Mandarin

TV:

• Chinese TV Streams. 350Kbps at best. Still looking for a better option (maybe IntelSat1R, if I can be bothered to buy the gear).

Radio:

• BBC RTSP stream (for some reason, the BBC persists in using the accursed RealPlayer, but VideoLAN works OK).

Reading:

• JSON-ZH a JSON service to convert Hanzi to Pinyin
• Zhongwen - very good, although a bit on the complex side to surf in.
• Pinyin.info
• The Tao by Lao-tse - brilliant way to go through the text.
• Chinese Text Sampler - Chinese texts for reading practice.
• MiddleProxy, a Python-based proxy that links Chinese characters to their common definitions (more).

Writing:

• Grids of various descriptions, including this one
• Google Pinyin - their own IME, which seems to be slightly better than the Microsoft default.

Places:

• Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau - Curso de Língua e Cultura Chinesa

Vocabulary:

• MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary
• Chinese-English Dictionary - will take Pinyin input as well.
• BBC Languages - basic greetings. Fairly easy for Portuguese speakers (we actually understand vowels and tonal variations).
• HESS Mandarin Chinese Survival Guide - finally, a decent podcast to listen to.

Dialogue

• Pinyin Practice - tonal coach.
• Exercises for Lessons - for an accompanying textbook. Pretty good even on their own.
• Mandarin Chinese Lessons with Serge Melnyk - situational dialogues.

My personal favorite is -

Lesson Thirty-Nine. Computers and Internet.

Vocabulary and expressions in Mandarin Chinese related to using a computer and Internet. Working with files and folders, chatting in Chinese with your buddies on MSN. Your computer has crashed! Tell your Chinese online friend that you need to restart your computer and that you will be back online in a moment.

Speech Synthesis

According to Wikipedia, Leopard is supposed to include a Chinese speech engine.

Mac Input Methods and info:

• Chinese Mac
• OpenVanilla - has a Pinyin input method for Simplified Chinese that works somewhat better for me than Apple's default.

So far, all I have is this page related to Chinese language support on Series 60 devices.

Notes on Mac Input Methods:

Since the vast majority of Asian input methods seem to work best with a US keyboard, it is a right pain to use them on a Portuguese keyboard. However, I've learned a few things that help:

• The U.S. Extended keyboard layout lets you type Pinyin diacritical marks - go to International on System Preferences and enable it (it's the one that says Unicode, in case you have any doubts). Here's the basics (you can check these in Keyboard Viewer):
  • Alt+a for first tone
  • Alt+e for second tone
  • Alt+v for third tone
  • Alt+` (or Alt+< in a Portuguese keyboard) for fourth tone.
  • Alt+u for diaresis (umlaut mark)
• Forget about Spotlight's key bindings. You really want to use Cmd+Space to switch input methods, it's the only sane way to do it without reaching for the mouse every 30 seconds.
• Apple's Pinyin input method only works for Traditional Chinese, so you're likely to either want to try to figure out the other (PRC) input methods (ITABC sort of works for me, but I find it annoying to hit space for every character) or install OpenVanilla.