On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 5:40 PM, [email protected] < [email protected]> wrote: > > > "I think you are confusing a web-based tool such as quia.com and > a piece of software installed in your computer. " > > I am still not sure that I understand your distinction but my next > question would be why couldn't mnemosyne be a web-based tool? Isn't it > in the whole community's interest for this to be very user friendly? > Thanks for your help. > > Let me try to make the distinction clear. It has to do with location. When you use a web-based tool, you are using a tool located on somebody else's computer (somebody else's webserver).
When you download and install a tool, you are using software that is located on *your* computer. This has a number of implications. When you use a service such as that at quia.com, you have to be connected to the internet, you have to pay (30 day free trial, $49/year individual subscription), and anything you upload to the service *becomes their property *(read the terms of service). Once you have downloaded mnemosyne and installed it, you no longer have to be connected to the internet in order to run the software, you don't have to pay, and any cards that you create remain yours unless you choose to share them. In addition, should you wish to do something different with mnemosyne, you can change it and share it with others, or you can change it and keep the changes to yourself (assuming you know or are willing to learn how to program in Python). It's open source. With a proprietary service like quia, it's take it or leave it. Maybe they'll make the changes you want and maybe they won't. It's closed source. Besides, being web-based is no guarantee that the software will be user friendly. There are lot's of unfriendly web-apps out there. Whether an app is out on the web (in the cloud, in the current lingo) or installed locally tells you nothing about whether it's easy to use or well documented. I don't know if quia is easy to use or not; I just visited the site long enough to get some basic information. -- Rich --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
