VietCali.com

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.

If you ever want to type in Vietnamese and the system you’re using doesn’t has Vietnamese keyboard suppport, try this online Vietnamese keyboard. To use it, type your text then copy and paste it over whatever application you’re working on. The Javascript just bascially filter some assigned keys and convert them to Vietnamese characters using Unicode. It’s a pure and simple tool to get Vietnamese characters into any application. All thanks to the popularity of UTF-8 encoding and Unicode. I tested the Javascript on IE, Netscape, and Firefox browsers and it works fine.
Try out the VietCali’s Online Vietnamese Keyboard.
Nếu các bạn muốn đánh tiếng Việt mà computer của bạn đang sài không có cài phần mềm cho bộ gỏ tiếng Việt, bạn có thể dùng bộ gỏ online của VietCali viết bằng JavaScript. Xin mời các bạn dùng thử.

Just want to revise this post to tell you all that the Quick English Vietnamese Phrases is now posted at VietCali.com. With this version there will be no more waiting for the sound to download. Just click on the Vietnamese words and hear the sounds instantly.