It’s been a few weeks now since I have launched the Heisig Helper apps on Android Market. These apps are intended for people who are studying the books “Remembering Traditional Hanzi” or “Remembering Simplified Hanzi” by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson. I have links to these books on the Heisig Helper site. For each of these books there is suppose to be a second volume which has not been published yet. Once they are published, I hope to put out apps for those as well.
In its present state the app is very simple. It just organizes the characters by less
on and in the order they appear in the book. It also gives you extra information such as the possible pinyin pronunciations, the radical, and number of strokes.
Future revisions of the app should include features such as search, saving your own story, and possibly integration with a more robust Heisig Helper website. Actually, I’m planning on building out the website
and making the app peripheral to the site. I expect to have the first version of the site completed in the next few months. The site will also be free. I’m not sure how I’m going to make any money yet; it may just turn out to be a labor of love instead of a profitable venture.
Now Heisig is most known for his “Remembering The Kanji” books (3 volumes I believe). I haven’t made any apps for the Kanji books as I’m not very familiar with Japanese. However someone has taken interest in helping me push out an app for this and he is currently working on the database for it, so we’ll see.
If you happen across this blog post and are yourself a Heisig student, please let me know what you would like to see in a site or Android app.
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