A new Japanese learning tool

About a year and a half ago, I posted some suggestions for people trying to learn Japanese who wanted to keep their costs down... and everything there still seems to hold up.  However, there's a new tool just on the market, from the makers of Human Japanese, that might provide some extra help with learning kanji in particular, called Satori Reader.

The basic description I would give is that it's a website where you can read a variety of articles on various topics in Japanese, but it's really more than that.  Much like the Human Japanese series, it includes full spoken audio for each article.  Past that, it's use of Kanji in articles is very customizable... you can tell the site what your level of knowledge is (be that by how commonly each kanji is used, by grade level, or from a custom list), and the site tailors the display of words based on your preferences (for example, hiragana if you don't know any of the kanji, kanji if you know all the kanji involved, and kanji with furigana if you know some of the kanji involved).  You can also pick out words and phrases for review, which the site offers to you in a flash-card-style format at intervals, in both English to Japanese and Japanese to English formats, based on how you tell it you did the last time you saw that card.  You can even export those words and phrases into external programs, but, as that's a feature I haven't tried, I can't speak to how useful it will be for you.

All that said, it's a pricier proposition than anything I've recommended to date.  While it does have a free trial option, they expect to charge $12/month, or $99/year, for everyone who signs up for it after mid-January.  Until then, they offer $7/month and $70/year options for "Founder Pricing", which is a little more bearable.  Personally, I expect I'm going to go with the $70/year option after the first of the year, which is at least reasonably close to the streaming anime subscription I use that started me on this path to begin with.  For the rest of you, hey, free trial, can only hurt so much to give it a look.

Now the ball's in Sony's court

It's been over 6 years since Sony decided to screw with their customers by removing Linux functionality from their PS3 line of devices without compensation.  I was none too pleased by that turn of events (as posted here), and decided that I was done with buying anything from Sony... and, barring the odd movie that might have come out where Sony's involvement wasn't readily visible up-front, I've been quite good at sticking with that decision.  It's with some mixed feelings then that I went ahead and submitted a claim, just now, for "class A" compensation under their lawsuit settlement process (which, on the very off chance somebody from the verification crew is wanting to make sure the post I submitted is really from a blog I control, my Claimant Number is F0CEDC52DF).

So, first off, any of you with the necessaries that somehow haven't heard, be sure to head to www.otherossettlement.com to make your claim before the December 7th deadline.

That said... if Sony makes good and pays out in full on my claim, they'll be the first company taken off my no-buy list that I can recall.  Honestly though, I'm expecting they'll kick me down to a "class B" claim, since the only proof I have that I actually used the PS3 Linux capability is a brief whine about repartitioning going poorly afterwards, because I never thought to post about playing NetHack on PS3 after having mentioned doing so on PS2's Linux kit prior.  Not that I'm going to rush out and buy a PS4 if they do pay up (6+ years of grudge doesn't slough off that easily), but at least it won't be a reflexive "hell no" if a Sony option does enter the mix.