Being one of the sites I visit on a daily routine to learn Japanese vocabulary, iKnow!’s more-than-a-day-long maintenance wasn’t new to me. I’ve actually missed learning 10 new kanji (five a day) because of it. It took that long for the people behind the amazing flash card site to relaunch it as smart.fm.

So what’s new besides the new image-studying feature? The name. It seems to follow the two-letter TLD trend that’s been going on in the Web 2.0 scene today (i.e., ping.fm, last.fm, ma.tt, etc). Also, the site aims not to be a web app but a collection of web apps hence the rebranding of the site itself for distinction between the site and the web app. iKnow! would’ve been a great brand name though. Right now, the only web apps in smart.fm that I know of are iKnow! (learning), Dictation (listening) and BrainSpeed (speed-testing) but seeing their intention of generating a “learning stream” for users, I’m guessing there would be new apps in the future. An iPhone app would be great!

The design is something to be commended. It might look dragging to the usual eyes but personally, I like the image-less look of it. Big Web 2.0 sites such as Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and the like have very minimal images in the layout itself. The color scheme should be improved though as without images, that’s the only thing that can bring the layout to life. To sum it up, smart.fm has gone minimalist.

Aside from the slower loading time, I haven’t experienced any major problem with it. I’m positively sure the people behind smart.fm are getting buzzed up right now especially with the negative feedback they’ve been getting since the relaunch. However, it’s just the first few days and bugs are inevitable. Besides, the smart.fm team must’ve been lacking sleep because of this. Apparently, we, the users of this wonderful free service, are not the only ones who want smart.fm to be better.

Now, if only an iPhone  app of this would be released…

NIHONGO TANGO:

変わる (kawaru)

vi, v5r – to change, to be transformed, to vary, to be revised, to be different, to move location. (JLPT 3)

official statement from the wonderful people at smart.fm.