
Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy - sonabinu
http://ankisrs.net/
======
gjcourt
A friend and I decided to build an Anki replacement a few years ago, it's now
located at [https://www.memorangapp.com](https://www.memorangapp.com) and has
a loyal following of 10s of thousands of users. Anki is a great tool and has a
wide variety of content on Ankiweb, however the ecosystem doesn't allow for
any collaboration or the ability to keep content up to date (aside from
manually editing decks, but where for example can you suggest a correction?).

Memorang was designed from the ground up to be the next generation adaptive
learning platform. In fact many hard-core Anki users have switched over to our
platform and love it! The main difference is in the ease of use of both
creating and consuming content. Anki has the underpinnings of supermemo, which
is designed for the ideal learner. In a couple of experiments that we've done
partnered with large institutions, one still underway, we have shown that most
students are not "ideal learners" in that most still cram right before big
exams or deadlines. The original study focused on efficacy, you can find the
slides we did for an NSF sponsored presentation here
[http://www.slideshare.net/gjcourt/memorang-nsf-
mooc-2014](http://www.slideshare.net/gjcourt/memorang-nsf-mooc-2014). The
latest study is still in the works, but will involve significantly more data.

Anki is a fantastic program and many people love and use it everyday. If you
have loved and used Anki as much as we have, then give Memorang a try and see
what you think! (or come help us improve the future of learning
[https://www.memorangapp.com/jobs](https://www.memorangapp.com/jobs))

Edit: Read about our data-model here
[http://blog.memorangapp.com/post/108094496626/tags-more-
how-...](http://blog.memorangapp.com/post/108094496626/tags-more-how-to-make-
awesome-flashcards-on)

~~~
yermierc
"A friend" reporting in...

While many people may love Anki, you can count me out. I used it extensively
during my first 2 years of medical school along with trying physical cards,
Quizlet, and even my own custom batch files and macros. I think that it works
for a very particular use case, and you need to fully commit to it to get the
intended benefits.

My personal belief is that an "adaptive" learning system doesn't just adapt to
the spacing effect, but to your study habits, emotional state, learning style,
and even the global activity linked to certain concepts. (e.g. If you have a
centralized API, you can track which facts learners struggle with and use the
algorithms weight those facts for first-time learners). Learning isn't just
meant to be something you do in isolation - there is a community aspect and
there are endless things you can with a big data approach.

Our goal is to take spaced repetition and this new concept of meta-adaptivity
and apply it to the masses, not just the hardcore users. Yeah, it sounds like
a fancy vision but we're further along than you'd think. Would love to start a
discussion on this and possibly get more manpower on making this a reality. (I
dropped my career as a surgeon to make this happen, so we're all-in at this
point).

A few references:

1\. Dyrbye LN, Thomas MR, Shanafelt TD. Systematic review of depression,
anxiety, and other indicators of psychological distress among U.S. and
Canadian medical students. Acad Med. 2006 Apr;81(4):354-73. Review. PubMed
PMID: 16565188.

2\. Beard C, Clegg S, Smith K. Acknowledging the affective in higher
education. BRIT EDUC RES J. 2007; 33(2): 235–252

3\. Burleson W, Picard R. Affective Agents: Sustaining Motivation to Learn
Through Failure and a State of “Stuck”. Social and Emotional Intelligence in
Learning Environments Workshop in conjunction with the 7th International
Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Maceio-Alagoas, Brasil. August 31,
2004. [http://affect.media.mit.edu/pdfs/04.burleson-
picard.pdf](http://affect.media.mit.edu/pdfs/04.burleson-picard.pdf)

4\. Durlak JA, Weissberg RP, Dymnicki AB, Taylor RD, Schellinger KB. The
impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: a meta-analysis
of school-based universal interventions. Child Dev. 2011 Jan-Feb;82(1):405-32.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x. PubMed PMID: 21291449.

~~~
zappo2938
After a career of being a chef with employees, I decided to return to school
to learn how to write. There is one thing that struck me with the professors
in college. While in the kitchen, if a cook made a mistake, the failure and
responsibility fell on me whether I was a sous-chef or executive chef.

Earlier in my career I was a chef de partie in a two Michelin star restaurant
with a team of 4 cooks under me. If a cook made a mistake, the chef didn't
talk to him, the chef would literally scream at me. I asked one of the cooks
who worked with the chef for many years why the chef was yelling at me instead
of the cook and he said that I was responsible for everything that happens on
my station.

Here is the striking contrast between learning in the real world and learning
in a school. In the real world, the teacher is responsible for the failure of
the person learning, while in the school the student is responsible of the
failure to learn.

As a chef, I can break people's spirits day and night, I have a mouth like
chef Ramsey and scars on my chin where I've been punched hard, but that
doesn't serve me any purpose. People breaking emotionally happens a lot
especially in kitchens. There is a reason there is a lot of drug use and
alcohol abuse in restaurants.

If I opened a restaurant in the town I'm in now I would never find decent
cooks. I would have to train them. Unlike a college professor I wouldn't
succeed by giving out F's and pushing people to drop out. I'd have to know on
a case by case basis how far I can push a person to learn; to know when to
give a cook a hug and to know when to scream, "where the fuck do you think you
work, McDonald's?"

Some people hear things like that and they change a behavior to end a chef
being annoying while others see it as a threat to their employment. The same
feedback is different with people. The ability to hire or fire someone gives
an employer an enormous amount of power over that person.

Absolutely, adaptive learning must address the emotional state of the student.
Not only does every student have a different rate of learning and different
types of intelligence, for example, some people are much better with
kinesthetic reasoning while other verbal reasoning, everybody has a different
stress threshold before they break emotionally or give up.

~~~
paganel
> "where the fuck do you think you work, McDonald's?"

I'm stating the obvious here, but verbal abuse is not ok in a professional
setting, never ever. There's nothing to justify it, not even "success" (a
better cooked meal, more revenues coming in for the company etc).

~~~
such_a_casual
How do you define verbal abuse? We all have different codes of morality. Is
manipulating your employees verbal abuse to you? Is lying or placating things
verbal abuse to you? What about going behind your back and telling another
employee to talk to you instead of telling you face to face? Is that verbal
abuse? Well it is to me. Whereas, I could care less if someone said "Where the
fuck do you think you work, McDonald's?" I am extremely offended by the other
examples. I think they are never ok in a professional setting, "never ever".
Not even justified by success, revenue, or majority vote. Please realize that
your morale code is not the only morale code, that your way of communicating,
is not everyone's way of communicating. Trying to say that your rules, that
your methods, are the ones that everyone needs to follow is childish.

~~~
jonahx
I get where you're coming from, but am torn about agreeing. The problem is
that your argument can be used, exactly as you made it, to defend physical
abuse too -- or anything at all. Either you don't believe in _any_ universal
human rights (in which case your argument is perfectly consistent) or you _do_
believe in some, and then your disagreement with the OP is just about where to
draw the line (in which case accusing him of childishness for wanting to
enforce rules of behavior seems hypocritical, since you do that too, just in
different circumstances).

~~~
such_a_casual
The argument I am supporting is that different things work for different
people. So yes this applies to all human "rights". That said, if a population,
say the state of Texas agrees that physical abuse in the workplace is wrong,
then I think that it's perfectly reasonable for a rule to exist for that
particular population.

The case that OP is making is that X is the only acceptable way to talk to
people in the work place.

When it comes to violence, enough of us agree within our "populations" so to
speak. When it comes to how people should communicate with their words, there
is enough diversity to warrant freedom of choice. I think that it's important
that OP be able to choose to not work in a place where their competency is
questioned without regard to their feelings. However, it's completely
unreasonable to tell everyone how their businesses should be ran, or how their
bosses should talk to them. Not all of us enjoy being patronized, or are ok
with being dishonest about how we really feel. Enough of us disagree on the
best way to communicate in the workplace that there shouldn't be one right
answer. OP presented their case without any regard for the other side, "never
ever" as they put it. They didn't even consider the possibility that not all
of us are so sensitive, that not all of us are helpless marshmallows squashed
at the first f bomb, creamed by the first, second, or hundredth joke at our
expense. That is the argument I'm making. Not that rules should not exist, but
that rules need to address the fact that different things work for different
people, and society cannot work if it is run under the assumption that what
works for one person works for everyone.

~~~
jonahx
> OP presented their case without any regard for the other side, "never ever"
> as they put it. They didn't even consider the possibility that not all of us
> are so sensitive, that not all of us are helpless marshmallows squashed at
> the first f bomb, creamed by the first, second, or hundredth joke at our
> expense. That is the argument I'm making. Not that rules should not exist,
> but that rules need to address the fact that different things work for
> different people, and society cannot work if it is run under the assumption
> that what works for one person works for everyone. reply

Fair enough, some people like a culture with directness, swearing, etc. Fwiw,
though, you come across as equally sensitive and marshmallow-like as the OP,
it's just that your point of sensitivity is the idea of people ever talking
behind your back, while for example I accept (and expect) that as the natural
behavior of nearly all humans. If you're cool applying your logic to that,
too, and just choose to opt out of being around people who aren't direct, then
that's fair.

~~~
such_a_casual
> it's just that your point of sensitivity is the idea of people ever talking
> behind your back

Exactly, everyone has their own values. I value honesty. OP values dishonesty.

~~~
vehementi
Though you haven't yet been called out for it, in your posts you repeatedly
create a false dichotomy: either the boss is honest and must say "fuck you,
you are a stupid fucking chef" or the only other choice is to be dishonest and
patronise. That is not true. In this post, I am providing you direct feedback
about how you are wrong, without calling you an idiot or saying something like
"what the fuck do you think this is, reddit?" despite your basic errors in
argumentation. Speaking these words would not be verbal abuse.

I'm pretty sure verbal abuse has a specific definition (not related to
morality), and is not the same thing as "offensive to me", so you can't just
redefine it as you did above.

~~~
such_a_casual
It's a range. The exaggerations are there to make you think about things
differently. One man's answer to "verbal abuse" is another man's "patronizing
dishonesty". You've taken my hyperbole too literally. Statements like, "I
value honesty. OP values dishonesty." are meant as a playful jest to make you
question the value of honesty in modern society. There is no one going out and
complaining that patronizing employees is morally wrong, because the vocal
majority on the matter does not represent these people. There is no voice in
defense of brutal sincerity. The point of all of this is simply to shed light
on different values as was stated in my original post. My thesis does not
revolve around the existence of a dichotomy, it revolves around the fact there
is more than just the one set of values.

------
cblop
I used Anki for 30 minutes to an hour each day for about a year to memorise
around 1500 Japanese characters and their readings, with the aid of a mnemonic
technique. So long as you have an hour a day to dedicate to the flashcards
_without fail_ , you will retain the memorised information.

My problem was that a job and location change altered my daily routine
entirely, so I stopped reviewing the cards. One year later, I have forgotten
most of the characters I knew. However, the characters I learned while living
in Japan, in context, are still fresh in my mind.

I think that spaced repetition isn't the memory panacea it's always touted to
be. It's a great tool for cramming, but soon becomes a pain when you have
hundreds of cards to review every day. I've heard good things about the
goldlist method, a much more low-tech pen and paper approach. Does anyone have
any experience with this technique? It claims to be better for long-term
memory: [http://huliganov.tv/goldlist-eu/](http://huliganov.tv/goldlist-eu/)

~~~
wahnfrieden
SRS is best used to reinforce things you learned outside the flashcard
environment. So put things into Anki that you have some real-world context to
anchor that memory to, and use Anki to reinforce that memory, not to create
new memories that lack any vivid context in your mind outside of the drab
flashcard app window where you first discovered the term in isolation. Ideally
you're consuming native media, talking with natives, etc. and drawing from
that to create your flashcards, since you'll come across a lot of terms that
you learn once and then have otherwise forgotten by the time you see them
again in the wild; this is where SRS helps.

~~~
steveridout
I make software to help language learners generate flashcards for SRS while
reading or watching videos: [http://readlang.com](http://readlang.com)

It works as a browser extension for reading web-pages or you can upload texts
and whole novels to read via the web-app. You can then click-to-translate
words and phrases that you don't understand, and it generates cloze flashcards
for use in it's own flashcards, or for export to apps like Anki.

Would love to hear feedback from anyone who tries it!

~~~
closed
I glanced over the site, and was really taken by the simplicity of the
approach! I've used Aki in the past, but resorted to scraping the sites I was
learning from to create flash cards. This looks like it really takes the pain
out of putting material in.

As a memory researcher, I'd love to see a good example of how you (or someone
else) implemented readlang to learn a language. The site seems good at
conveying how readlang can get flashcards cooking, but it would be interesting
to hear how it was used as part of someone's language learning process (the
big picture). I saw on the about page that you used it to learn Spanish, and
there are a bunch of posts on the site, so it may be there and I missed it.

I'll definitely look more into it later this evening, but a few
questions/thoughts I had were..

1\. is there a good way to programmatically pull out flash card information
(as say a JSON object)? Is the export to Anki as a csv/tsv?

2\. How fleshed out is support for Chinese? What should I expect from it being
in beta?

3\. I was intrigued by the video player functionality, clicked the "Find
something to watch now" on the features page. Clicked blindly. Arrived on a
page of text in Spanish. Backed up. Realized that it was a mix of text
articles and video articles. Scrolled down to a video article. Was very
impressed with the player, but thought with a little less patience I may have
missed it. This seems like an incredible feature (similar to fluentU's
approach), and one that the link should take people to with as little friction
as possible!

Sorry if any of this should have been clear from a more thorough read. I
didn't have a lot of time to look, and was really impressed, so thought I
would fire off my impressions before giving it a more thorough look :).

~~~
steveridout
Thanks for the feedback!

I agree it would be nice to include examples of how Readlang fits into a
different people's language learning process. Here are a couple of articles I
found online:

\- [http://www.languagesurfer.com/2015/01/14/readlang-review-
six...](http://www.languagesurfer.com/2015/01/14/readlang-review-six-ways-to-
get-the-most-out-of-this-awesome-tool/)

\- [http://www.alexstrick.com/blog/2015/9/surviving-
middlebury-h...](http://www.alexstrick.com/blog/2015/9/surviving-middlebury-
how-to-get-the-most-out-of-an-arabic-summer-school)

To answer your questions...

| 1. is there a good way to programmatically pull out flash card information
(as say a JSON object)? Is the export to Anki as a csv/tsv?

Export is by CSV (or you can specify your chosen delimiter) and you can choose
from a number of different fields. You can't export data from the spaced
repetition algorithm since I felt it would make the UI confusing. But you can
access this data via the API: [https://github.com/SteveRidout/readlang-
api](https://github.com/SteveRidout/readlang-api)

| 2. How fleshed out is support for Chinese? What should I expect from it
being in beta?

Chinese, Japanese, and Thai aren't that well supported at the moment. The main
omissions are:

\- Lack of "word" boundary detection (these languages don't use spaces to
separate words) \- Lack of Pinyin translations \- Lack of word frequency lists
to prioritize flashcards by usefulness.

| 3. I was intrigued by the video player functionality, clicked the "Find
something to watch now" on the features page. Clicked blindly. Arrived on a
page of text in Spanish. Backed up. Realized that it was a mix of text
articles and video articles. Scrolled down to a video article. Was very
impressed with the player, but thought with a little less patience I may have
missed it. This seems like an incredible feature (similar to fluentU's
approach), and one that the link should take people to with as little friction
as possible!

Thanks, glad you like it! I agree these should be more discoverable. BTW:
These videos are all added, sync'd, and shared by Readlang users using the
web-app, here's a short guide:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szcvArpfxWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szcvArpfxWI)

~~~
xiaoma
Word boundary detection in Thai is indeed a thorny problem.

With Chinese, though, it should be simple. Just allow users to make flashcards
of any number of contiguous characters. Unbound morphemes aren't something you
need to worry about and even a single character part of a larger word could
reasonably be a vocabulary item.

~~~
steveridout
That is exactly how it works now - users drag to select a sequence of
contiguous characters. I haven't tried learning Chinese myself so I don't have
a good handle on how pleasant this is to use.

~~~
xiaoma
Chinese traditionally had no bound morphemes and even now tends not to. I
think dragging a sequence of contiguous characters should be good. Most words
are two characters, but some are one, three or four. Many four word characters
contain words within them.

This system should work.

------
tormeh
>It's highly recommended that you install Anki from this package instead of
relying on the version distributed with your OS, as the packages in the
official repo are often very out of date.

Why is this _still_ a problem in Linux-land? Why can't we just make _some but
not all_ packages rolling-release? Making Anki rolling-release won't make the
distro unstable by any sensible meaning of the word.

~~~
temp
_> Why can't we just make some but not all packages rolling-release?_

Does that include Anki's dependencies? And if it does, does it include all
other packages that depend upon Anki's dependencies?

Also, does it include thousands of other packages similar to Anki that also
"won't make the distro unstable by any sensible meaning of the word"?

Don't think you'll have a "just some rolling-release packages" distro by the
end of that. Unless you think this specific package is somehow deserving of
special treatment by Linux distributions (why?).

~~~
tormeh
If the new version of Anki needs a new version of a dependency, just install
the new version alongside the old one. Whatever happened when I installed this
deb may also be an option.

If handling this is a huge problem, why not have all the rolling-release
programs include their own dependencies. Most of us have so much storage space
that, without films/games/music, _we couldn 't fill it even if we tried_. It's
cool to use minimal amounts of storage when you're on a virtualized machine on
Azure/AWS, but those machines aren't used to run Anki anyway. Storage for
executable usage is effectively infinite nowadays on consumer devices.

~~~
temp
>If the new version of Anki needs a new version of a dependency, just install
the new version alongside the old one.

Yes, and do that with every other package as well.

Are you even considering the implications of what you're saying? The next-to-
latest version of Anki is for example in the repos of the most popular
distribution. The latest version of Anki is _not_ in the repos, and its
dependencies break something in that distro.

You're free to install Anki's latest version, but there are reasons why stable
distributions will not just jump on the latest version of a fairly unknown
package.

------
sandGorgon
Anki is great - the original Supermemo algorithm on which Anki is based[2],
makes for fascinating reading [1]

However, I daresay that this is a usecase that is tailormade for the mobile
rather than the desktop in any which way.

I wonder why the core team is spending effort behind a desktop app, rather
than go full mobile.

[1]
[https://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_w...](https://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)

[2]
[https://www.supermemo.com/help/smalg.htm#Anki_will_work_grea...](https://www.supermemo.com/help/smalg.htm#Anki_will_work_great_with_SM-2.2C_but_SM-5_is_superior)

~~~
pzzz
It is much easier to create large numbers of cards on desktop than mobile.
There are also a large number of third party add-ons available for desktop
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/addons/](https://ankiweb.net/shared/addons/)

~~~
sandGorgon
It is actually much easier to use a desktop browser as well. Yet, most traffic
now is mobile. Flashcards are a mobile usecase, I actually think a desktop
version is actually limiting for them...maybe that's why Supermemo never
became a roaring success.

------
jhund
Anki is great. I've used it to learn the 100 most common Clojure expressions.
You can get the Anki file by signing up for the newsletter at
[http://www.lispcast.com/100-most-used-clojure-
expressions](http://www.lispcast.com/100-most-used-clojure-expressions)

~~~
nextos
There's also a great org-mode extension that implements most SRS algorithms,
including Anki's:

[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-
drill.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html)

~~~
Ixiaus
I second org-drill. Org-mode is my whole personal information manager
including information learning w/ org-drill.

~~~
tangled_zans
Any tips for how to implement that? I've tried org-mode for personal-
information-management and I just get lost in all of the subtrees.

~~~
nextos
I was in that kind of situation too.

The problem is that org-mode is too flexible. I use it as a flattened kanban
board.

------
reinhardt1053
I would like to recommend Memrise [1] as alternative to Anki.

[1] [http://www.memrise.com/](http://www.memrise.com/)

~~~
tedks
Memrise is fun, and certainly much better designed than Anki, but at the end
of the day it's just another startup that will either fail or get acquired and
shut down. All your content will be destroyed, or maybe, if they're generous,
given to you in some crappy export format that won't be interoperable with
anything else.

I use Memrise, but Anki is my extended memory. Anything I want to actually
remember is there.

------
syntiux
Anki is great. I have been using it to prepare for my exams. Creating
flashcards on my laptop and learning with them on my Android phone / tablet
works like a charm. Also, the Android app just got updated. The only
limitation I've found is that there is currently no way to self-host
flashcards which can be accessed by the mobile app. If you're only using the
desktop version you might want to look at [https://github.com/dsnopek/anki-
sync-server](https://github.com/dsnopek/anki-sync-server) in order to self-
host your flashcards.

------
markbao
I use Anki as a part of my college strategy
([http://markbao.com/notes/college-
strategies](http://markbao.com/notes/college-strategies)) by using the Cornell
notetaking method to write up questions and answers for my notes and piping
those 'cues' into Anki. Turns out self-testing is one of the best ways to
learn, so this combination is surprisingly effective.

It's no replacement for actually learning the concepts, but they help in
drilling down the foundational knowledge that helps me understand the bigger-
picture concepts better.

------
dorfsmay
I'm surprised there's no mention of Super Memo and P. Woźniak's studies on
spaced repetition in this thread:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperMemo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperMemo)

[https://www.supermemo.com/help/faq/memory.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/help/faq/memory.htm)

------
omarish
I've been using Anki on my iPhone for the past 3 years and it's been quite
effective. Highly recommend it for anybody who has a lot of content to learn.
It's really useful if you can make time for it on a daily basis.

------
markm248
Remember that you read it here first, there will be a unicorn built on the
concept of SRS. I use Anki daily and love the application but there's a
learning curve and you have to build your own workflow to make it work.
Someone is going to take the concept and make it accessible to the masses.

~~~
sidedishes
First thing that comes to mind when I read your comment is Memrise. Or is even
that missing something?

~~~
markm248
Kind of on the right track but I don't think that is it though... But if you
had shown me facebook in 2005, I would have said the same thing.

------
Shank
I've used AnkiSRS and recommended them, but I still don't have a good solution
to catch up on decks that you're behind on. It's very good for keeping memory
in tact with lots of info.

Gwern has an excellent overview of spatial repetition software too:
[http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition)

------
EvanL
Someone please create a browser extension that automatically adds every word
you "Look Up" to an Anki stack. My vocabulary would be vastly improved if I
had this, I always find myself looking up the definition of the same complex
words over and over again that are for whatever reason slippery for me to
remember.

~~~
lemonberry
I always wanted a dictionary app that would make flashcards based on words I
looked up.

------
hammerbrostime
I love Anki, been using it for the last year. What has been most powerful for
me, is that I no longer take standard notes when trying to learn a new topic.
Instead, all of my notes are in "question" form, so that I can keep on top of
it over time. The spaced repetition keeps my learning efforts efficient and
keeps things from leaking out of my wetware memory.

The synchronization feature between devices has also proven to be very useful,
as I use my laptop usually to put in new questions, but use the iPhone app to
quiz myself whenever I have a few spare minutes during the day (waiting in
line, walking to work, etc).

UI is a little wonky at times, but its features and flexibility more than
makes up for it for a dedicated student.

------
polymath21
We've been working on a product more oriented towards "everyday" remembering
instead of hardcore educational learning called Remembered.io
([https://remembered.io](https://remembered.io))

It's meant for use cases like reminding yourself about lessons you've learned
in books, to keep yourself inspired, or for encoding tidbits from short term
to long term memory.

Here's a recent Lifehacker post about us: [http://lifehacker.com/remembered-
io-offers-smart-reminders-t...](http://lifehacker.com/remembered-io-offers-
smart-reminders-to-keep-you-inspir-1742240345)

------
bigethan
I'm loving learning Arabic with
[http://orangeorapple.com/Flashcards/](http://orangeorapple.com/Flashcards/)

The website looks underwhelming, but the app is amazing. The more I use it,
the more it's flexibility impresses me. There are lots of options to review
the cards, and it'll use card data to make quizzes, etc for you.

~~~
capedape
Yep, I've used Anki for years and moved over to Flashcards deluxe because
after a few months on both noticed little difference in its algorithm compared
to Anki. I find the mobile interface of Flashcards deluxe to be a whole lot
less kludgy than Anki and the developer to be a whole lot more responsive.

[http://mnemosyne-proj.org/](http://mnemosyne-proj.org/) is pretty good too.

------
xavi
Anki has many features but I found it too complicated and I didn't like the
UI, nor having to sync across devices. So I decided to develop a basic,
simpler alternative, a web app that can also be installed in the home screen
of an iOS or Android device, [https://omnimemory.com](https://omnimemory.com)

~~~
mtau
[http://mnemosyne-proj.org/](http://mnemosyne-proj.org/) is also a simpler
alternative

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tangled_zans
Ask HN: What's the coolest thing you've used Anki for?

~~~
Steuard
It's not "cool", but I'm a professor who's always struggled to learn my
students' names. A few years ago, I started to populate an Anki deck with
their photos from the college lookbook paired with their names and a few other
details. Now I usually recognize most people on the first day of class and
just about everyone within the first couple of weeks. (I had trouble that year
when I had identical twins in the class.) Anki has transformed a point of
shame to a point of pride, and I'm grateful.

~~~
tangled_zans
That's a great idea. It makes a massive difference too when the prof remembers
your name, I bet your students appreciate it.

------
aeris
There's also a web interface

[https://ankiweb.net](https://ankiweb.net)

------
mtau
I would like to recommend Mnemosyne [1] as an alternative to Anki. It uses a
very similar algorithm for spaced repetition (based on SM2), but has a simpler
and cleaner UI.

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

------
antoaravinth
Anki is an great tool. I used to read javascript Coercion algorithm from JS
Specs using this little tool. It have immensely helped me to remember almost
everything!

------
stewbrew
The problem with every app like this is the lack of good quality material. For
language learning, I prefer learning whole sentences as examples of an
appropriate context. But creating good lists of sentences & translations is
cumbersome and just throwing a tool at the "crowd" doesn't automatically get
you quality content.

That said from all these tools I prefer anki since it has a web-based UI and
an android app.

~~~
yermierc
"lack of good quality material"

You definitely are correct and I agree with you 100%. The problem is that you
can't just throw a tool at people and expect it to stick - ultimately people
need good content to study. For us at
[https://www.memorangapp.com](https://www.memorangapp.com) it comes down to
two things: (1) Better collaboration and (2) Pre-made expert content. The
latter takes a lot of money and time as we've effectively split the tool into
a publishing platform and technology platform in parallel. (You can see an
example of the expert marketplace of content at
[https://www.memorangapp.com/premium](https://www.memorangapp.com/premium)).

You can check it out at the website and there's another discussion in this
thread. We have a web-based UI and Android/iOS apps currently. Brand new
versions of these are being released next month as part of a 2.0 launch.

~~~
steve19
I would happily buy pre-made decks, but for decks I spend hours crafting
myself, I want to know I have access them forever and not lose them if you get
bought out or go bust.

Do you have export functionality?

~~~
yermierc
Currently you can export the HTML and also as printed sheets. In the next few
months we'll enable exporting to formats such as csv/tsv. (This is currently
supported in the admin interface, but we haven't made it a user-facing tool
yet).

If it's any consolation, we already prepaid the next 2 years for AWS and are
cash-flow positive. (i.e. not going bust anytime soon).

------
outlace
Anki is what's getting me through med school

------
a-dub
I used this for foreign language vocabulary when I was in school. Did it work?
I honestly don't remember...

------
currentoor
I've been working on a similar concept after using Anki for a year.
[http://www.looprecall.com/](http://www.looprecall.com/)

I wanted to have a more modern UI and plan on adding the ability to share
decks between users. I would welcome any feed back! :-)

------
kiba
I spent using Anki, and all I have to say is that my graphs actually dovetail
neatly.

Space repetition just works.

------
meesterdude
This is really great! I'm building a SaaS that is similar to this, but I was
feeling bummed about not releasing it as open source; but now I can just point
people to this if they want to run their own. awesome!

~~~
wahnfrieden
Is it in a ready enough state to share?

~~~
meesterdude
That depends on how you look at it. I'm using it, but is it ready for normal
humans? I'm not sure. It's equally or more complicated than anki, and serves a
larger usecase of doing the remembering for you and collaboration; and is not
nearly as well documented as anki at the moment.

That said, if you're up for beta access, shoot me an email at r.letmein [a]
ruru.name and i'll see about access

------
roflmyeggo
I've been using the Anki iOS application for a while now. I'm considering
moving my stack over to org-drill.el to minimze context switching. Anyone made
a similar switch or can compare the two at all?

~~~
tangled_zans
Very tempted to do so as well.

------
ixtli
Anki is a very impressive project if for no other reason than its constant
development. It basically got me a degree in Japanese seven years ago and it's
still being polished.

------
746F7475
I remember trying to use this for school stuff, but I didn't find it all that
useful. There is after all very little you have to remember that isn't about
schedules

~~~
6d0debc071
UK:

I found this sort of thing, can't remember if I used Anki specifically,
incredibly useful for remembering dates and percentages and so on when taking
my A Levels. There were something like a hundred different studies that you
had to learn for a good grade in Psychology - at least the way we were taught
it - you could't derive them or anything, you just had to memorise them over
the term.

It was similar for wanting to remember specific quotes from books for English
Lit.

The vast majority of the work I put in for those exams was just trying to eat
a textbook so I could vomit it back up. :/ For which this worked great.

------
sriram_malhar
I couldn't get past the awful UI, written using a generic portable UI toolkit
which makes it uniformly terribly looking on all platforms.

------
pmoriarty
Also see the mentat wiki:

[http://www.ludism.org/mentat](http://www.ludism.org/mentat)

------
thewhitetulip
Anki has a nice android app too by the way

------
asimjalis
A simple screenshot on the landing page would make this a lot easier to
immediately understand.

------
GeorgeMatthews
That's what everyone needs in a busy schedule

