The cataloging system is, as with much software these days, drawn directly from iTunes, which is no bad thing. There's a library of "All your words" as well as drag-and-drop groups (just like playlists) and "Smart groups" that automatically include cards based on an impressively vast selection of user-definable parameters (just like smart playlists). A familiar built-in search field produces results from your search terms in real time. You'll be right at home if you've ever used iTunes, but even if you haven't, you'll find the system easy to learn and convenient.
In experimenting with Keep Your Word for a week or so, I've found only a couple of things I would class as problems. The user can choose how many cards from a list to include in card viewing or quizzes, but there's not a ready option to use all the words in a list. This effect can be achieved by entering any suitably large number, but that seems somewhat inelegant. Also, the smooth frame rate of the flash card viewing becomes noticeably slower and halting when running in quiz format.
Not only are these very minor complaints, but in this same week, Bambooapps issued two updates. With such attentive support, it's reasonable to expect that KYW's few rough edges won't stay rough for long. Speaking of support, they've also set up a separate Web site called Wordsparade where users can share dictionaries they create. Selection is limited as of this writing, but as the user base grows, this could become a useful resource.
The only real sticking point is the price. You can try Keep Your Word as a fully functional demo for 30 days before registering it for $24.95. If I were a starving student, a price tag like that might drive me to the competition (iFlash, for example, is a similarly feature-rich though much less streamlined app, and costs $10 less), or even have me abandon software altogether in favor of good old (cheap) index cards.
That being said, this title does everything one could want a flash card application to do, and it's hard to imagine another app that does it better. If it's worth going digital with your learning tools at all, then it's worth the cost to get the right one, and Keep Your Word might well be the right one for you.
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