Topic: kongzi.ca going live -- investment/presales opportunities (Read 7805 times)

Kongzi Online Beta-2 Official Announcement

April 8th, 2013
Hello! I'm pleased to announce that we've reached another milestone with Kongzi Online. We have now entered Phase 2 development at kongzi.ca! Our previous milestone was Kongzi Online Beta-1 which was reached on November 25th, 2012.

Here's what's new and what's planned:

Recent Developments (1st quarter 2013)

• Our eyecatcher strategy is to give away the dictionary content for free with a front-page multilanguage dictionary search -- similar to tangorin.com, jisho.org, etc.
• We now use a superset of Jim Breen's JEDict/JMdict format. This allows us to store much more information about words and definitions and definitively breaks the dictionaries apart into language and translation. This will aid in multilanguage support later on.
• We no longer create flashcards directly from dictionary entries on the fly. Instead we allow users to create and edit their own personal flashcards with an innovative drag 'n drop flashcard creator.
• The SRS flashcard system is now active, which means the site is now officially useable. It's a bit of a rough draft, but it works. やった！

While we are not planning on smoothing out the UI/user experience until Beta-3 in June, Here's what's planned for the immediate future (April & May):

Development Goals for April/May 2013

• Many new types of game and quiz to help people learn in a fun and exciting way: Memory game, Mix 'n Match, as well as more traditional Multiple Choice and Cloze tests.
• An example sentences system (separate from the "example" field in Jim Breen's JEdict format).
• A Lesson/Path system where you can sign up to "courses" which will contain lots of reading material and pre-made flashcards.
• Users can share and publish their flashcards for other users of Kongzi.ca.

Content / User base:
Our user count has increased from 7 to 15 and one of our users (a native Japanese speaker) has volunteered to help edit the Japanese dictionary. The focus is on adding more N5 level content first, and then progressing to N4, N3, etc. before opening the dictionary to anything-goes mode.

Investment / Presales opportunities:
I've spent a great deal of time thinking about how to offer an investment opportunity for kongzi.ca. This is what I have always been working on, and I always felt I should have done this first instead of other plans. Right now, the idea is to sell shares OTC. I will entertain private offers for how much money you want to invest, and what % of the company it should be worth. Then, when we go live, I will double the number of shares and give those extra shares to myself. This is a pretty fair way to run things, I think. Here are our current and projected costs:

BitVPS server costs us less than 0.5 BTC/month. Will need 5 BTC or less for the first year.
We need to hire a mangaka to help us brand the site. cost 3-5 BTC.
We need to license some fonts for embedding. Something really pro, like TB Yokobuto Mincho, or Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro. This will cost 3 BTC or less.
Adobe Creative Suite subscription costs about .2 BTC a month. Say 2 BTC a year at current rates.
Textbook printing costs for a first run of 100 books will be 4-5 BTC. This will be a money making venture for us but we won't need the money for that for at least another 4 to 6 months.

So as you can see our costs are not exorbitant. I am thinking an IPO done over the counter for 1000 shares at 0.1 BTC/share, with 500 shares retained by myself as lead developer & CEO. This would raise 50 BTC and would completely cover our costs to operate the system for more than 2 years.

When we list your shares will probably be moved BitFunder. We're going to be the best, yo.

PM me any questions or concerns. Please enjoy your time spent at kongzi.ca

Well, they are already closed down, more or less. And, the businesses are separate from each other so I don't see how they could interfere. I'm very industrious and sometimes I do bite off more than I can chew but in this case there really isn't much work that needs to be done closing down my other business.

One of the big problems we face is that we don't yet have all the information from Nefario. So it is difficult to handle (say) our holdings with you, because they have nowhere to go. I mean, I do have a personal claim in all this, but I'm handling that last. So it will take a bit, maybe a week or a month (?) until I get the other lists.

OTOH, I do realize some people have the same idea and think that they shouldn't invest money in my businesses. There's a bit of a problem with that tho ;-) It's like, when I was trying to sell insurance on pirate. People were saying no, they didn't believe I would pay. Then when I did, they were shitting themselves wishing they had bought insurance. This is going to be just like that. Not many people are interested in supporting this project or investing in it, but over the coming years, I'd like to muse they will wish they had.

This is not having a go at you but shouldnt you wait and close down your previous businesses before opening  a new one ?

Well basically it's a division of labor problem. It's less efficient (slower) to have a javascript program running in a browser communicate with a remote database because of latency. If the number of queries ever gets to the point where the latency ceases to matter, that just means it's getting time to upgrade your server. So to me it makes more sense to process database data on the server. It's also more secure because you can just deny outside connections and you're fine.

So the user clicks on some link or button somewhere and is taken to the quiz. The user expects a certain type of quiz because of selections or options he's made or other information on his screen, and as a result we also have access to this information ahead of time. So when the page is loaded it doesn't make sense to use JSON to transport values during the quiz; it seems simpler and easier to create the javascript code dynamically ahead of time and have it load with the page since it's being processed in PHP anyways. So there's no reason to select "as json" because it's PHP processing the database result. Also doing a select as JSON uses more database time because you need to use GROUP_CONCAT and other stuff.

Another issue is bandwidth. I have a feeling that tossing out a few hundred bytes as a variable is going to be a lot cheaper than tossing out the javascript code to get that structure out of a database and process it.

For example, you would need at least a select statement, sent out on every page load... something like:

second of course you would need to send out the javascript code to communicate with mysql since it's not in the javascript library. Stuff like this:


and I am afraid to even guess how large that code would be.
basically I would rather have the server run a few CPU cycles than have to load and send all that junk over the internet every time someone loads a page (according to a character count it's north of 200k). Then if it's that large you are going to have disk IO issues too.

What's the advantage that this method (creating javascript code on the server) has over JSON?

You dont think theres people on this forum who would dearly love to hack your site and show goatse pics to japanese students ?

 

Good point. In this case, the server-side pulls info out of the database and pushes it into a javascript variable. So if someone could introduce an entry name like x"}}; {malicious code}; var z = {{"x there might be some sort of problem. However, right now only admins can put information into the database, and in the future users who edit the database will have their submissions put into a changelog where admins can review it before it goes live.

Generally I design for security first, but in this case it's not so vital, as admins would have access to the database anyways.

On other sections of code, I have a cleanstr function which right now uses (I think) htmlentities. ex:


One interesting point to make about a site like this is that it isn't the sort of thing that would come under repeated or focused attack (IMO). It isn't a financial site, I plan to outsource payment processing (at least at first), and so on. Who would want to hack into someone else's japanese learning account? I admit some people would do it for the lulz but I'm not obsessing over it too strongly this time. Good point tho.

If you are taking input from users and not sanitizing it then is to prevent them from injecting malicious php code or creating xss vulnerabilities?

Announcement! The flashcard system is almost ready! This means the site will be usably operational very soon. You cannot see the recent work I have done unless you look at the page source; but I have already finished the backend which connects the database to the modal window! Right now the server side scripting pulls the data off the database and creates dynamic javascript code to feed it into your browser! That's absolutely amazing!

Here are two sample snippets of the dynamic code to show that the interaction is working as intended:

sample test run #1

sample test run #2

This is really fantastic news for kongzi.ca. I think, that I will have a usable system done by the weekend. It won't have all the features I intend yet of course, but it will start providing value to the community as a set of online flashcards. I can't wait to soup it up and open for business!

For those who are interested in critiquing my code, or to see proof that I am actually writing code and capable of doing this (which is material information for anyone interested in supporting this project with a personal business loan), I've decided to release the snippet of code which creates this:


Thanks and good luck!

Therefore your argument is invailid.

As if usagi will listen to reason....



See? 

No I'm not, what are you referring to? I'm working on my website, I just made an announcement about the flashcard system. Did you read it? Did you create an account on kongzi.ca? What do you think? I'm really excited to see it come this far already It will definately help me generate a little extra income to help pay back CPA loan holders and others. Cool, huh?

I almost want to send him money out of pity. Maybe you should try making up pathetic stories and begging usagi? It seems like a line of scamming which is better suited to your natural talents.

usagi, this is exactly the kind of shit which keeps negative attention focused on you.  The other day you were asking complaining that people wouldn't leave you alone.  You said that you'd give Eskimo Bob an opportunity to find out what had happened to his YARR shares - something which is quite reasonable given the GLBSE clusterfuck and people's dependence on Nefario releasing accurate information.  Now you're back to engaging in pointless pissing matches again.

No-one's going to take you or your ventures seriously if you feel the need to write a diatribe every time something negative is said about you.  It's your own posts which call both your competence and your sanity into question so stop playing the game if you don't want it to bite you in the ass.

usagi is Japanese for rabbit. In case that helps anyone's investigations.

Announcement!

I've just added timer code to the flashcard quiz, and moved it to the Learn page. You can also now browse by tag. I've added a few entries so you can see how this works. Try browsing by keyword and by tag.

I've also added a convenient link to the editentry screen in the browse results!

Everything is proceeding according to schedule. Right now I am focusing on getting a basic flashcard system up and running; should be a piece of cake, I've already written the code for the Java version of Kongzi.

Stay tuned!

Hot links to where the most significant recent developments have been made:
http://kongzi.ca/dict/browse.php
http://kongzi.ca/learn/fc.php

Nobody cares.

First reference to the name in connection with usagi came when usagi, a while back, posted his/her/its credentials which included the claim to have written a book.  The link provided by usagi in connection to that claim was to information by a book with the author listed as Oliver Richman (or whatever it is - haven't checked in a while).

Someone (may have been EB - may have been someone else - can't remember) then did some searching and found the rec.martial-arts (or whatever it is) list entires where someone using the online nick usagi had an email address of the form oliver/richman@ (or similar).

Obviously it's possible that there's two people who like to use the nick usagi, have an interest in martial arts, have an interest in pretending to be Japanese and use the pseudonym (or real name) Oliver Richman.  There may be other similarities - I've never had enough interest in it to look any further than the initial links posted bt others.  How likely that is (2 people with so many things in common), is for everyone to decide themselves.  usagi has also explicitly denied that the identity on rec.martialarts is its - but later made a post which at a glance seemed to be saying that in fact it WAS usagi's account (by referring to alleged harassment against that account - and explaining why it happened to usagi).

Fuel was added to the fire by pretty clear evidence that usagi (the one here) changes his/her/its claims of gender.  Initially posts relating to its business were signed on here as "Serena" but there have been several occasions where usagi has cleared referred to itself using male-gender terms (e.g. just recently referring to itself as "a guy" twice in one post).  However usgai has also recently made a straight-forward statement that it is female. But at the same time usagi has also claimed in the past to have a wife.  Barring at least two sex-changes and a lesbian marriage it is not possible for all the claims/inferences to be true at the times at which they were made.

Now I couldn't care less what gender someone I deal with on the Internet is - I'm more interested in their competence, honesty etc.  But when someone lies or intentionally misleads about it, then it naturally leads me to believe that there's a much higher chance of them being untruthful about other (more important) things.

To be clear, I have nothing against someone using a pen-name when authoring a book, even if that pen-name is of a different gender to their own.  But common-sense would tend to suggest that IF they do that and are then going to refer to themself in the opposite gender then they should make plain from the start that it's a nom de plume rather than their real name - to avoid the sort of debate over it which has now occurred.

So Oliver is also an alias. Who said it was your real name?

It's okay. My name isn't Oliver either ;-)