You've probably seen this already http://blog.chinesepod.com/2009/03/06/studyarcade-and-chinesepod-vocab-api/

It would be great to have my Skritter vocab list sync with the vocab lists from a customized selection of ChinesePod lessons. Is this something you guys are considering?

Indeed that would be a good idea !

Indeed, indeed.

Here's a question: how would you like to see such integration happen? How would such synchronization best work for you?

Here's one idea...

ChinesePod could appear as one of the lists on the Vocabulary page. Adding this list will require you to verify your ChinesePod account. Then, I can think of three methods for syncing vocab:

1. Skritter checks which lessons (intermediate, advanced etc) you subscribe to. When new lessons appear, their vocab is added to the ChinesePod list.

2. Skritter looks for all lessons in your archive, and adds all their vocab to the ChinesePod list. This could be done just once, then method 1 would apply in future.

3. Some facility for browsing the ChinesePod archive. Individual lessons could be selected and their vocab added.

Personally, I prefer method 1 (less effort on my part!). However, there would need to be some way to add older lessons, so having all three options would be ideal.

I will probably have to have a closer look into how the lists work...on the whole I like Lyons idea of adding the ones that one is subscribed to. My only concern is that I want to be able to throw out words quite easily. Often there are words which I don't care too much about (it's okay to have heard them and be able to recognize them in the proper context, but I think other words have higher priority when it comes to writing them).
Being able to easily throw out certain words is also important because several characters are repeated throughout the various lessons. Although I recognise that repetition is important, I do think that Skritter has its own system of letting me repeat certain characters....just sporadically adding will mess that up and probably in the long term result in lower effectivity (correct me if I'm wrong:)

I hope I explained my points more or less in an understable way:)

David

Good point from David about words being repeated throughout the lessons. The ideal thing would be for Skritter to pick up on duplicates and remove them from the list.

As for words that one doesn't really care about... I suppose these could be dealt with via the 'ignore' button. This might be a bit time-consuming, but so would any other method of handling individual words.

Thinking about things a bit more, another method of syncing vocab would be more flexible and useful:

4. Skritter allows you to sync lessons according to their level. For example, I might choose to sync only 'Upper Intermediate', so only new lessons from this level would have their vocab added to my list.

This would be useful (for me) as I like to listen to the 'Advanced' lessons, just to stretch myself. I'm not at that level yet and wouldn't want my vocab list to get overwhelmed with difficult words.

I have no idea how easy any of this is to program by the way. It's just my wishlist!