We are courious about your opinion

We would like to know what you think about the presentations of OnlineAikido.com. In case you haven't seen the above mentioned presentation videos, you can try our Instructional videos section.




In case you prefer sharing your opinion here in a comment, you are most welcome to do so.

Your feedback is very precious for us, we will do our best to improve our site accordingly.

Test team full

Thank you all who registered into the Test Pilot team.

Now the registration is closed until we finish the test period. In the next two weeks, we will probably post new posts in this blog every 2-3 days, and send newsletters with similar frequency.
As several mailbox providers do automatic spam filtering, it might occur that our emails end up in your spam folder. So please also check this folder in case you don't hear from us in the next weeks.
The emails we are going to send will be about fresh additional contents and information.

Dear Test Pilots,
thanks in advance the active participation. We'll be posting and emailing the newest updates, information and questions soon.

OnlineAikido.com latest updates

A couple of things we changed, added, updated.

We created a new page (Analyse your technique), in which we will analyse videos found on the Web. We will try to show possible mistakes in an objective manner and try to explain why something works or why doesn't, and if it doesn't how the technique could be improved. We would also like to start discussions about these videos and what you think about them, or about our comments.

We would also like to use the above mentioned new page to analyse videos of our own, or videos submitted by you. We will do our best to describe where we find some problems with the technique and how these problems can be solved.

You might think that this page could go into criticising anyone and everyone. Our aim is obviously not this but to provide constructive criticism from which everyone can learn. To make sure this happens, the comments will be moderated.

Here's the first two videos to watch and analyse. You can also see the comments if you click on the links below the videos.

How NOT to do it - part 1

How NOT to do it - part 2

Difficulties of testing

Due to difficulties with our system, we are posting our first newsletter to this blog as well. Also, the deadline mentioned in the emails will be extented to Sunday, 20th April 2008. The real and interactive testing will start on Monday (21st of April 2008).

Thanks for your understanding.


The newsletter:

Dear User,

First of all, thank you for visiting our website. In case you haven’t done so, you can use the link in the registration confirmation email to visit the site. After logging in, you will have access to the instructional material (videos) for which you can submit your comments or ask questions regarding these videos.

The reason for sending this email is to draw your attention to the new learning material (How to learn mae ukemi?) we mentioned in our public blog. You can access this video directly if you log in to our site, but we would like to ask for a small favour before you do this. As the learning material is now more complex than in the first two presentations, we would like to ask you to do the following.

If you find our videos useful and you would like to share the experience, there is a new menu option you can see when you log in. This is to assist you to promote our site to your friends, colleagues, etc.

To access the above mentioned video, we would like to ask you to send an invitation to (at least) one of your friends. Regardless whether they register or not you will gain access to this third video. We will send you an email to let you know when your account is updated to access the mae ukemi presentation.

There is still a couple of places left in the test team, so your friends will also get something useful from you if they are invited in time.

To make this invitation process more interesting, we will only grant access to the video to those who invited a friend within a short period of time from receiving this email. After this, we will also close the period of Test Pilot recruitment. The deadline for sending out your invitations is April 16.

On April 17, we are going to start the real testing phase in which we will need your active participation. Those who don’t invite any friends will still remain test team members, however, they will lose the free access to the mentioned bonus video.

So once again, if you would like to watch our newest video for free (How to learn mae ukemi?) don’t hesitate to invite at least one of your friends to OnlineAikido.com.

Until next time, don’t forget to meditate and attend your local aikido training classes.

Best wishes,

Connor and Zolley

OnlineAikido.com

And something to watch again:

More modifications

We've changed the look and contents of the instructional video page. Now you can also read the outline (table of contents) for the videos.

One video will be added about mae ukemi, the forward roll of aikido soon. It's a 12 minute presentation with several ukemi exercises. A bit of explanation plus a video about them. If you are a Test Pilot, you will have access to it within two days. If not, it's still not late to join.

But until that there is something to watch:

Recent changes

We are working on the site 24/7 :).

We added an 'About us' tab to the site, you can access it through the top menu. At the moment, it's a couple of sentences and a bunch of videos (I think they are worth watching). Text to be added very soon.

The forward roll (mae ukemi) video is almost ready and the backward roll (ushiro ukemi) presentation is also close to finish. We will need your advice and comments if the videos are good, great or excellent :). What we'd appreciate even more, however, is if you could critique them and could give some feedback on how they can be improved.

Several videos have been uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing sites, please watch them and comment here on at the main site.



There are some other changes as well but please find them yourself and comment if you feel like :).

There are still a couple of places left in the Test Pilot team.

First updates to the site underway

We are constantly working on the site which may cause that some of the contents (menus, videos, etc.) will temporarily be unavailable, apologies for this. We are working on creating a more stable system and structure so please be patient if couple of things don't work at this early stage. We are trying to sort out problems as quickly as we can.
Meanwhile, if you have any comments, question or suggestions, please send us an email or a comment in OnlineAikido.com.