Topic: kongzi.ca going live -- investment/presales opportunities - page 6. (Read 7805 times)

honest bob's seal of disapproval

Kong Zi says: "Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!"

Usagi is trolling himself now? How sad is that? 

LOL, how stupid are you? Read the rest of the thread. I was lucky to get out of this bull shit service at so early stage. Turn out, this service is a joke and pjotr is as unstable as you are. LOL

What other textbooks have you seen?

Can you speak Japanese? If you have actual experience on this I could pay you to help me.

Sounds like EskimoBob is just mad he got banned from assets-otc. I warned people not to invest with him. He's what you call a scammer, vs. someone like me who actually has a real business up. Why, just look at the third link down from what he posted:

> My e-mail address says "oliver.richman" but that
> isn't my name, it's my email address. I know plenty
> of people who use their phone number as their
> email address. If I did that would you claim that
> my name is myphone number?"

The funny thing is, that isn't me. And even if it was, whoever posted that said it isn't their real name. So yeah, back to your regular trolling ;-)

Yes, Oliver Richman aka usagi appears to have a long history in scamming.

You do not want to forget that post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1303227


Oliver Richman [email protected] (usagi, https://www.google.com/search?q=usagi+%22Oliver+Richman%22, know troll in mailing lists and forums) is about 40 years old and not a single bank trusts him with a CC? WTF! Or is he just full of shit and made this poor guy in to his scapegoat, who has to mop up usagis next fuck up in that forum?
Oliver, please, just leave and never return! Your hysterical dramas are not funny any more.

Wrong section of the forum surely?

If you want a loan then post in Lending section.
If you want to discuss development of the site/software then there's a section for that.
If you want to sell the books then there's an area for that.
If you want to sell the service you provide then there's a sub-forum for that.

This particular one (Securities) is for "This section is for topics about individual Bitcoin bonds, stocks, etc." - which you've explicitly stated you aren't issuing.

Mildly amusing that someone who professes to teach English somehow picked the one sub-forum that their post clearly doesn't belong in.

Your sample textbook pages include too much English.

I am a consumer of language texts. As a consumer, I reject offerings that are full of English language.

Less English language -> More space for examples of actual Japanese.

As you revise the book, consider including more examples and cutting the discussion of grammar aggressively.  


Your English style needs work.

e.g.
Your version:
"Strictly speaking, given the above breakdown, we're not dealing with a subject-verb-object sentence pattern, we're dealing with a subject-object-verb sentence pattern"

My version:
This is a subject-object-verb sentence pattern.   [reference to the breakdown indicated through page layout]

I won't be buying/investing in your textbook or your programs, but if you give me free access to the programs, then I would happy to give you comments.
(on the Chinese and maybe the Japanese version)

Oops, looks like you made a mistake ;-)

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1336285

Nice try tho.

p.s. it's she, BTW. Y'know.. like you?

Usagi is an anonymous, incompetent nutjob. Anyone considering giving him money is irresponsible.

See
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/usagi-simple-contract-violation-114820
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/usagi-118507
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/puppet-malicious-criminal-libel-112927
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/usagi-not-disclosing-conflict-of-interest-115411
but most of all https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/usagi-falsifying-navs-manipulating-share-prices-and-misleading-investors-113708

Yes I am using iknow.jp right now (formerly smart.fm). I bought a 6 month subscription. In bitcoins, of course (see the services forum for my post ;-)

Well, I don't know if the quality went down, from what I understand the quality itself went up, they added pictures and native voice actors. Things that you pretty much can't get for free. They did remove a lot of the social features and as you say, user created content. Because they didn't have a license. However, there are ways around that, such as attributions and getting permission -- things which are not hard to do for a real business. I've been in contact with people. Even, a lot of native Japanese. And of course, Chinese. And Korean. I feel that the worst I can do is hire native speakers to generate content, at any rate.

The big thing from what I hear was the social features that were removed when smart.fm changed into iknow.jp. I fully intend to create a "better iknow.jp" which was a lot more like the old smart.fm. As for price, I don't see why iknow.jp needs to charge $12 a month. I think $5 or less a month is a much better price range.

As for users earning money, well, perhaps bitcoins but more likely "kongzi points" or time towards paid services. Kind of like "Add ten facts to the database and get a (gift code for a) free 1 year membership" or something. Users will be able to edit their own content, but there will also be a "core" content owned by the system which is 'default content'. Not sure if you get what I mean, but I have the database structure already worked out for it. I'd never be able to enter all the data by myself otherwise. It will be like Anki's internet-shared decks feature, but done properly.

The way I have thought out for users to get paid for using my site is viral marketing/commissions. I'm planning to offer users a 50% lifetime commission on any user that signs up to kongzi.ca using them as a referral (i.e. get 2 people to sign up and your membership is essentially free, 3+ people, and you get paid). I think that's a great deal. Now, if I just could get 500 active users at $5 a month I would be very happy. I think that is very possible to get that many paying users once the system is perfected.

Anyways I have a lot of plans for this. No online service really offers comprehensive JLPT N5 material which is really the way things are moving in the Japanese Learning world right now. iknow.jp still has a user-created JLPT N5 list but all iknow.jp does is flashcards, essentially. I will be able to do everything they do and much more. One of the big things is having the user create their own sentences and having the computer verify the grammar. One thing I am very interested in doing is offering a teaching trail where the user is taught something, is shown some example sentences, and then has to enter their own sentences and have the computer verify that the grammar is correct. No one else has that. Stuff like that. Beyond that, I'd like to hire native teachers to do video lectures once in a while, and have them available for view/download online. Oh wow there's so much stuff I could do with this it's insane. Please check out the screenshots for the kongzi program. Another great couple of things? hiragana word search. Kanji sudoku. Drag and drop scrambled sentences. And so on. Oh boy do I have ideas! There are so many little games and puzzles I can do.. Man this will be great.

Have you seen YesJapan? I really really like their branding. I'd like to do something like that but a bit more anime (well, more of it, anyway). I could talk about what I want to do for hours with this but I'll cut it short for now. Go sign up on the site. What I am working on right now is the dictionary system. I'm working on the add entries form and the browse entries form. This will allow me/you/us to start entering data into the system. From there it's a short hop over to basic flashcards, and from there -- the world!

You know the funny thing? Kongzi (the java program) uses HTML to display it's data. I did it that way because it was easier to get fonts to display (as I recall). So basically if I wanted to I could drag and drop code into .jsp or have kongzi launch as a web app. I think recoding it for the web would be better in the long run tho. Anyway please do sign up and check back on the site once in a while and let me know what you think, any comments or suggestions.

Welcome back usagi! We missed your drama  

BTW what happened to your post count?

I think that it is great you are trying to offer a real service.

I am sure you are familiar with inknow.jp

This used to be a free website which had a lot of nice user constructed material. Later it was turned into a pay website and the user submitted material was removed (I think the company didn't have a license to sell this stuff). This sucked because prices went way up (from zero ->~US$12/month) and quality went down.

Could you build a nice platform for people to create and edit content, (like iknow.jp used to be before it went behind a paywall). Perhaps a platform which would allow people to earn money from their contributions?

I'm not sure what the best revenue model is (ads, premium services, etc.). I feel that iknow.jp made a bad decision though.

Kong Zi says "Study the past, if you would divine the future." -> Subscribed for inevitable drama goodness.

FAQ

Q: MPOE-PR (and maybe others) said you were an anonymous, incompetent nutjob. Post quoted:
Is there any truth to this?

A: Hey, who you calling anonymous! This is the internet!
Lol, no, seriously, it's true -- of course it's all true -- people did in fact accuse me of being a scammer.

But guess what! I never got a scammer tag because i'm not a scammer.

In MPOE-PR's zeal she also posted a scammer accusation I made against someone else (#3 on the list above). MPOE-PR is clearly "incompetent" even at accusing others people of being incompetent. How ironic.

Trolls like MPOE-PR are essentially full of shit, don't listen to them. You're better off placing them on ignore. This has been a public service announcement. There's really no need to answer every troll is there?

kongzi.ca -- what is it?

It's a real business. Something that adds value to the bitcoin community. Not just some fancy schmantzy financial bond or mining scheme. It's a language school, and we accept bitcoins. We don't accept dollars because I don't have paypal.

We also publish and sell our own language textbooks, and they are some of the most advanced language textbooks in the world. We're starting with Japanese (although others are in development). We currently have the only Japanese textbook in the world that attempts to use comprehensible input theory to teach the language. And our website will be the same.

So, I am looking for private investment to help me develop this. I have a couple of ideas.

One, I can sell the book I'm working on (see: http://kongzi.ca/wtj). <--- No really, check this out. It's real and it's 90% done. It's good enough to offer pre-sales.

Two, I can sell you a lifetime membership on kongzi.ca. There isn't much there now, but once it gets rolling I'll start charging by the month, and a lifetime membership account would become priceless. Go there and sign up now, it's free. See for yourself how I am working on it.

Finally, you can invest in the language school itself. While I can't offer you shares or bonds, I can offer you an investment opportunity in the form of a private business loan. If you loan me money personally so that I can develop this project, then I promise to personally pay you back once the site starts making money. The terms of such an arrangement can be discussed privately.

So how do you know I'm for real? Well first, I have a very good OTC rating (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=usagi). Second, please visit the link above; http://kongzi.ca/wtj -- There are pictures of the book. Finally, I've done more than one complete and fully functional website before, including hotwallet.ca. So you know for a fact I can complete what I start.

But what's more, I've already finished the programming and solved all the natural language processing issues surrounding a language school; please see my old blog at renli.wordpress.com especially the following posts for some screenshots.

http://renli.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/kongzi-pre-beta-8-progreess-report/
http://renli.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/concentration/
and
http://renli.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/kongzi-can-now-import-cc-cedict/

So you know this is for real, you know this will compete with programs like stackz, anki and iknow.jp, and you know it will blow them out of the water. It will destroy programs like Rosetta stone. It will revolutionize language teaching online!

I've always been afraid to release my code for fear that it will be pirated; that concern does not exist with a web app in the way that it does with desktop software. I've been a professional language teacher for the last seven or eight years now; I use the desktop (java) version of kongzi to teach in the classroom and not only do the students love it, it really does help them learn the language more quickly. I'm very experienced teaching English here in Asia, and I will have a large (30+) base of customers on kongzi.ca learning English almost immediately. I also work closely with the cram schools, private highschools and universities I teach English at here, and there will be options for me to draw students from those places and provide English teaching services to those schools and also to help smaller schools get a web presence/computer presence.

I can tell you for sure, a lot of smaller cram schools would LOVE to be able to tell parents they have computer teaching/testing or to give students homework that they have to complete using a computer. Parents eat that stuff up like popcorn.

So how will this work? Here are my ideas:

1. Presales of books/membership:
For 1 bitcoin I will sell you a copy of one of the books I'm working on (see; http://kongzi.ca/wtj). Combined shipping anywhere in the world is 1 bitcoin.
For 2 bitcoins I will give you a 1 year full-access membership code, which will become active when we start charging for membership (no point using it until then, at any rate).
For 5 bitcoins I will give you a lifetime transferrable* membership to kongzi.ca and e-book copies of the books now, and also send you printed copies of the final product when the books are done.
*(you can edit your e-mail/password, or I can give you a code which will unlock a lifetime membership account.)

2. Investment into kongzi.ca
For every bitcoin you give me personally, I promise to pay you back 1.2 bitcoins out of my profit from kongzi.ca. You will be paid first before I realize any personal profit. (idea 1)

kongzi.ca -- go there, check it out. I'm working on it.... right now!