In less than 2 weeks, I will be going to Dubai and Germany for 9 days.  So, this is putting me in a “squeeze” for getting this program done.  My plans are to have those 9 days covered, and a little after that as well so that we still have a program for every day.

This brings me to another point, I have gotten several emails suggesting that we should do fewer programs and try to make them better.  I completely agree that the program can be improved, and I am committed to doing so.  However, I also feel committed to doing a daily program.  It is a discipline thing.   Once I start to move the line from daily to something else, then I am the afraid it would be the beginning of the end of the program.  I have seen this in several other things that I have been involved in.  Once I reduce the frequency, then I am tempted to reduce it again, until it becomes so infrequent, that I’m not really doing it.  So, I really feel like I have to stick with a daily program.

However, it has occurred to me, and been suggested by some people via email, that the programs should be related to each other.  So, my thinking is to have a big program, recorded and planned together, that would be broken up into 7 pieces are so.  For example, we could have day 1 a vocabulary builder lesson.  Day 2 we can do a dialog using those words.  Day 3, we  can have a grammar lesson tied into the vocabulary/dialog someway.  Day 4, find some of the words/grammar “out in the wild” in some printed material and explain that on the program.  Day 5, another dialog using the grammar/vocabulary, Day 6 have a excerpt from something on the radio or TV tied in with the grammar/vocabulary.  And the day 7 would be saved for something completely different:  interview, cultural lesson, review a song, etc.

Anyway, still working through some ideas, but I think this could be a good way to improve the program.

Also, over the next two weeks I’m trying to learn some German on the LiveMocha site.  It is a really good program, I think all of you might like to try out the Hindi program there.

Today I edited and posted two sessions.  These will go live tomorrow and the next day.  So, now I do have a one day buffer.   Also, we recorded 2 vocabulary building sessions and 1 dialog.  I hope to intermingle the dialogs and vocabulary building to keep it more interesting for you.  But I have already staged the vocabulary sessions in wordpress and I do not want to manually change the post dates on several sessions.  I am hoping to write a WordPress plugin to do that at some point.

Ok… Now about the ads.. You will notice them at the bottom of the pages again.  Which might surprise you considering on of my earlier postings.  I have a theory that google favors sites with adsense on it.  So, I am going to leave one ad at the bottom of the page to be safe.  And it will be a while before I can remove the side ads on many of the pages.

Now about money…  I keep wondering if I can improve the quality of this program, add a lot of additional resources, and really build up the audience, would it be possible for this site to make enough so that in combination with other things, I could do it full time.  What are your thoughts on this?  What do you think is the best way to do that?

Today, we recorded 5 vocabulary builders and 1 scenario session about buying a DVD at the store.

Got 2 sessions edited.  One for tomorrow.  And the other one I need to listen to again to be sure I cut out the mistakes and noises…  But that will be for the day after that.

Stacey has emailed me the Hindi text for most of the posts on the site.  I have gone through most of her updates.

I create a start of the “page of thanks” page I’m working on to acknowledge all the people that have helped with the site including my family, Stacey, Marty, and others.  It is going to take a while to get that up.  I am really worried about falling behind on the daily podcasts.. I would like to get setup with about a month or more lead time on the podcasts..

I have also been trying to recruit other speakers for the site.  I think you might be hearing some new voices soon.  If you speak Hindi or know someone that does, then please let me know.

Oh, I hope you got a chance to hear the interview with the CEO of LiveMocha.  I believe there are a lot of key areas that LiveMocha and ISpeakHindi.com could work on together such as a tutor market place for Hindi tutors, have common profiles of users on both sites, allow for ISpeakHindi.com listeners to get LiveMocha points by listening to podcasts and taking a test.  Once I make a lot more progress on the ISpeakHindi site, I hope to bring these things up to the LiveMocha team.  But that is probably 6 months from now.

The future is bright… but one step at a time…

Today, we have an interview with  Shirish Nadkarni, the CEO of LiveMocha. This is an innovative way to learn several languages including Hindi. The LiveMocha.com service makes learning Hindi fun by helping you to connect with other people learning the language and people that already know the language. LiveMocha keeps you motivated by tracking your progress and adding an element of friendly competition to keep you encouraged and engaged.

Click the “download” link below to listen to the interview. After you listen, be sure and leave a comment to let us know what you thought of the interview format and ways future interviews can be improved. AND be sure to check by LiveMocha.com.

 Standard Podcast [6:33m]: Download

We recorded three sessions today.  Meena and Nariandas will be in India from the end of November till February.  Therefore, it might be very difficult to stay on top of the daily schedule without them here.  So, we are attempting to record ahead until February.  And then I will augment this with other sessions that I am able to get from Sonia and others.  Also, I will be going to Dubai in November, so I hope to get a of material from that.  But just in case, I am trying to record 120 sessions over the next 3 weeks.  This is going to be a crazy schedule.

Today, we went to the Hindu temple in Pearland.  It is a south Indian temple, so very few people spoke Hindi.   But I got some material that might be useful for a future session.  Also, I think South Indians might find ISpeakHindi.com useful.

I have added the Hindi words and pronunciation  for the session tomorrow.  I am trying to improve the sessions a little each day.  But I am getting squeezed between a lot of things right now, so that is very difficult.

Unfortunately, with all this work on ISpeakHindi.com, I am actually having trouble finding time to study Hindi myself.  So, I am afraid that I am not seeing my Hindi improving.

Well, that is all for today….

Today’s podcast will have a list of words covered in English and Hindi. And the Hindi words will be linked to a sound file for that word. So, by clicking on the Hindi word, you should be able to hear it.

Not much other than that has changed with the site. But I am trying to improve the daily postings to make them more useful to you.

Also, Stacey has sent me a lot of the Devanagari text for some of the previous podcasts. I will be adding them shortly.

This has been a very busy and interesting week.  I got an email from a “Community Manager” at LiveMocha.  This site offers language instruction in several languages including Hindi.  It appears to be well done.  It is free.  But there are two additional components that help to set it apart.  It overs a “scoring” system that is displayed in your profile that shows how many sections of the material you have completed.  Also, it is hooked into Facebook.  And provides a way for you to interact with other people that know the language you are learning or people that are also are learning.  It looks like we might have a special interview with the CEO of LiveMocha next week.  That could provide us all a chance to hear, first hand, how LiveMocha can help us to learn Hindi.

This week, ISpeakHindi.com received its first $10 donation.  Earlier this week, I signed up for a PayPal account and put the sidebar link that says “Please consider supporting this site.  A $10 donation would go a long way.”  This can only be found on the front page.  Well, a listener decided that this program was worthy and donated.  I think I would like to have a “page of thanks” so I can list out all the people that have helped put this site together.  The people that help to write the text on the site, record the program, and make the site better.  As well as those that contribute by giving money.  So, please consider supporting this site if you find it useful.

The donation has really made me reconsider pursuing ad revenue.  It only brings in about $20/month.  I don’t like ads.  I think they are distracting.  And I want people coming to the site because they find the content helpful.  I do not want to have people coming to the site just to send them some place else.  So, I am planning to remove the ads from all the site except for the “list of sites” pages and the “site search” page.  I figure the ads makes sense on both of these pages because the visitor is already looking to go some place else.  So, I have removed the ads from the front page.  And I will remove them from the other pages over time.  It may take a little while to remove them from the entire site, because I do not plan to make changes to the “non-WordPress” pages.  Instead, I intend to integrate all the content into WordPress, and have it use the same template files.  So, it may be many months before you see it removed from some of the secondary pages.

Also, a friend of mind was looking at the podcast listed on the front page.  He pointed out a lot of things that did not make sense.  This has led me to change the title of the podcasts and the descriptions.  I really want to get more of the Hindi content out there with some quizzes and exercises.  But we have to make small steps each day.  It might be many years before we get this site to a point that we really want.  But we have begun the journey, and we will continue the journey.  And eventually I and you will be very comfortable in Hindi.

Well, that’s all for today.

I finally figured out how to get the most recent podcast to show up on the front page. Hopefully this will make the site easier for you to use. And hopefully it will help first time visitors to see the main offering of this site.

On each of the postings for the podcasts, there is a group of 5 stars.  Hover over these stars with your mouse and text will appear saying “1 star” or “2 stars”, etc. depending on how many stars you are giving it.  When you have the right number of stars selected, click it.  This will save it and your selection will be averaged in with everyone else’s.  This information will be critical to us to know which podcasts are great and need more of and which ones probably need to be revisited and possibly re-recorded.

It will also help other visitors since it will help them to find the most effective lessons.

So, to run through my daily three questions.  I have not done anything to really improve the site today.  I did try to get today’s podcast to appear on the front page, but had trouble and could not get it to work.  I also looked at http://www.phpdictionary.com and installed it on our server to be used for the Hindi-English dictionary.  However, the Hindi words in the database are messed up.  so, that did not work either.  I did go through and give all the podcasts an initial rating.  Most of them I gave 3 stars to.  There was one that I gave a 1 star to.

Regarding the podcast itself, today Meena and I recorded 4 lessons.  And I edited a lesson at lunch time.  So, a little progress there.

And besides that, I did not do anything to do to learn Hindi.

I need to get ahead on the recording so that I have some time to spend on adding functionality.  I also need to setup a development environment so that I do not risk damaging the live site.  Once I get that working, then I think I will go to a weekly development cycle.  Code on Sunday-Wednesday.  Test on Thursday and Friday.  Deploy on Saturday.  Something like that.

Last night, I installed a WordPress plugin that lets you rate the posts.  This means you can rate the ISpeakHindi.com podcasts.  Give the podcasts that you really, really like 5 stars.  Give the ones that you think need to be redone 1 star.

Unfortunately, I’ve been ill today, and we did not record any more podcasts.  Thank goodness we are recorded ahead.  So, there will still be a podcast posted tomorrow.

In terms of learning Hindi, I watch some news in Hindi.  I was surprised by how much of the printed text I was able to pronounce.  I believe my ability to read Hindi is coming along.  I need to improve my vocabulary though.