The NanoGong Applet

An Example Showing NanoGong
at Actual Size (180 x 40)

NanoGong is an applet that can be used by someone to record, playback and save their voice, in a web page. When the recording is played back the user can speed up or slow down the sound without changing it. After the sound is saved in a file, the file can be put on the Internet and then played back using the applet.

The NanoGong is a 'simple' applet which does not require any complicated setup procedure. You only need a simple webpage in order to use it.

Proceed to try out the NanoGong applet »

Features of the NanoGong applet:

Very small in size (around 200KB) and display size (180 x 40 pixels)
The applet therefore has a short loading time
Can save the recorded voice, in different playback speed, to a file on the user's hard disk
Can send the recorded voice to a Web server
Can playback any sound file created using the applet from a website

You can put a NanoGong applet anywhere on a webpage. The following is a summary of the applet GUI components:

	Use the record and stop buttons to easily make a voice recording feature to your web page.
	Use the pause button to temporarily stop recording your voice at any time.
	Use the play button and speed control to play back the voice recording and change the speed during playback.
	Use the pause button to temporarily stop playing back the current recording.
	Use the save button to save the voice recording to the hard disk.
	Click on the timeline to play back the recording at any time location.
	Move the mouse over the timeline to display the current time and duration of the sound file (this feature is turned off by default More Details »).
	Upload the sound recording to a server and see the progress of the transmission.

Here are some examples of ways in which NanoGong can be used.

Let students practice recording and listening to their voice
Let students record themselves, save a copy, and then upload the recording (perhaps as an attachment) to any learning system such as Moodle, or as an attachment to an email
Let students record themselves and automatically send the recording to a website which could be a learning system or the course website
Let students play back lots of recordings in a web page, as examples of pronunciation (see the end of this page for example)

The sound file created by NanoGong can be saved in a particular type of WAV file and played in any of the common audio player programs such as Windows Media Player and Audacity.

You need to have the Java run-time environment installed for the NanoGong applet to work. Most computers already have this installed. You can use this link to test whether your machine has it. If it doesn't, you can get the latest Java from here and install it, and then run the NanoGong applet.

How Does It Compare to Other Gong Applets?

It may be helpful to compare NanoGong with other applets that we have made in the Gong project.

The regular Gong applet contains the full functionalities of the Gong system such as hierarchical board structure, real-time text/voice chat and selective word/phrase playback. Another Gong applet, MiniGong, is a 'mini' version of the regular Gong applet in terms of display size but still keeps the majority of functionalities of the regular Gong applet.

The NanoGong applet contains a smaller set of functionality compared to the regular Gong applet or the MiniGong applet. Both the regular Gong and MiniGong applets require a Gong server to be set up, as described here. This may be outside the capability of some people, which is why we made NanoGong. The NanoGong applet was created to record and playback sound files without the need for any Gong server. Also, NanoGong has been released as an open source project, but the others currently have not, although they are completely free to use for non-profit purpose.

The size of the NanoGong applet is small compared to other Gong applets:

Type of Gong	Size of Applet	Display Size	Requires Gong Server?
The NanoGong Applet	~200KB	Very Small (180 x 40 pixels)	No
The MiniGong Applet	~1.5MB	Small (480 x 115 pixels)	Yes
The Regular Gong Applet	~1.5MB	Large (800 x 600 pixels)	Yes

Using the applet is relatively quicker than the other applets because downloading the applet is faster and it uses less memory. The display size of the applet is also very small (if it is being shown at all) at 180 pixels width and 40 pixels height.

More information about the NanoGong applet can also be found in the FAQ page. We have also tested the use of the NanoGong applet version 4.1 in different machines. The result of the tests can be found here.