Native Tongue 2011: A year in review
Posted under: It was the end of 2011 and the entire team scattered throughout Melbourne not only to unwind but also to celebrate the achievement of 2011′s final milestone: breaking 2,000 downloads for our Mandarin Chinese-learning app Mandarin Madness.
Matt, Riley and Allen discuss Mandarin Madness at Matt's new digs
Our successes would not have been possible however without the support of our creative team: Antonia Follano, Gemma Golland, Kacey Boxall, Alice Jin and Simon Villani. As we gear up for the official launch for iOS devices, we are consolidating all works and the creative genius of the creative team will feature prominently throughout Mandarin Madness. (For those who cannot wait… Mandarin Madness can be downloaded now from Android Market.)
Hacking James' laptop: Replacing his wallpaper with Matt
From winning Startup Weekend Australia to launching at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing to moving into our first office space after months of working out of cafes to officially launching Mandarin Madness LITE on Android Marketplace and the subsequent full version, the entire team stands chuffed at hitting our milestones in quick succession: 100 downloads, 200 downloads, 500 downloads, 1,000 downloads, and finally 2,000 downloads.
It’s 2012 now and the entire team are fresh, energized and ready to kick butt. Here’s to a rocking 2012 and beyond.
James and Riley enjoy a beer after a week of scrambling together a prototype
Working out of Inspire9
Working out of Inspire9 (part II)
Tyson from TaskWant shows the team how to perform the perfect head-book-balance
Matt tries his hand at the delicate book-head-balance
Taking over Inspire9's collaborative consumption corner
Matt hard at work whilst we trial a potential new office space
Matt on the plane… ready for departure to TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing
thanks boys, I am an 80yr old Ausssie lady who has tried to learn Mandarin before, I often visit my family who live in China, now at last I feel I am learning a little and having so much fun. I am using an Apple IPad. I would appreciate a little explanation re the use and levels, and it would be great if you could include the spelling,(dont know how to describe the option to the Chinese characters) as I would get the pronunciation better. I would love to learn the characters but at my age (and for most casual tourists) just understanding the words is a pretty good effort. Good work, and thank you very much.
Thank-you for your great comment and feedback Yvonne! Your story is lovely and I would definitely love to feature it throughout the website if you’re happy for me to do so?
Explanation screens for the levels and use tutorials are to be included in the future and the spelling that you are referring to is called pinyin; I will discuss with the boys here on how we can incorporate this option in the future.
If you have any features that you would like included or there are things that you think we can improve on, I can be reached directly on kym@nativetongue.com. Else, keep hammering away on your Mandarin Chinese and thank-you again for your comment; it’s why we do what we are doing!