VietCali.com

After a year of launching the Quick English Vietnamese Phrases iphone app, I still don’t recoup the expense I put into it.  At the current rate, it’s going to take another year to make even.  How sad!  So I though instead of charging a buck for the app, I’ll just turn it into free app.  At least this make me feel better by giving away free stuff.  Now, you can claim there is such thing for free.  And since my used Mac is no longer functioning I can’t update the app to put in some kind of ad, you get to use the app for free and free of advertising.   Is that cool!

 I just turn it free a minutes ago so please give sometime for the price change kick in.  You can pick it up here or search for ‘QEVP’ in the App Store.  Let me know if it still not free so I can ping the Apple guys about the price change. 

 Again, thank you for visiting VietCali.com

I just modified my VietCali’s WordPress template so everyone can now leave comments in Vietnamese. It takes me a little while to hack the WordPress’s theme files: comment.php, header.php, and the style.css to put in this support. To type in Vietnamese just click on the “VNKeys” line or checkbox so the box is checked and follow the key layout to type in Vietnamese characters. For example to type the word Việt you would key in Vi39t. To type normally just unchecked the box. This is the same layout as Vnkeys.com .
I’m learning to write WordPress plugin and will port this Vietnamese script into module so other WordPress users can easily install it. This is another challenge for me at this moment. In the meantime, if anyone want to do the same let me know and I can write a little instruction to hack yours manually.

Well I’m excited that my first QEVP iPhone app made it in the App Store.  It’s the adaptation of my popular Quick English Vietnamese Phrases.  It’s paid version for only $.99. I’m trying to recoup the money I spent on an used but expensive iMac and the hefty developer fee.  I must say if it wasn’t for the Google search engine and all the blogs and articles on how to write iPhone app out there, this app won’t be existed.  It’s a very rewarding learning experience for me.  I got to learn how to use the MAC, Unix commands, Xcode, CoCoa, Object-C and other ‘fun’ stuff.  It wasn’t easy but I think anyone can do it if you just put your mind to it.

I love to get input from other iPhone developer out there on my first app.  Or if you are also writing your first iPhone app and have some questions or need some pointers, just leave me a comment.

You can find QEVP app here or just enter “qevp” in the search box in iTunes or the iPhone’s App Store.

Rough Guide Vietnamese Phrasebook

My VietCali’s QEVP is probably the most simplest and free tool to help you to start speaking some Vietnamese. But I know you just can’t be online all the time to get to this page. If you are traveling to Vietnam and want to speak some local lingo then the next best thing to bring along is this Rough Guide Vietnamese Phrasebook.  The book is basically a traveler phrasebook and a mini English<->Vietnamese dictionary.  This book is less popular than some other phrasebook like Lonely Planet Vietnamese phrasebook but I think it’s much better in content and price. The publisher also provides audio files for some common conversation scenarios that you can download to yours MP3 player. The book also has tips and cultural tidbits that can enhance yours stay in Vietnam.  There is one page titled Coloquialism but actually it contains profanity or bad words.  I don’t think it’s approriate to use bad words when you travel to any country.  But I guess you might need to recgonize the the words just in case you know someone is swearing at you .   For less than seven bucks I think the  book is a best buy for the money.