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Happy Year of the Tiger,

While some of our crew were off celebrating the Chinese New Years with family and friends, the rest of us were trapped in Beijing feverishly upgrading Popup Chinese. We admit this only so you'll feel guilty enough to at least skim this newsletter introducing our newest features. But if you need another excuse, we've included a link to tons of photos of our celebrity recording team at the end, and those are definitely worth your time. First things first though, here are some of the newest features on Popup Chinese:

*** Dialogue-Only Recordings ***

You mentioned you wanted these. So we added them. We're currently uploading these recordings lesson by lesson to our archives. Where they already exist you can find them on the downloads page or in your premium RSS or iTunes feed (you are using these feeds to avoid downloading everything manually, right?). Use these recordings to quickly review lesson materials. Or as a shortcut for the full podcast if you're pressed for time.

*** Community Forum ***

Our new platform has a community forum. Its latest posts are also listed on our front page: highlighted in yellow in the comment box. We already have a number of discussions covering everything from the Chinese economy to Beijing's most infamous right-hand turn (you have to see these photos of Xizhimen to believe it...). So drop by and check it out. And feel free to start your own post on whatever topic catches your fancy.

*** Your Personal Calendar ***

With this upgrade we wanted to give everyone an easy way to create custom courses, and so developed a calendar you can use to schedule lessons for yourself whenever you want. To get started, login to Popup Chinese and come here:

http://popupchinese.com/account/schedule

Click on any level and your browser will load a list of lessons in the right-hand column. Now just drag-and-drop lessons to your calendar. You can also drag lessons off the calendar to remove them from your schedule. Once a lesson is scheduled, it will appear on your front page and in your RSS and iTunes feed exactly when requested. And because our scheduler will only show you lessons you haven't already studied, it is an easy way to discover content from our archives that you may have missed.

*** New and Difficult Tests ***

The last new feature we want to highlight is our new tests. We've added support for new exercise formats with this upgrade, including support for HSK reading passages and type-in-the-blank questions. If you haven't tried the HSK reading passage tests yet, we think you'll be surprised at how difficult they are. Our latest Beginner HSK test is a good reminder that the HSK is not an easy test. Time spent preparing in advance will pay off. [http://popupchinese.com/lessons/hsk-beginner/reading-passage-exercise-1]

We have a lot more features, but in the spirit of rewarding those of you who've made it this far, we want to move on to share news of our Facebook group. We've finally uploaded a ton of team photos to our fan page on Facebook. You can check them out by visiting http://facebook.com/group.php?gid=214639983936. If you can't tell the difference between Apple and Echo or Tiansen and Andy by sight, you should drop by and see who we are.

As always, before we go we'd like to extend a special thanks to all of our subscribers for making Popup Chinese possible. We are entirely supported with user subscriptions, and you guys are the ones who make it possible to keep the lights on and the mp3s streaming. So thank you for your support. And if you haven't signed up yet [insert requisite sales pitch encouraging you to do so by visiting http://popupchinese.com/account]. We hope to see you in Beijing in the coming year!

Happy Year of the Tiger,

The Popup Team

(Echo, David, Brendan, Apple, Gail, Nicole, and everyone else here in the Orient....)