Zorbi - I Recommend this Flashcard App/Site that Doesn't Raise Your Blood Pressure

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I finally found a Flashcard App that doesn’t kick me in the crotch.

It’s called Zorbi

Here’s my shameless referral link in case you go pro (gives you and me 1 week for free): Zorbi: Remember stuff easily.
(Free version is still great btw so don’t skip reading from here)

Edit: They are not on iOS yet as of October 2021 but they are developing it and you can apply for the beta of it here → This typeform has moved

It has an excellent google chrome extension that enables you to make flashcards with hot keys, right on the page you’re currently reading and then instantly syncs the new card to your phone and the site where you can review the cards too.

You can paste a photo right into the card too using a screen grab app (I use a free one - https://app.prntscr.com) or just copy and paste a Google image.

The app creator’s mission is to make an SRS app that is super quick to make cards with whatever you’re reading online or in PDFs and to remove all the Anki headaches but giving you all the advantages Anki/an SRS App provides. I know some of you must be thinking “Ya but, Anki has XY&Z plugins”. Anki plugins, for me, have always almost but me into a pysche ward because they are so buggy or complex to set up. At the very least Anki needs extra clicks. Zorbi minimizes clicks to the minimum.

It also includes a “learning assistant” which basically you tell the app what your goals are and if you have any deadlines when do you need to “know” the card deck by. With a few clicks it customizes the review frequency to your needs to be as relaxed or as extreme as you need.

If you’re like me and Anki stresses you out because it takes way too long to deal with then I highly recommend it. It’s very intuitive but not too simplified.

It has a free basic version which honestly fulfills most people’s needs. If you want to put Text to Speech into your card and be able to edit images within the app (image occlusion) then you’ll need to get the pro. But the free version makes ditching Anki worth it alone in my opinion and doesn’t limit cards (ala LingQ’s limit).

As a LingQ user I prefer reading/watching content to be my input 100%. But through my experience I do sometimes need to stick words/phrases into flashcards that for some reason I NEVER remember when I see them in my LingQ lessons or in daily life. Or if I need to train myself some active output phrases, questions/answers I have to use in my daily life in my L2. So I’ve been looking yearly through the options beyond Anki and revisiting Anki and always left with a migraine. Zorbi instantly solved my pain so I thought I should share it here to help others who need help from migraines too.

Here’s my shameless referral link again in case you go pro (gives you and me 1 week for free) : Zorbi: Remember stuff easily.

Site Link: https://zorbi.cards/

Zorbi Google Chrome Extension (the secret sauce of this app): Zorbi - Flashcards from PDFs and Notion - Chrome Web Store

Apple iOS Beta: This typeform has moved

An interesting interview with the creator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReQvcQKoalU

Two Walkthrough Videos (But I suggest just diving in):

Enjoy LingQers!

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Hi, Stewart!

Good to have you back!

Where have you been?
Looking for ancient temples in the Brazilian jungle? :slight_smile:

Have a nice weekend
Peter

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Lol, it’s nice that you noticed Peter :slight_smile: No the opposite actually, flew out of Brazil and then it was more of the forests of the USA and also a jaunt through the baron dry landscape of southern France/Spain in the summer when things opened up for Americans. Totally fell off the language study wagon and ceased Lingqing right when I was achieving peak study efficiency. I saw Toby’s “power user” interview on youtube last month and that guilted me back onto LingQ haha. Glad to be back though and getting the remainder of the cobwebs out of my brain. Now I just have to learn how to keep up a routine whenever I’m not in Brazil again.

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Guilted you?! Well I don’t know about that, but glad to see you back and to hear you’ve been doing well :slight_smile:

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Southern France / Spain:
Nice. I love both regions.
Andalusia is a bit hot in summer, though.

Yeah. Toby did a good job in his interview :slight_smile:

“Now I just have to learn how to keep up a routine whenever I’m not in Brazil again.”
That shouldn´t be too difficult.
I mean your wife is Brazilian, isn´t she? :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the tip, I didn’t know it.

Unfortunately they don’t have an iOS app where it’s basically I use Anki the most.

You’re right though. Anki is not always so user friendly and I wasn’t ever able to take full advantage of the plugins. And the main reason is that you never know if they are going to be updated or not. And if you update Anki and the plugin is not you’re going to lose the way you had your workflow. And I don’t trust plugins for random people, it’s always a gamble. Or maybe it’s just me!

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Yikes I’m surprised it’s not on the App store yet. I just checked their discord and they said they’re working on it, you can join their beta if you want to check it out ahead of time: This typeform has moved

Ya Anki was never user friendly for me and the plugins usually showed great promise but never worked as advertised for me. With Zorbi, I saw the video of how it worked, I installed it, and it works exactly as they claim. Also the seamless experience between all my devices (at least with an Android) is incredibly time efficient compared to my former flashcard app that required manual syncing everytime I changed anything on the computer or android app. So ya, check out the beta if you get a chance or keep an eye on it to come out in the app store.

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She is! I don’t know if this has been covered in a forum post in the past but spouses/partners/relationships are probably not very often a panacea for improving language skills just as living in a location isn’t either. That’s based on personal experience and also the 100+ examples I’ve seen personally. Especially if the person speaks your native language to a high degree as she can. The one advantage to that is she can explain anything quickly to me but the disadvantage is it’s tough for not just one but BOTH people to get in the habit to sticking with the language one desires to learn as she generally prefers to speak English and I generally require a lot of willpower to stick with speaking Portuguese 100% only since I basically become a mute because I can only output the most basic of sentences so it’s like I turn into a frustrated angry caveman who says 1-4 basic words at a time and then just flailing my arms the rest of the time to sign language words I don’t rememeber. I’ve had more benefits with being around people who speak zero English than with anyone who speaks it. So for me I actually get the best practice when I’m with her grandmother who A. speaks zero English and B. Doesn’t understand my pronunciation unless it’s at least 99% correct so I figure out really fast my pronunciation problems and C. Has short term memory issues so we repeat the same conversation over and over again (natural SRS lol).

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I´d say it depends on the language level of the partners.

  • If partner A is a native speaker of the target language, but partner B can barely speak it, the speaking practice tends to collapse rather quickly. This reminds me of an anecdote about Elon Musk and his first ex-wife. Their dialog was something like:
  • She: “I’m not your employee!”
  • Elon: “If you were, I’d fire you immediately!”
    In your case: just replace “employee” with “teacher” :wink:
  • The situation is different if both partners can speak the target language quite well. In this case, conversations are real conversations between equals, and the relationship is no longer that between a teacher and a student.
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Yes you’ve certainly highlighted a big issue that occurs which is the discomfort of either side being a student or a teacher to the other. Even if no argument occurs it can be a rather uncomfortable dynamic to get used to.

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You can probably generalize this point beyond partners:
At least in my case, I’ve never been able to teach any of my family members or girlfriends anything (languages, math, programming / IT stuff in general, basketball / calisthenics, etc.).

I´ve tried countless times., but I always failed because I was first and foremost “son”, “little brother”, “uncle”, etc.

My personal conclusion:
Skill transfer within family / close relationships is either implicit or it doesn’t work.
But, of course, they usually want me to repair their computers because I´m a cost effective IT troubleshooter :slight_smile:

On the other hand:
When a family member tried to teach me something explicitly in the past, I usually ignored it too. Motto: “I’m not a (small) child anymore!” :slight_smile:

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Also @Peter.

So I’ve actually been a part-time Swedish teacher for the past 2 months (mostly for kids), and the first thing I told both my fiancé and family was that I couldn’t teach them. I can give them advice, and reiterate what I did to learn, but it simply wouldn’t work for me to be a “formal” teacher for them. I know them too well and doubt it would be possible to change or substitute our relationship as-is with a “student/teacher” one until we were peers.

It goes the other way too though. My friends have all commented on how I’m more or less impossible to teach :).

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