In a previous review of Anki, I had a number of critical things to say about the cross-platform application. However, I eventually came to realize that the only true advantage I seem to gain from using iFlash (a review of which I never completed for this site, out of a desire to wait for certain updates) were certain conveniences of the interface and its elegant Mac like feel.

Interfaces are important because they define the relationship between a user and his or her interaction with data. When done well, they also provide a sense of consistency which allow users to quickly and easily access the features that are useful to them but also create an enjoyment in the use of an application that bring users back again and again. Given the fact that, as a fully cross-platform application Anki must always make certain sacrifices in this regard and that it continues to have areas that might be seriously improved, I believe there will always be, at least in the OS X environment, a range of other flashcard applications which will appeal far more to a user at first use than what they are faced with when they first open the Anki application.

However, my reason for posting this entry today is to make and support the claim that Anki is currently and without question far ahead of all of its competition, at least in the OS X environment that I’m familiar with, as a powerful spaced repetition flashcard application.

I feel the need to post this entry because I’ve been sent a lot of e-mails by various students wanting me to stake a clear position on what I believe to be the current leading application. While the reviews on this website seem to be useful to many, the various advantages and disadvantages I have listed for each application in my various reviews seem to have left many newcomers to the world of spaced repetition and interval study in a flash card environment wondering what ultimately they ought to use.

So, for the record, after having looked at dozens of flash card applications on multiple platforms, many of which I have not had the time to review fully on this website, I am happy to recommend, without reservations, that’s serious students, especially of language study, take a good hard look at the open source and freely downloadable application Anki which is available for OS X, Windows, and Linux operating systems. I believe that given a little bit of initial effort in becoming familiar with the application and getting your data into the program either by direct input or through various import methods Anki provides the best solution for long-term memory management of large quantities of small atomic units of information. I am happy to endorse another application at some later date, and will continue to keep my eyes open for what is out there, but at this time, no other application, at least on the OS X platform, comes remotely close to Anki in terms of the number and power of features, flexibility in study, or implementation of spaced repetition.

Instead of writing a completely new updated review of Anki, below are listed just a few of the areas where I’ve been particularly impressed relative to the alternatives. Because I believe in the potential for further innovation through a healthy competition between flashcard applications I hope that other developers may consider some of the points below as they develop their own solutions.

1. Spaced Repetition - The most important area in which Anki shines is also the area in which it has the greatest lead ahead of its competition. No other application that I have worked with, with perhaps the exception of Super Memo for Windows (which, though powerful, and a very important innovation leader, is such mess of an application that I would not recommend to anyone and will exclude from comparative consideration below) offers users the same degree of power and flexibility in carrying out spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is becoming more and more popular and I’m very happy to see it being implemented in various forms by developers on all platforms. However, generally speaking, these features often seem to be added as a nod or a gesture to users who demand them and rarely, with a few exceptions, as a central component of the application itself. Many developers also seem to lack an understanding of what the concept really means, and how to make it work effectively.

I won’t go into a blow-by-blow comparison here between Anki and its main competitors for lack of time but I believe that serious students who want to not only memorize materials but to maintain a long-term mastery of things such as language vocabulary will find, as I have, that in the long term Anki just works. It has a powerful but flexible algorithm which can be customized by users and which adapts to the memory of the user with each iteration of review. While I hope that documentation of this algorithm, its use, and the ways in which users can take control of the process itself will improve in future releases and the interface for customizing some of these features also likewise continues to develop, I’m convinced now that the Anki approach is far superior to the interval study schedule in applications like iFlash (which was in turn based on a method I used in my own Flashcard Wizard many years ago and later by StudyCard Studio) or on the somewhat more advanced and customizable approach taken in such applications as Mental Case. It is also superior to any of the spaced repetition implementations I’ve so far seen in a wide array of iPhone an iPod applications that continue to emerge every week.

Note: While there is a browser-based client of Anki available for the iPhone or other mobile devices it is difficult to install and unreliable in use. It cannot match having an easily installable native application and I hope that either the developer of Anki or some other enterprising soul will produce a full on key client for popular mobile platforms such as the iPhone in the near future. Users who really want to have a mobile client for their flashcard study are strongly encouraged to contact the developer of Anki to make their wishes known, but currently may be forced to consider alternatives like Mental Case which support spaced repetition on their iPhone/iPod clients. iFlash may also support it in a future update to the iPhone/iPod client.

2. Models – One feature that I have not personally made full use of but which I now believe is a major advantage of Anki is the powerful ability to create multiple models for each deck. Anki allows users to create different kinds of questions and thus cards with a different kind of appearance within the same study deck. Thus a single deck of cards for one’s Spanish class, for example, can offer differing kinds and numbers of fields according to the type of material being tested.

3. Facts vs Cards – Another feature that I once underestimated but which I now believe offers a powerful advantage for users of Anki is a distinction that it makes between facts and cards. See my entry on this for more detail. One fact is a relationship between several fields of information while one card is simply a way of displaying that information or rather withholding some of that information from the user who wishes to review and memorize its contents. This provides an easy way for Anki to allow users to review language cards in multiple directions, and keep spaced repetition statistics and performance data separate in those multiple directions of study, without the user ever having to change the mode of study or make other adjustments. Users can suspend, temporarily bury, or delete individual cards without harming or touching the original fact.

4. Deck Overview – A new feature of Anki which I’ve now come to like very much is also very useful for students who wish to engage in long-term review and study. If Anki is successful in helping one review information then it is likely that over time a user will acquire new decks that for various reasons they have decided to keep in separate files rather than incorporate in one large deck with multiple models. Anki now provides a kind of dashboard or overview of one’s decks upon launch of the application which immediately shows users how many cards are due how many new cards need to be studied and how many cards and how much time has been spent on the application on this current day. No other application that I know of provides this kind of convenient overview of multiple decks of cards and thus Anki provides a wonderful single starting place from which once daily study may begin.

5. Statistics – No other application that I have used provides anything near the amount of easily viewable data and statistics about one’s study. Anki provides users an easy way to browse statistics about performance on a single card both during Flashcard study, while the management of entries or accessible through the graphs created by its statistics feature. Students who engage in long-term study understandably wish to have a better understanding of how they are performing on individual cards or on the deck as a whole as well as get a rough idea about the number of upcoming cards and the opportunity costs of not studying for several days. Again Anki is way ahead of its competitors.

6. Customization – Anki is also way ahead of the competition in providing easy and convenient way for users to customize various aspects of one’s daily flash card study and provide reasonable limits on that daily study. For example Anki provides an easy way to limit study to a certain number of cards, a certain number of minutes, and fix a limited number of new cards for each day of study. It allows users to customize the way that the three different categories of cards are handled, that is to say, failed cards which have been marked incorrect recently, cards which are due for review, and cards which have not yet been studied but which are currently scheduled for review. Unlike many other applications Anki assumes that you are dealing with a large amount of as yet unstudied material that you wish, through regular but managed study, learn and remember through use of the application. It takes as its unit of time not merely a single study session, but a single day of study within a larger study schedule that continues indefinitely into the future. It never assumes that any fact or card is completely memorized (the serious Cookie Monster flaw that most flashcard applications make) and it never seems that any of its users have the same powers of memory. Nor does it force you, like a number of applications out there claiming to provide spaced repetition, to continue reviewing cards beyond what is currently due or on the verge of being forgotten (this I have called the Insatiability Flaw).

7. Formatting – While it can be somewhat confusing to use, Anki also provides the most flexible approach I’ve seen to displaying information in various fields on cards with full control over the fonts and sizes of information. I have been told that one friend even successfully used some more advanced cascading style sheet features in the formatting of individual fields to allow the display of certain fields only when certain text is moused over.

8. Online Backup & Synchronization – Anki allows synchronization of one’s decks between one’s desktop and an Anki server and also allows you to review your decks online when you are away from your desktop. As I’ve noted before, with the exception of a somewhat unreliable browser-based JavaScript client there is still no mate if iPhone or iPod mobile Anki but I have some hope that this will be added in the future.

9. Excellent Use of Tags – I once criticized Anki for not using a set-based organizational method. However, I believe this was short sighted of me and showed that I was too tied to one standard approach to organizing data. I have come to appreciate the power of Anki’s full support for tagging which allows me to easily deactivate certain tags that may correspond to a particular direction of study or a particular category of words. It also allows me to indicate a priority for words that will have an impact on when those words are introduced.

10. Open Source & Open Architecture – Anki is an open source Python-based application. It has a fully supported plug-in architecture which allows any developer to add functionality and add features to the application. I believe that this kind of approach, both the fact that it is open source and its open architecture, gives me the best hopes for its future in that any interested and passionate developer can make improvements on the software and expand its functionality in the future.

11. Very Active Development – Finally, I’m incredibly impressed with the responsiveness and the enthusiasm of the primary developer of Anki. The application is continuously being improved and I found the developer to be extremely responsive to suggestions from his user base. A look at the issues database will suffice to show this. I hope that in the future the network of developers working on Anki will expand but for now I’m very happy to see a flashcard application that is continuing me being improved by a an active developer who seems to be devoting a considerable amount of personal time to the project. I only hope this continues to be the case! There are costs to this of course in that features can sometimes change quite rapidly and some consistency in approach might be lost but so far overall it gives me the impression of using a living application that is constantly evolving in response to the needs and requests of its user base. If you use Anki and want to support Damien’s work, I strongly encourage you to show your support for his labors with a donation. I also encourage other programmers with some understanding of Python, who use and enjoy Anki, to study the code and offer their services.

Search – Searching for flashcards on the website is easy and conveniently provides separate lists of sets containing the search term in the name of the set or tagged as such. However, this list also includes lists private sets that one cannot access (sympathetically the developer writes, “I wonder what’s on those cards? I bet it’s something cool ” However, other than to show off a high number of sets returned, it seems pointless to list such private card sets, especially when no user name of the creator is hidden so one cannot plead with them to open up their card set. The developer might consider adding an “advanced search” option which allows one to, for example search for “verbs” in the title, but tagged “german.” Also, the search seems to handle tag searches in a strange way. For example, searching for “germ” gives you all sets with “German” in the title, but none tagged “german.” Instead it return only two sets tagged “germ” However, if one searches for “germ cells” one gets all sets with “germ” or “cells.” There doesn’t seem to be a way to search for sets with both the tag “german” and the tag “verbs” (that search will return all sets tagged verbs).

Set Ratings? There doesn’t seem to be any kind of rating system or other way to make use of the growing community of users at Flashcard to help differentiate the level of quality between the various sets one can view on the site. This is a feature present on most other online flashcard review sites and I hope the developer will consider adding it.

Creating Sets and Adding Cards

Creating sets is pleasant but limited. Only two fields are permitted so students of Japanese and Chinese, for example, should look elsewhere. I hope support for three sided cards will be added in the future. Like most sites with the notable exception of Anki’s online study website, this is a card and not a fact based approach (see my posting on facts vs. cards). It looks like the cards can support multiple lines but does not have any controls (or even support for a meta-language like Textile used by Cramberry) for rich editing of the cards with bold and italics, for example. The cards and the import features support unicode without any problems.

One can easily import cards with various delimiters (commas, tabs, etc.) and also export both your own and other user sets with an even larger selection of delimiters. However, the developer does not handle CVS comma delimited files correctly. Normally comma delimited files will enclose fields with quotation marks if there commas within the field, to prevent those commas from being interpreted as delimiters.³

There doesn’t appear to be any easy keyboard short cut for easily adding new cards and one must click on the button each time to proceed to the next blank card. I recommend recognizing a key like an “enter” (as opposed to “return”) or “tab” or some other special key from the final field as indicating the user wishes to save and create a new card. There is also a bug in the interface for creating new cards. If you press “Add this Card” and get impatient while you wait and click the button again, the site will create two identical cards. Also, I would recommend adding a warning to users who have added text to a new blank card but who click on “I am done adding cards” to warn them they have not saved the currently edited card. Currently the field gets hidden without any warning and the silly user will have lost the card they entered without saving. Since this field appears to be simply hidden with Javascript, however, “Add a new card” will actually show the field again with the unsaved text still in there. I would still add a warning though.

It is nice that you can conveniently view previously added cards above when you add them, and easily delete or edit them with a click on a series of buttons visible only when you mouse over the earlier cards. I could recommend that it also allowed the user to double click directly on fields of cards to edit the field in question without having to mouse over to the left and press the “edit.” There is a cost to this pleasant display though. If one has imported 3,000 Korean words, as I did during my test of the site, you will have to patiently wait while a huge list of 3,000 Korean words is generated for you each time you open the set. I would recommend having a separate browse overview of a set’s contents or at least limit the displayed cards to a few hundred.

Interval Study and Flashcard Study

FlashcardDb supports two separate forms of interval study and you can switch between methods globally in the “Settings” of the user. One is the Leitner system, or what I have been usually referring to as a static time-to-forget (TTF) schedule.⁴ A description of the system used can be found here. The TTF schedule used essentially only has four stages with the intervals being one day, three days, one week, and one month. Although I haven’t used the service enough to know, I’m guessing (correct me if I’m wrong in the comments) the cards continue to repeat at intervals of one month when they reach the final TTF stage (otherwise, of course, it would be guilty of the cookie monster flaw). A static TTF schedule is fine and easy for users to understand and use. I used it in my own Flashcard Wizard a decade ago, and versions of it can be found used on the previously reviewed Flashcard Exchange website and such OS X applications such as iFlash and Mental Case. However, I feel that the number of stages are far too few and should, like iFlash, Mental Case, and my old Flaschard Wizard allow the user to tweak the intervals between stages according to their needs.

The “Graded Spaced Repetition” method uses an approach familiar to users of Anki, Mnemosyne, or the powerful SuperMemo application which developed the method. Users can grade their response which propels the card into the future accordingly. The cards are still, however, displayed with the same break down, making it somewhat difficult to distinguish off hand which system one is using when looking at an overview of one’s cards. In fact, regardless of which system one is using, clicking on one’s flashcards will send you to the page with a description of the Leitner method.

It would be nice if, on the “My flashcards” page, there was a more obvious way to study all cards that are due (across sets). The only way to begin interval study, that I can tell, is to click on an individual set and click “Study” but this studies only the cards for that given set. This would not be unusual if it weren’t for the fact that the “My Flashcard” statistics lump all statistics together for all sets, yet only allows you, as far as I can tell, to study the sets individually.

There is the capability of tagging one’s sets and then conducting interval study across sets on that tag or viewing the interval study statistics for that tag alone. However, I was not able to determine how to tag flashcard sets that I had found on the site. Again, my study statistics for those saved flashcard sets created by other users are included in the aggregate total of cards due, but I cannot seem to tag those sets or study them without explicitly going to the set itself. To allow this to happen though, the developer will have to devise some way to allow people to tag other people’s sets, while it may be wise to keep these tags visible only to the user who tagged them unless that user is the creator of the set. Either way, the tagging system has some more work. Future improvements might include the ability to tag at the sub-set level, marking collections of words by their part of speech for example if one wants to review simply the verbs across multiple sets. Adding this feature will need some work though, as it is only useful if tagging is extremely fast and simple.

FlashcardDB has a somewhat confusing system of dividing cards up which, if I understand it correctly, works like this when displayed in graphical presentation: yellow expired cards are cards that are due at a particular session or which have not yet been studied, there are green correct cards which are not currently due but the display of which gives you an indication of how many words are at a given interval, and red incorrect cards which have had their time-to-forget stage reset to zero. At the top of the table one is given totals of how many words are expired, incorrect, or green but this is not the most obviously useful indicator that could have been displayed since these aggregate numbers don’t by themselves tell you very much. Instead, statistics indicating certain trends or indicators of future study might be alternatives to consider. To be honest, while the colors dazzle, I don’t think they serve any truly useful purpose when presented the way they are. When looking at graphs of this kind, the primary things a student wants to know are: how many cards do I have at various intervals? How many cards are scheduled or are likely to be scheduled (at the current pace of daily added new cards and average performance up to now) for the coming days and weeks? It is easy to look at the chart provided and think one is looking at latter instead of the former.

It would be nice if, like Anki, the application provided a way to limit the number of cards offered for study on a particular day, regardless of how many cards are due. Anki, for examples, allows you to indicate a fixed number of “new” cards each day, maximum number of repetitions overall, and a maximum time per session (each of which can be overriden when the limit is reached during any given session). A blog entry written by the developer suggests that he is already thinking along these lines when he mentions, “a sort of Recovery Mode…through which a daily maximum of cards to study could be set. That way just logging on and seeing the number of scheduled repetitions doesn’t lead to a sinking feeling and maybe even further procrastination.” I hope that such a feature is added and that other developers of similar websites recognize some of the fantastic advantages of such a system. My ancient Mac OS classic application Flashcard Wizard provided a similar feature, as does iFlash but in both of our cases, it was merely a cap on total cards, rather than the optional caps on new cards, total repetitions, and study time provided by Anki.

During flashcard study itself, FlashcardDb has a number of good standard features, such as the ability to edit a card, and easily move back to earlier cards with the left arrow even after they have been graded. The right arrow key or the “f” key will flip the card. In graded space repetition, the number keys will grade the card. Ending the session will show you a nice pie chart of one’s performance, but rather than merely showing you performance on cards you actually studied, it includes words due or “expired” which were not studied (while understandable, it might be better to merely show cards actually studied in the pie chart)

From an interface standpoint however, frequent readers of this weblog know I generally dislike applications that try too hard to emulate the physical experience of turning over a paper flashcard, especially if this comes at the sacrifice of performance or efficient use of space. In fact, while in this case this is a relatively minor point, I am hereby going to call this general problem the “Flip Fixation Flaw” and will elaborate on this point in a separate posting. In this specific case FlashcardDb sacrifices precious browser space to create two separate spaces for displaying card information: one for each side of the card next to each other horizontally on the page. More text can fit easily on the card (which it probably shouldn’t since cards should generally be kept simple) or more importantly a larger font can be displayed by maximizing this browser real estate and putting all card information in a single large canvas. I recommend that FlashcardDb and other flashcard sites forego the physical representation of a physical flashcard and focus on the maximum efficiency, speed, and clarity (for example, by distinguishing the front and back by means of colors, shading, or some other means). In the case of FlashcardDB, I think the horizontal approach is not the best for flashcards. Generally the content of flashcards will be wider than they are tall. A vertical format is therefore, I believe, better than a horizontal approach and putting the text of each side in the same general space rather than creating a visual image of a separate card is not necessary.

Wrapping Up

FlashcardDb offers interval study and data portability for free so it deserves serious consideration for those who need only two sided cards. While the design needs better discipline, the overall experience is pleasant. However, my feeling is that it has a lot of rough edges and areas needing improvement both in terms of interface, interval study implementation and a few minor surface design issues. Although it may be my current location (South Korea) I also felt the site was sometime on the slow side to load but again, this may not be a problem in North America. At any rate, FlashcardDb needs some lovin’ attention by its users and developer to address some of the quirks throughout the website. It has good potential but I’m concerned that, given the powerful competitors out there, it will be hard for FlashcardDb to stand out clearly on either the design or features front. On the one hand, there are very professional looking sites like Quizlet and Wordchamp that, whatever problems one might feel they have, at least feel like they have a disciplined team of web monkeys at work on the interface while there is also the sexy minimalistic and colorful approach taken by Cramberry all of which offer FlashcardDb a serious challenge on the design front. Sites like Flashcard Exchange, with its pedigree, user base, one of the highest card counts and iPhone/iPod deployment via Mental Case will attract many who can overlook the clunky feel of the site. Finally, the ability for Anki application users on OS X, Windows, and Linux to easily synch and review their cards online as well as via a browser based tool on the iPhone/iPod gives adopters of that solution and its web equivalent access to the full power of interval study. FlashcardDb does, in fact, do a fair job on all fronts, but doesn’t really feel like it has its own niche where it truly shines. The best thing I can recommend to the FlashcardDb developer is to find that niche and really go all the way with it.

1. In Firefox the home page did display the “Featured Card Set” and “Failed” in a strange position, not sure what is going on there.
2. Actually, the developer might consider adding such a donation button, surely every dollar counts to help with hosting costs and there is no shame in providing an easy way for loyal users to contribute.
3. This is, incidentally, the biggest reason why I think CVS is a really stupid format for flashcard sets that will very often contain commas and I wish all flashcard developers would support it only for import, exporting by default with other delimiters such as the simple tab.
4. There is some confusion in the field of interval study and spaced repetition applications. Sometimes the Leitner method is a general term for any kind of spaced repetition algorithm, but other times it specifically refers to a system which is roughly based on the idea of decks of cards spaced at increasing but static intervals.

Data Portability

Many of these websites are either advertising or subscription driven, or are at least contemplating these sources of income in the future. The more content they come to host, and the more traffic they attract, the more costly it becomes to manage such sites in terms of bandwidth, hosting costs, and labor. If monetization becomes a potential goal then these websites usually come to realize that the flashcards that their users upload the website, or which they provide for their users themselves, are their biggest asset. There is often, thus, a clash between the needs and desires of those running the site on the one hand, and those who use it on the other.

Sites will be very tempted to prevent users from downloading flashcards in a format that can be easily migrated to an offline solution or another website. If users can download flaschards, especially without paying for these flashcards that, in many cases, were typed up and uploaded by other users of the site, then they are essentially giving away “their” assets for free. Sometimes they will use excuses like copyright, which is a ridiculous argument since most such websites allow you to share your uploaded sets (often typed up from copyrighted language textbooks) with other users and some allow it only if you have paid for special “premium” features.

As users it is in our interests to avoid such “closed” web sites in favor of “open” websites which allow you to easily download any flashcards you have access to through the site in a format convenient to you. In reviewing the websites, therefore, I will lay heavy emphasis on data portability.

Other Features

The other major things I look for in an online flashcard solutions beyond the above key issue of data portability are:

1. Interval Study – Does the site provide a solid spaced repetition study system?

2. Fields and Unicode – Does the site provide the ability to review cards with 3 sides useful for studying Asian languages? Does it use Unicode and support non-roman characters?

3. Does it provide a good range of statistics on your study.

4. Does the site make good use of Javascript and or Ajax technologies so that flashcards are loaded quickly and cleanly without the page repeatedly reloading.

5. Does the site provide an easy way to share your flashcards with everyone who visits the site and a way to share with only a few people or optionally, with no one?

I also am looking for other things that I have listed on my Basics page.

See also my Terms page and Issues page.

In this posting I offer some more comments on the desktop version of Mental Case for OS X following up on my review of the iPhone/iPod version of the application yesterday and an earlier review of Mental Case 1.2.2.

The desktop version of Mental Case is now strengthened by the ability to synch with its mobile counterpart, reviewed yesterday, but as I pointed out in that review, synch is slow and complicated to carry out. Like its mobile counterpart the desktop version has made some UI decisions, especially in the important flashcard arena, which make it frustrating to use for high-volume study. However, this remains one of the leading applications in its class. The price for the application has come down significantly and there is a further deep and welcome discount for educational users making this application good value for its feature set.Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

This is only a review update. See the full original review for more.

Application Name: Mental Case
Version Reviewed: 1.4.3
Software License: Commercial ($25, $15 for educational license)
Review Date: 2009.01.28
OS Tested: OS X 10.5.6

Note: Some things mentioned or discussed here may have been present in the earlier version and I simply failed to notice or comment upon them at the time.

A number of things I pointed out in my original review have been changed for the better. 1) You can edit cards directly in the case overview, without going into the modal edit mode, by double clicking the entries. 2) The price is much lower, offering much greater value, especially for students. I think it is now perfectly priced for the target market relative to the competition. 3) There is a form of cycle elimination now, wherein cards studied in a case and the lesson will continually repeat if they have been marked incorrect. This could be further improved if, at the completion of all cards, you were presented with come visual feedback that announced correct completion of all cards, preferably with some statistics on the study session. A kind of debriefing card, as it were. This gives the user a satisfying feeling of completion. Without such a debriefing card, one feels like you have completed the most difficult level of a computer game, but are given no victory screen.

An improvement in this version which addresses a problem I discussed in the interval study portion of my review of Mental Case is that users can now select from a number of behaviors for entries marked incorrect during lesson study.

It would still be nice to allow users to create their own Lesson spacing algorithm and I hope a future version will include this ability.

Just a few more areas where further improvements could be made in future releases:

Flashcard Study

-Given the attention spent by the developer on the UI, I continue to be surprised there is no full screen option and way to format the display of flashcards. There is a full screen theme but it doesn’t cover the screen fully. The developer notes that he wants to leave space for the controls, but these can surely overlap the background of the card. As it is, all my other applications in the background and my desktop background are still distractingly visible. There should be an option for a solid and full screen background. Also, from a language student perspective, we are mostly dealing with cards with text that we would like to see big and clear on the screen so the current smaller text is a waste of screen space.

-I have the same complaint about flashcard study on the desktop that I had on the mobile edition (See that review for the developers own take on this), that is, I feel it should be possible to immediately move to the next card (or show the reverse side) when the card is clicked, or when the card is marked correct or incorrect. Mental Case started with an image of flashcard study as a more passive slideshow experience, I believe, but for high-volume study by language students, it would be best to provide at least the option of being able to quickly mark a word “known” or “unknown” and have it immediately present the next thing.

-Students of Asian languages or who wish to include conjugation information etc. in a separate and distinct field still will not find Mental Case compelling, given the fact it still only supports two fields.

Other Issues

-I have already mentioned in my review of the mobile edition that synching is not a pleasant experience, even though we should celebrate the accomplishment of adding this powerful feature. I hope this will improve in future versions.

-I want to say again, as I mentioned in my full review of the application, the pie chart approach to interval study, which allows users to “complete” an interval schedule for cards and completely “memorize” a word goes against a very basic principle of long-term interval study that other developers, such as Andre Khromov (whose Kanji Flip iPhone/iPod application I recently reviewed) have understood well: For all practical purposes one never permanently memorize a word. It should never completely exit the interval study environment even if, in reality, we will probably remember a word for many years without forgetting it. In fact, and I speak from plentiful personal experience here, even native speakers forget their own language after a long enough period of disuse. Mental Case would do well to rethink their interval study approach to make it accord with this fundamental principle of perpetual learning.

-I have been doing more tests with the sorts of large sets that high-volume students will need to work with, containing 500, 1000, or cases up to 8000 cards (Which is appoximately the amount of vocabulary the average student will learn in a one-year advanced intensive language program such as IUC in Japan, IUP in China, or ICLP in Taiwan, etc.). What I found is that Mental Case is extremely slow, in comparison to competitors such as iFlash and even the cross-platform application Anki, in handling such large sets. In comparison to the fragment of a second or 1-2 seconds of its competitors, sometimes Mental Case will present a spinning wheel for long periods of time, even 7-10 minutes in some cases.

Some examples:

-Case of 2500 Chinese characters, select all, right click and choose “Restart Lesson Schedule” – took over 7 minutes. (same task less than 1 second in iFlash for example)
-Moving 200 words from one case to another took 4 seconds (should be almost immediate!)
-Changing the interval schedule of a case in one case took 1 minute, in another case over 5 minutes for the same number of cards.
-Moving 1000 words from a case to the trash took over 2 minutes, in another case, the application hung for 5 minutes.
-In a separate case deleting a whole case of 2500 Chinese words (thus moving its contents into the trash) took 12 seconds.

As you can see speeds were not consistent, sometimes it happened faster. In all these cases I was dealing with two side cards with no images or sound. I don’t know if adding images and sound makes this even worse. Drew McCormack, argues that he is much at the mercy of Apple’s Core Data framework for performance issues, but I find it hard to believe that there are not ways to further optimize performance. I can’t fully recommend this application for high-volume students who will be adding and managing large sets to the application until this performance is significantly improved.

The installation of iCards comes pre-loaded with Japanese vocabulary (JLPT) and Japanese Kanji character cards (常用漢字 grades) but allows you to and manage new sets.

While this very reasonably priced application has a number of great standard features, serious students of language should probably consider some of the somewhat more expensive alternatives available. The lack of cycle elimination is especially problematic, while the lack of interval study, or reversal of field order compares poorly with other competing applications. The user interface during card study also could benefit from some further improvement.

Application Name: iCards
iTunes Application Link: iCards
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Software License: Commercial (about $1)
Review Date: 2009.01.27
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

This graded slideshow flashcard application comes pre-installed with vocabulary and kanji flashcards, students of the Japanese language can immediately use it for their study. Other users will have to add their own cards.

Sets of cards can be created, deleted, and studied in an easy to use and familiar flashcard application environment. All sets are available directly from the home view. All cards, which can also be easily edited and deleted, come with three fields, which is useful for Asian languages or students who want additional data on their cards. Users needing only two fields need only leave one of the fields blank and iCards will recognize the fact and size the fonts of the two fields accordingly during study.

Study of the cards can be randomized, but the order of the sides shown cannot be likewise randomized.

There is the option to choose between four different “card flip modes” which give the option of showing only one, two or all three sides. Strangely, however, there doesn’t seem to be a way to determine which of the three sides one wants to start with. Thus, if one ones to study from English to Japanese, for example, that option does not seem available. That is an unusual omission and a more important feature than allowing users to optionally show the second and third fields at first showing of a card.

Flashcard study on the application is accomplished by finger swiping through the cards and marking them correct or incorrect. The correct/incorrect buttons are very small and located in the bottom of the screen, which is a bad stretch for the thumb when holding the iPhone/iPod. This makes any major use of the application a strain on the hand. Also, three other interface issues that might be noted is 1) the unusually large and distracting check mark that covers almost the whole card on those cards previously marked correct. This could be made less distracting. 2) In order to create the visual sensation that one is looking at a physical card, and in order to show off a reflection of that card as eye candy, the card is far smaller than the iPod/iPhone screen itself. This is a perfect example of eye candy that harms an application, a major complaint of many the reviews of application by this Fool. On what is already a small screen, information must be crammed into a tiny space in order to create a completely useless visual illusion. 3) There are far too many motions at work. When a user marks a word correct, they expect to move on immediately to the next card. They don’t want to sit and stare at the same card and its newly arrived massive check watermark. This application has 4 different motions in card, which I believe is unnecessary: tap to switch card sides, swipe to move between card, and the two buttons. It should be possible to design it so that marking a card correct does the same as swiping, marking the word incorrect shows the other sides of the card as if one tapped, for example. As it is, the user must do a variety of actions that slows down the flashcard experience.

The most disappointing absence in this application that is a must have feature of any flashcard application is cycle elimination. When you complete a set of cards, nothing happens. It does not, as all good flashcard applications, should, continue to flash through cards that were marked incorrect (or even more efficiently: simply not marked correct). When you begin study do have the option of reviewing only cards that have not yet been marked, but that is not really the same thing as cycle elimination since you have to exit the review process and begin again in order to carry this out and are not given statistics on your current “round.” Remember how a user flashes through flashcards before there was any software: they put aside cards that they know (or alternatively, that they don’t know) and then continue reviewing their cards until they get them all right. Going through the cards only once only tells you what you know and what you don’t know, and doesn’t help you memorize those which you don’t. I hope iCards will introduce this absolutely essential basic feature in future releases.

There is also no interval study in iCards. Also, there is no way to export, import, or synch cards with one’s desktop. It is unlikely that users will want to create large size sets on the iPhone/iPod tap interface so many users will come to miss such a feature. However, given the very reasonable price, this can’t be expected.

With some improvements in the UI and the introduction of cycle elimination iCards can be an excellent contender for its price range. For students of Japanese, for example, such an improved version can provide an immediate and cheaper alternative to more powerful and effective software that includes interval study such as Kanji Flip. It is very reasonably priced and overall has a pleasant design so I hope to see improvements in the future that increase its competitiveness.

Some images below:

Home view:

Card View:

Set View:

Import: None.
Export: None.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: None.

Entry Creation: Good, but fixed at three fields.
Entry Editing: Good
Set Organization: Can create, modify and delete sets.
Flashcard Study: Poor, no cycle elimination, no statistics while studying, poor UI
Interval Study: None
Formatting: No customization possible
Design and Feel: Average, flashcard screen too small
Statistics: Poor. Shows currently number of correctly marked words in the set view only.

Golden Coxcombs: 5/10 Decent for its price range.

While the feature range is narrowly restricted to serve its primary task, this enables Kanji Flip to do the one thing it sets out to do admirably: help you memorize over two thousand Japanese characters. It is somewhat more expensive than other offerings, could benefit from some minor improvements, but given its powerful interval study feature, as of this review Kanji Flip is currently the clear leader in iPhone/iPod offerings for students of Japanese characters.

Application Name: Kanji Flip
iTunes Application Store Link: Kanji Flip
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Software License: Commercial (about $6)
Review Date: 2009.01.26
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

Kanji Flip is justly confident in its ability to get you going with kanji characters. Even the icon (which, given its blue on red color is probably the ugliest my iPod touch currently sports) has chosen the character 叡 or えい (C: ruì S:睿), which can mean shrewd, profound, or astute, to declare the wisdom of its approach.

At launch Kanji Flip offers a standard list of sets of characters to study based on those in each of four JLPT levels ranging from 80 characters for level four to 2230 characters for the highest level one. You may also practice the hiragana and katakana syllabaries via a special kana practice zone. Finally, if you wish to add your own kanji to the list, in the unlikely event that the most commonly used 2230 characters are not enough, you can also add them. There are not, however, any options for set creation or set organization. Given the highly targeted nature of the application, however, this is not essential.

Kanji Flip is, from start to finish, an interval study powered application. Because some users may not be familiar with this style of study it is wonderful that it includes built in help that explains how the process works. However, the exclusive focus on interval study means it offers absolutely no study on demand so students cramming for tests or studying along in a textbook may with to consider other alternatives. You can, however, browse through characters of one of the offered lists if you enable the “browse mode.” Although a very minor issue, the browse mode button is annoyingly “sticky” and requires a swipe of the finger rather than a press, unlike most other switch buttons in the iPhone/iPod interface.

Kanji Flip is built for long term study and there is, in fact (and the developers website acknowledges this) no real reason a self-study student should begin studying one of the lower levels unless one is targeting a particular JLPT examination.

Flashcard Interface

Flashcard study is done in the following way: A kanji is shown and the user taps the “show answer” button or the large white space on the card. Unlike the fully touchable surface of Lima Sky’s “Kanji” application and its “known” button located in the easier to reach upper half of the screen, these buttons in Kanji Flip are all located in the harder to reach bottom of the screen, which is a further stretch for the thumb when holding one’s iphone/ipod. This is hardly noticeable at first, but if one goes through a hundred or more reviews each day, one begins to feel the pain in one’s hands. I hope Kanji Flip will consider making the whole surface touchable to show the answer, and locate the buttons in the easier to reach upper half of the screen. Once you see the answer you can indicate, in true graded slideshow tradition whether you have recognized the character. Unlike some less well designed flashcard applications, Kanji Flip immediately moves to the next card when you have marked it correct or incorrect.

Interval Study

Using an interval study algorithm which is, unfortunately, not made transparent, the Kanji Flip application slowly introduces new characters as you master a small set currently in the cycle. As your memory of the characters improves, the characters very slowly begin moving down through the “Recent”, “Older” and “Ancient” interval stages. This process will seem extremely slow to the user at the start, but I think Khromov has made an excellent algorithm which errs on the side of the conservative: he is pessimistic about our memories and my years of language study show this to be an 叡 approach.

Khromov has also designed Kanji Flip in such a way that you are never finished. You will never “know” all the kanji and be able to call your task complete. Kanji Flip will forever drag out the oldest characters for you to review. This is an absolute key and basic principle of long term language study that is sorely missed by even the biggest commercial software developers who are ignorant of this basic fact. As the developer wisely puts it in his website FAQ:

“Please realize that the goal of learning (and this program) is to continually strengthen your mind. There is no such thing as “finished”. The kanji in a set will never all pile up in the Ancient area. After you exhaust all the untested kanji, the oldest previously tested kanji will be put back into testing rotation – even if you answer it correctly. This is done on purpose.”

I do think, however, that the algorithm can benefit from some kind of date tracking. While the application should never conclude that the user is done forever with the task of learning characters, it is not necessary to drag out characters before they are likely to be forgotten. For example: If I have a word which finally reaches the “ancient” category and has been reviewed over two dozen times (say), then, the following day, if there are no other words “up” for review, it isn’t necessary to force me to review that card which has just recently reached the “ancient” category. I might use that time to practice other cards or other languages in another flashcard program, for example. Since Kanji Flip is not a general use flashcard application it cannot assume users are only learning its material in the way other general flashcard programs, where you can practice a large variety of information, may be more justified in assuming. A word in the “ancient” category can probably go several weeks without being forgotten – weeks during which my time is better dedicated to learning new information, say working with Khromov’s Japanese or Russian vocabulary applications instead. Thus, while the developer is completely correct in maintaining that we never permanently know any words, it is also not the case that, at any given time, we necessary have forgotten any individual character.

A solid interval study implementation keeps in mind the time-to-forget (TTF) for any given unit of knowledge and, ideally, does not prompt you to review a word until it has nearly reached the threshold of that TTF, as calculated by whatever algorithm chosen by the developer (and ideally tweaked with some input from the user based on their own experience and strength of memory). This allows students to make maximum efficient use of their study time, especially when a large percentage of target knowledge is at a distant TTF and they wish to focus on new material elsewhere.

It is not clear to me the exact interval study method being implemented, but my testing so far shows that every half dozen or so correctly marked characters will result in one new character being introduced. Poor performance is brutally punished with a high repetition rate, and that is as it should be. Given the fact the program clearly is doing a lot of tracking, I would very much like to see greater transparency in future versions by offering the user a way to inspect certain statistics of study that are clearly being tracked (e.g. total reviews for a card, total marks correct, incorrect, and a more precise indication of card progress). The colorful “progress” table at the right is useful but large and sometimes distracting. I would recommend the following improvement for future reviews: Allow this area to be blank, so there is no distraction, but allow a tap to toggle between the progress table, and specific data on the currently viewed card, and then back to blank. Otherwise, I find myself too often looking over at the progress table instead of concentrating on the card at hand.

Supplemental Vocabulary

There is vocabulary attached to each character, which is excellent. There are two possible improvements that might be considered for future development: 1) Using a method similar to Lima Sky’s “Kanji” application show the example vocabulary before the answer has been shown, but hide their pronunciation and definition, only to be shown when prompted for the answer. That way a user can easily practice vocab along with the kanji. 2) Many Japanese kanji have verbs or adjectives based on the kun-yomi reading of the character. While the kun-yomi readings are shown for each character, too often the definitions for these kun-yomi words (sometimes quite obscure) are not included among the example words. Many kanji textbooks use a method I recommend: among the example words, include the most frequently used kun-yomi word.

Other Comments

In the realm of statistics, Kanji Flip is great in that it shows you not only the current number of words in each of its general interval stage categories, but also the percentage of words answered correctly in any given study session. However, as noted above, it would be nice in future updates to have a little more of an overview of individual card statistics or overall study statistics in some location.

While it is understandable that synch or update/export options are not available in this highly target application, this does leave the user feeling very vulnerable. Learning or reviewing over two thousand characters can take several months or more than a year of almost daily study. The possibility of data loss or other problems with one’s iPod/iPhone are real, and I think all strong data-intensive (in this case, the data being about one’s study in the form of interval statistics) applications should offer some way to back up the data (beyond the standard iTunes backup of the entire device) either by wi-fi synch or email. Given the highly professional nature of this excellent application and its potential for intensive long-term use, I hope that the developer will consider offering such a capability in future.

My comments above should largely be seen as recommendations to make an already strong application stronger, and I believe much of what is said here is equally applicable to some of Khromov’s other flashcard application offerings. Kanji Flip is way ahead of its competition for kanji study software. I hope the developer continues to strengthen its features in order to maintain its solid lead.

Import: None.
Export: None.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: None.

Entry Creation: Can add kanji to the
Entry Editing: None
Set Organization: None
Flashcard Study: Excellent
Interval Study: Excellent 4 level system, very conservative, but no transparency at the level of individual characters
Formatting: No customization possible.
Design and Feel: Good, progress window a bit distracting, icon is nasty looking.
Statistics: Good, session average shown and overall interval progress indicated.

Golden Coxcombs: 9/10 Currently the top of its class.

Kanji is a Japanese language flashcard application for the iPhone and iPod touch that offers the graded slideshow method of study. It offers the ability to study with cards in random order and create custom lists of Japanese kanji to study from.

Many of the kanji cards provided by the application come with a selection of Japanese vocabulary compounds that can be studied alongside the Kanji characters themselves.

The application by Lima Sky is highly targeted to Kanji learners and performs its task quite well. It provides excellent cycle elimination, the ability to create custom lists of Kanji, and its inclusion of vocabulary adds to its usefulness. Though it lacks interval study feature and there are some areas for improvement mentioned below, this is an excellent offering for its price range.

Application Name: Kanji
iTunes Application Store Link: Kanji
Version Reviewed: 1.4
Software License: Commercial (about $3 or on sale for about $1)
Review Date: 2009.01.25
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

This graded slideshow flashcard application comes pre-installed with Japanese kanji and vocabulary flashcards (from KANJIDIC and EDICT databases) and students of the Japanese language can immediately use it for their study.

While earlier versions only allowed study of four previously fixed sets based on levels of the JLPT test, you may now create custom sets of kanji that you want to study. Unfortunately, creating such sets can be time consuming given how hard it is to find kanji you may wish to study since you must scroll through a long list of kanji to find those you might want to add. There is no index by pronunciation or ability to search for character by inputting them oneself so the benefit of this feature is minimal. The developer has indicated that a more elegant and simple to use searchable index is in the works.

When studying the flashcards the kanji is displayed along with, in many cases, a few vocabulary items that use the kanji. According to the developer, an upcoming update will add supplementary vocabulary for all characters. Their kana pronunciation and English meanings are hidden at first viewing. When almost any area of the card is tapped, the kana and English for the card is displayed. You may then swipe to the next card, or tap a small check mark in the top right of the card.

The location of the small check mark in the upper right of the screen, where it is easy to reach, is excellent, since the developer did not, like many others, place it in the harder to reach nether region of bottom of the screen. However, the check mark to indicate that a card is known is way too small and a blundering thumb must aim well to hit it. The developer has indicated that this will be addressed with a larger area of sensitivity for the “known” button in an update due to come out soon. Also, there is no reason to continue displaying the card after a card has been marked correct, and the number of gestures in a long study session can be significantly reduced if marking a card correct moded it automatically to the next card. I also hope future versions will consider adding this.

Unlike some other offerings in the price range, this application offers excellent cycle elimination. When a series of cards are completed, statistics are displayed and the user is given the option to continue studying the cards that have not yet been mastered. This might even be made even faster and more efficient if, without pressing a button, an additional swipe past the statistics screen immediately proceeded to display the un-mastered cards (since it usually takes many rounds to get through a set of cards and dwindle them down to nothing).

There is no interval study offered for this application, so serious students of Kanji may wish to consider the powerful Kanji Flip application but given the very reasonable price, this hard-to-program additional feature is an unreasonable expectation. However, I am in fact optimistic that Lima Sky is considering such a move in future development. There are also no export/import or synch options to combine with desktop study but that is also beyond what one can expect for an application of this price.

If the check mark is significantly increased in size, lookup of characters for the creation of custom kanji sets made more simple, this would be a leading offering for its price class.

Some images below:

Adding kanji to a custom list:

Card view:

Completion of a study round:

Home view:

Import: None.
Export: None.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: None.

Entry Creation: None
Entry Editing: None
Set Organization: Can create, modify and delete sets. However, difficult to find kanji characters one might want to add.
Flashcard Study: Good, but needs a larger check mark to indicate known cards.
Interval Study: None
Formatting: No customization possible
Design and Feel: Good, simple, clean, and fast.
Statistics: Decent, shows the statistics upon the completion of a round but not during study.

Golden Coxcombs: 8/10 Excellent for its price range.

Mnemosyne is quite limited in its features, but its open source status, its sheer simplicity and the strong focus on the core task of spaced repetition makes it a strong minimalist offering for students of language using windows and Linux, and with the recent appearance of a binary download for OS X, Mac users can now also use the application without having to go through the incredibly complicated source building and installation process.

Application Name: Mnemosyne
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1.1
Software License: GNU Open Source
Review Date: 2008.06.29
OS Tested: Mac OS X 10.5.3, Windows XP Home SP2

Note: See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

The features described below, as far as I can tell, work the same in the Windows and Mac versions. I have not tried the Linux version. My tests on the Mac version is based on the binary found here and suffers from some user interface defects described below.

Creating and Editing Entries

The program opens up into a simple central window. You add cards by pressing the add card button and then can move through the fields of your new card with the tab key. Once you have entered the information for the flashcard, you choose an initial interval stage for your card which establish whether you already know the card or not.

You can assign a single category to your cards, which are useful for sorting them later. You can also “activate” and “de-activate” categories, so that you temporarily stop studying some words. This is the only equivalent for organizing your cards, but like a similar feature in Anki, leaves something to be desired. The set/case organization based approach of Mental Case and iFlash is, in my opinion, superior. The fact that cards cannot have multiple categories is also frustrating.

When you create a card, by default, a second card is created which reverses the order. This makes sure that you are tested in both directions when you study. It would be nice to be able to turn off this feature, since not all of us want to study words in multiple directions if we are focused only on reading ability, or in production. In fact, strangely you can turn this feature off in the OS X version by unchecking “Add vice versa too” but I didn’t see a similar option on the Windows version.

UPDATE: The developer tells me that this option is also present in the Windows version. If you don’t see it, trying uninstalling and reinstalling the application.

One of the features which some people, such as myself, will find annoying while others will see as an attractive preservation of a clean and uncluttered interface is that many features of Mnemosyne are hidden from view in contextual menus and only accessible with a right-click. This is bad user interface design, even if some users will not mind it. If you right-click in a new card you get options for “Insert Image” and “Insert Sound” (I have not tested these features). This is also how you switch from 2-field to 3-field cards.

Mnemosyne does support 3-field cards, a must for Asian languages, but the three field support is weak and not well thought out. When 3-field cards are listed in the “Edit Deck” mode, the third field is not listed in its own column and you can’t sort by the field. Also, when you create a card, by default, a second card is created which reverses the order. This makes sure that you are tested in both directions when you study. With 3-field cards, however, there are still only two versions of each card created.

Once you have cards in the deck, you can click the “Edit Deck” button to get a list of your cards and edit them with (again) a right-click on the item in the list.

You can also get statistics for individual cards through another option in the right-click contextual menu but one wonders why some of these statistics are not shown as a column in the overview, where it would be sortable.

Import Features

Mnemosyne supports an excellent variety of import formats, included tab-delimited sets and SuperMemo which makes it easy to bring in new card sets, some of which are available for download from the project’s homepage.

Reviewing Entries

As soon as you have a collection of words, any time you boot up the application Mnemosyne prompts you to begin flashcard study, showing you the words it guesses you need to study. You respond to each card by indicating a number from 0-5 depending how well you know an entry, with 0 corresponding to not knowing the word at all or higher numbers if you have greater confidence. The application uses cycle elimination so you will be prompted to repeat words you didn’t know until you give it a higher score.

You don’t have to learn all unlearned words in the program and any time you boot the application it will first prompt you to review those scheduled words among those you have learnt before giving you the opportunity to continue studying as yet unstudied words.

The preferences offer the ability to control text size of cards, and can optionally boost the size of non-latin characters.

Interval Study

Mnemosyne uses an excellent form of spaced repetition similar to Anki and an earlier version of SuperMemo. Words come in 5 stages and the application keeps track of lapses and an “easiness” attribute. The process, also like Anki and SuperMemo is not very transparent, and unlike some other flashcard programs out there, there is no way to customize the process. You can’t sort words by their stage or easiness, and I don’t think it is even possible to reset the stage of the words. Some would argue for a “just trust in the application approach” but as someone who has designed a program with much more flexibility and currently uses another one which allows for such flexibility I must say that the freedom to control my own interval study, within limits, is rewarding, especially over the long term when the number of cards involved is very high.

Mnemosyne does let you see a limited number of useful statistics including the percentage of cards at various stages and, much more useful, a list of how many cards are coming on which of the upcoming days.

Mac OS X UI Problems

After several hours of trying, I was never able to successfully build a version of Mnemosyne on the Mac from the source using the instructions on the homepage. This kept me from being able to try it natively in the Mac environment for some time. Now that there is an easy binary download of the application, we can use the application as well but, like its more powerful rival Anki, it feels very much like most cross-platform applications that were not designed with OS X directly in mind. Design matters, especially when you use an application every day, and the idiosyncrasies of non-standard behavior and appearances can become grating.

The toolbar in the main menu is classic windows toolbar, the disabled buttons seem uglier in the Aqua environment of OS X. These are minor issues but a reminder of what operating system was in the mind of the developer when the program was designed. More annoyingly, the add card window is a palette style window and yet strangely modal, not allowing clicks outside it. Like other palettes, however, it disappears when you switch to another application.

There is also a frustrating visual issue in the current build. Anytime a window is opened, all controls on the window are dimmed, even though it is the active window, and you have to click once somewhere within the window before all controls suddenly become active again.

While the UI works on the Mac, it somehow doesn’t feel as sleek and simple as its counterpart on Windows. While looks really shouldn’t matter, coupled with the annoying clicking problem and the strange behavior of the modal-palette, it will probably annoy enough users to send them to another application.

Fool’s Final Word

Mnemosyne’s biggest asset is its clean simple interface, which looks especially good on Windows when compared to many competitors. It feels very lightweight but actually hides a lot of power under the hood. It should serve students well for long term language study, especially if they don’t need solid handling of three field cards. At least one online review compares it favorably with Anki, but if you want a powerful cross-application program which focuses entirely on interval study, it simply can’t compare.

If you use OS X, want flexible control of your interval study, set management, or a wider feature set, other applications have much more to offer, but for many, especially on Windows, this serves as a very easy to use introduction to the world of spaced repetition. You certainly can’t beat the price.

Import: Multiple formats
Export: XML and tab delimited
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: Images, Sounds (not tested)

Entry Creation: 8/10 (keyboard input not remembered)
Entry Editing: 2/10 (no editing of cards directly in list view or during review, all options by right click, bad handling of three field cards)
Set Organization: 3/10 (No set management. Single category can be assigned words, which can be activated or de-activated for study)
Flashcard Study: 9/10
Interval Study: 9/10 (Can’t be customized)
Formatting: 3/10 (Can change font sizes)
Design and Feel: 7/10 Windows, 3/10 OS X (Far too much use of right-click for options. Nice clean interface in Windows but serious UI problems on OS X)
Statistics: 6/10 (You can view grade statistics, and upcoming words, but can’t sort cards by them or view them in column view)

Golden Coxcombs: 6.5/10 Windows 5/10 OS X

Other Substantial Reviews

Review of Mnemosyne vs. Anki vs. SuperMemo

Rapid Memorization Using Mnemosyne