaded Anki but got discouraged at the thought of building every
single card myself and figuring out how to import it all. I tried to find some
online that were premade but with no success I moved on. I don't consider
myself lazier than the next person but this kind of made me feel like it.

~~~
mightybyte
I want to reinforce ThomPete's point. Most of learning a musical instrument is
muscle memory. I really don't think flash cards / spaced repetition will help
you for learning an instrument. In fact, it seems to me that it could actually
make it more difficult for you because you would start to associate notes with
visual neural pathways rather than motor pathways. To learn any activity
involving muscle memory there's really no substitute for hours of actual
practice and quality instruction.

~~~
pkroll
Actually, that brings up an interesting question: does muscle memory act like
"regular" memory, with a curve of forgetting and with spaced repetition being
a viable solution? If it did, then you could adapt at least some of these SR
programs to, say, "perform this piece" or "do the following exercise" and
learning an instrument might get considerably easier.

~~~
coherence
There's a great deal to performance which is more intellectual than motor, and
I'd be very surprised if there were no spacing effect for either aspect.

My experience is that this kind of spaced repetition is dramatically
effective. I'm working on an app
([http://pianopracticeassistant.com/](http://pianopracticeassistant.com/)) to
manage it, since I found that Anki is a poor fit for the real structure of
practice. I started it to help me learn a pretty huge piece (The People United
Will Never Be Defeated) with very limited practice time. I've made way more
progress in the last six months managing my spacing/interleaving this way than
in the six months before that with equally sparing practice.

Like gwern says, there's not a lot of direct evidence on music. I'm not aware
of any studies in a laboratory setting that were equipped to directly show
realistic spacing effects, as opposed to "non-musicians who played a fifteen-
note passage once per day remembered it better." (Gwern links the Stambaugh
2009 study in his overview, which is a good one but which I interpret as more
about interleaving than spacing.) But even though there aren't good lab
studies, there are good expert case studies (The Practice of Practising has a
good set [1]).

Actual real-world effective practice, as done by experts, seems to combine
long-term spacing of practice between sessions with massed focused work on
subsections within practice sessions. You also see interleaving patterns of
section-by-section and integrative practice ("work and runs") in both the
long- and short-term. Amateurs on the other hand tend to practice mostly in
runs (playing things all the way through), and I'm not sure how much spacing
alone can help otherwise ineffective practice.

[1]: The Practice of Practising, a figure showing "work and runs":
[http://books.google.com/books?id=IW9wKssw2hsC&lpg=PA9&ots=zg...](http://books.google.com/books?id=IW9wKssw2hsC&lpg=PA9&ots=zgcqrs77Ha&lr&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
3JPLW
One thing that's unclear in the app description: does the free app come with
3000 words? And then is the $15 purchase is for an additional 3000? That would
be amazing!

Are all the words nouns? Or are there verbs/adjectives/adverbs, too?

Is there a way to create a set of flashcards via a file upload? That'd be a
wonderful feature!

~~~
jmcannon
Good questions! The free app (there's only one freemium app, actually), has
all 3000 words built-in. We charge based on how many you swipe into your deck
(i.e. you decide to actively learn). The app comes with a free deck size of
50, then you can increase that incrementally with in-app purchases.

There is a healthy mix of nouns, verbs, adjective, and adverbs.

There isn't currently anyway to add your own content outside of creating
individual cards within the app. It's something that I'd like to get to (if
people find the SRS system useful, I'd like people to do whatever they want
with it).

~~~
jschuur
I was genuinely confused about this too, and am still not 100% sure I get it
after your comment. So the deck size means it's 50 concurrent cards, but I can
add/remove card sets to my deck as much as I'd like using the free version?

If I remove cards from my deck to make room, does this mean any training on
how well I've told it I know those words is lost?

------
alexchamberlain
Android version in the pipeline? Should I sign up for email updates?

~~~
jmcannon
Ah man - one of the things I've learned from my launching my first iOS app is
how painful it is to answer this question.

Painful because yes, I would LOVE to. Let's see how people like it on iOS,
then I can decide the best way to go about getting it in the pipeline as
quickly as possible.

~~~
arbitrage
I concur with the other post; I would buy this app if there's an android
version.

While I understand that porting and maintaining two applications is difficult,
you're ignoring half your potential market.

Good luck, I hope to see the droid version soon.

~~~
jmcannon
Thanks! I appreciate the nudge. :)

~~~
ZoFreX
Is there a way for me to be notified if/when the Android app is available?

~~~
jmcannon
If you sign up on the email form on the front page of cleverdeck.com, I will
send something out when we launch an Android version. But that means you'll
also be spammed when we launch new languages for iOS. Not ideal - I'll try to
add a separate signup somewhere tomorrow.

~~~
ConSeannery
Chrome 37.0.2062.120 m (latest version) for Win7 x64 has some sort of
validation problem upon entering a perfectly valid gmail address in that
signup field. Hitting subscribe just makes it highlight red. Works in IE
though. PS: I'm looking for the android version too! Anki is great but clunky.

------
sethbannon
I almost hate to ask this question here because this seems like a really nice
product, but does anyone know of any similar apps? I ask because I'm learning
Polish, a language not yet available on CleverDeck.

~~~
jmcannon
I'll answer!

Check out Anki and Memrise. They, in my opinion, are the best SRS alternatives
out there.

~~~
Tossrock
What's your opinion on Mnemosyne?

------
pragone
Is this a language learning app or a spaced repetition studying app? I'd be
interested in something with a smoother UI thank Anki, but that seems to be
the established app for med school

~~~
jliechti1
Have you tried Mnemosyne?

[http://mnemosyne-proj.org/](http://mnemosyne-proj.org/)

It may not have as many features as Anki, but it has a good plugin
architecture and the UI is very simple.

------
jeromegv
Congrats! Amazing job. I'm learning Spanish and I'm a big fan of flash cards.
I use FlashCards++ (for words that I add myself), but it's good to have
another app that can bring me new vocabulary (I went over all Duolingo and
done with it), seems like you have advanced vocabulary which is great. I've
used Memrise in the past, but the UI, the offline caching, and the difficulty
to know which deck was high quality turned me off. Great job and add
Tagalog(Filipino) if you can one day!

------
rxdecoster
Great work Justin. As an intermediate/advanced Turkish speaker, I find a lot
of value in being able to learn new vocabulary easily and in a manageable way.
Thanks for building this.

------
z3ugma
Going through the French deck, I've noticed some errors, especially with
gender and homonyms - is there a built-in, effective way to report these kind
of problems to the devs?

~~~
jmcannon
Really? I'm really sorry about that. We checked those lists so many times.

If you can be bothered, please email me at justin@cleverdeck.com and let me
know what you found. We'll push an update fixing any errors ASAP.

------
saganus
Does anyone have an idea why I get a McAffee Web Gateway error with:

Alert: This website has a Security Reputation Rating of High Risk URL:
[http://cleverdeck.com/](http://cleverdeck.com/) Category: Site Reputation:
Medium Risk Code: Reputation Coaching

How is "Reputation coaching" a bad thing? I don't even know what it is but
unfortunately I also don't want to risk getting a red flag in the system
because I'm trying to find out.

Anyone have any ideas?

~~~
spacefight
No, no idea why you're running McAffee Web Gateway, sorry :(

~~~
saganus
I'm browsing from a work computer, and the network has the gateway enabled. I
would never do that by choice. But it struck me as weird that they had this
site blacklisted.

------
quadfour
Looking great, just a small pet peeve, in the coming soon section, above
portuguese you have the brazil flag, feels kinda weird being portuguese and
seeing that :)

~~~
jmcannon
I know, I know - I'm sorry. Despite some of the objections, I just think flags
_do_ make great language icons. I do understand that complaints, though.

In that particular case, we chose the Brazilian flag because the list and
audio is target at Brazilian Portuguese. We should probably explicitly write
"Brazilian."

Interestingly, we couldn't find a flag icon for Arabic that was neutral
enough. So we just chose the green color from the Arab League flag (which I
guess could itself be controversial) and wrote "Arabic" in white text.

~~~
alexbecker
I would write "Portuguese (Brazil)" rather than Brazilian, similar to how you
often see "English (US)" or "English (UK)". If I saw "Brazilian" my first
thought would be "whoever wrote this doesn't know that Brazil speaks
Portuguese".

~~~
jmcannon
Haha, right - I was thinking "Brazilian Portuguese."

Though, we will be launching Mexican and Canadian soon as well!

------
omarish
This is amazing. I've been using Anki for a few years now and have been
looking for a better app. Congratulations. I can't wait to use it.

------
ajsharma
You won me over immediately with the fox in a lab coat

------
techpeace
Thanks so much for building this! Just purchased the full 3k Spanish deck.
You've saved me a ton of time vs. my plan of writing a script to build my own
Anki decks.

One question: is there a recommendation on whether to go with English-first or
target-language-first when studying? I prefer to go with Spanish-first, but I
don't know if there's any data on which is more effective. Thanks again!

~~~
jmcannon
You're welcome! :)

In building this app, we didn't survey the research addressing that question
specifically (though googling "L1 vs L2 flashcards" pulls up some interesting
sites).

For me personally, speaking from 15+ years learning French, Chinese, and
Turkish, it's native --> target. Learning that way helps me recall faster when
I need to construct my own sentences. If you're looking just to learn to read,
I think target --> native is easier and might be a better approach.

I've also had success starting with native --> target to familiarize myself
with the word, then quickly switching to target --> native to solidify my
ability to produce it on my own.

~~~
jmcannon
Sorry, switch native-->target and target-->native in my last paragraph.

------
frankdenbow
Would love this on Android. Currently I use Duolingo, which is great, but many
of the words they teach seem irrelevant for common conversation.

------
fataliss
I'm desperate to find this kind of app for Chinese. Stuff like Duolingo and
the like are all great, but no Chinese :(

But good job, this app looks great!

~~~
alxndr
Check out Skritter, it's for-pay spaced repetition which also has you practice
writing the characters. (Also has Japanese)

Edit: oh yeah, they were previously turned down by YC and then accepted by YC,
or something. Don't know the details.

~~~
jfoster
Hadn't heard of them being turned down, but they were accepted for their new
project, CodeCombat. ([http://codecombat.com/](http://codecombat.com/))

~~~
alxndr
Whoops, yeah that's all I'm thinking of.

------
splatcollision
Really great apps just downloaded them all. I've picked up turkish from my
wife but it's still great to get more practice. Only suggestion is the right-
ward swipe on cards to dismiss them as well-known should trigger earlier - I
find myself having to swipe further than I feel I need to in order to dismiss
the card. Otherwise great work & thanks for sharing

------
azinman2
Really nice work! I don't know about the market but given I'm about to go to
Paris it's here just in time for me to bone up on my french! I like the 'learn
a little everyday' approach, and I found even putting those cards back not
only easy from a UX perspective but effective in that I had already forgotten
'drapeau'!

------
gurkendoktor
I think you should consider adding a newsletter sign-up form to the website. I
would love to use this for Japanese, but there is no way to 'subscribe' to
your apps. (You've posted a link to your blog below, so I think I'll just add
it to my RSS reader, but I wouldn't have found it without the HN comments.)

------
dubcanada
Awesome, I signed up to be notified of new languages. But the field border
just turned green. Does that mean it went through?

Looking at the network it seems the return value was success, but it says
"We'll just need to confirm your email address".

Shouldn't there be some text or something besides a green border?

Either way this looks awesome...

~~~
jmcannon
Shoot - I knew this was going to happen. Sorry about that. I'll go take a
look.

------
tvanantwerp
As someone trying to use SR to learn new things, I'm always tempted to build
my own software. Congrats for doing it!

The one gripe I have--about this and every other SRS--is that it seems geared
ONLY for language learning. While SRS works very well for that, I suspect it
works well for much more than that.

------
callumprentice
I can't install it right now as I am upgrading to iOS 8 but why is the app
free and the 3000+ cards mentioned in the description cost $15?

Is it because the App store doesn't support any form of trial? It may be
unfair, but I always feel like I am being tricked when a purchase is set up
this way?

~~~
jmcannon
Oh no, I really hope it doesn't give that impression. I'm open to suggestions
on how to avoid that perception.

It's freemium. You can download the full-featured app with a deck size of 50
(also enough to learn just enough words for a short trip for free). If you
like it, you can add different increments to the total deck size through in-
app purchases: 99 cents for +100, up to 14.99 for 3000.

Didn't mean to be tricky. I thought this was a good way to price it so
everyone could try it, tourists could get what they needed for free, and every
gradient of language learner could only pay for the amount they needed.

~~~
callumprentice
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I apologize if my comment was rude or
insensitive. It looks really nicely done and I can't wait to try it once the
iOS 8 install has finished breaking my phone.

------
icholy
Looks good. Any plans on allowing custom decks (for stuff other than learning
langauges)?

~~~
jmcannon
Yeah, definitely. Learning languages seems to be the largest use-case for
spaced repetition apps, so building in lots of good content for language
learning seemed like a smart way to differentiate and target ourselves at
first. One of the biggest annoyances I had using the others was how much time
I spent building my own decks - when, really, I just wanted to learn common,
useful words. It's true that some apps include user-created content you can
share, but the quality was pretty hit or miss - and usually didn't come with
pre-associated images, sound, and example sentences.

------
shamney
How did you decide on the vocabulary list and where did you get the example
sentences?

~~~
jmcannon
We wrote in detail about how we picked the words here:
[http://cleverdeck.com/blog](http://cleverdeck.com/blog).

Most of the example sentences were hand-picked from tatoeba.org. That covered
about 2700 of the words - our teachers wrote the remaining 300 or so.

------
thanatropism
How does this compare to Anki?

Duolingo is nice, but it's not as good for cramming as for low-intensity,
long-term learning. Anki is awesome for just "I'm going to memorize this
speech like a poem"

~~~
jmcannon
I agree with you on DuoLingo - great app, not good for vocab learning.

Anki was my main SRS app for many, many years. I didn't like managing all my
own lists (and was often buggy). I didn't like the UI. Adding pictures and
audio was awkward. It didn't have some basic features like reminders or
notifications built-in.

Also, I had to add all my own stuff to Anki. If you want to learn Spanish (for
example), we've already done all the work of picking the 3000 words we think
you should learn, added high quality images and audio to each one, and gave
each an example sentence with translation. I think that's what's most exciting
to me.

------
wf
This looks really cool, definitely going to download it and give it a shot.
(btw I didn't know what spaced repetition was and your wikipedia link is
missing the colon on your about page)

~~~
jmcannon
Thanks! All fixed.

------
nicpottier
This looks great, would buy if it was in the Android Play store. :(

------
ZoFreX
> "We can email you when we launch new languages."

How? Presumably I'm being slow because others have managed it, but I can't
figure out how to sign up to be notified...

~~~
jmcannon
Oh, is there not an email input there? Sorry about that. Feel free to email me
at justin@cleverdeck.com.

~~~
ZoFreX
Ah-ha, Adblock was to blame!

------
khiddy
Looks marvelous, very handsome UX, wonderful idea to have native speakers to
help with pronunciation.

I've been using Duolingo to learn Italian, and I'd love to see an Italian
deck!

------
__m
Why didn't you create a single app with all card sets as in app purchases? I
use Mental Case which allows you to share sets and download sets from other
people.

------
tehwalrus
German and Mandarin are my two requests (even just 300 or so Mandarin cards
would be great! I'll help!). Just started on French while I wait, looks great!
:)

~~~
pimlottc
There is a fantastic dictionary app for Mandarin called Pleco that includes a
SRS-based flashcards feature as an in-app purchase (around $10-15 if I
recall). The base dictionary itself is free.

While of course you can just program your own cards into Anki or the like,
being able to create new cards from dictionary definitions with one tap is
very handy.

------
serkanh
I have been using Anki for a while now and i love it. I wish there are more
spaced repetition apps out there that are not limited to learning a language.

------
confess_ly
China is a huge market and people there are crazy about learning English, so
definitely add English and then you can expand to international market

------
coldcode
Very nice, I wish I'd done this :-) Maybe I can finally learn Spanish and
relearn all the German vocabulary I've forgotten.

------
kevinherron
Signed up to be notified, awaiting German :)

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rdlecler1
I learned 850 chinese characters over a 3 week period one summer using this
technique. It's amazingly powerful.

------
dannylandau
Who is the designer? Did you outsource this part to a freelancer?

~~~
jmcannon
I did all the UX design myself then passed it to the very talented Yoshini who
made it pretty.

yoshinig.com

------
brandonmenc
Looks great! I cast my votes for Hebrew and Japanese.

------
LeonidBugaev
Looks great, but does it have pronunciation?

~~~
jmcannon
Absolutely. All 3000 included cards have native-speaker audio. We recorded it
ourselves.

------
ashishk
Congrats Justin!

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kpennell
Good work, Justin. Hope Turkey is fun.

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joshdance
Looks great.

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saiko-chriskun
I was so excited... then saw the ios only :/

EDIT: then I even realized there are only specific languages supported? we
can't add our own? this is useless..

~~~
joshdotsmith
This comment deserves to be downvoted into oblivion.

You must come from a very special place where you deserve so much more than
this. This guy busted his ass to release something. Yes, it's on a single
platform (for now). Yes, it only has three different languages (for now). Woe
is you that he hasn't built precisely what you want on the platform of your
choice.

Give me a break.

Makers and makers-to-be, don't be dissuaded by this kind of garbage attitude.

