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Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

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Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#71

Post by seanp2k »

omouse wrote: post #65
yellowbkpk wrote: post #39

When I clicked on a "Death Cab For Cutie" video in the list I was shown a 50-minute academic video about search engine quality. Slightly ironic.

...that's the correct result seeing as Death Cab For Cutie is an indie/hipster band ;p

.... they (are|have) signed with Warner and Atlantic. Doesn't get much more mainstream than that.

REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_cab_for_cutie

Regarding the _USEFULNESS_ of this: low. Regarding the entertainment factor: pretty high. I could use a m3u-> txt parser to dump a huge load of youtube videos and make a "music video playlist" -- kind of cool.

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#72

Post by hafifuyku »

encoderer wrote: post #37
jh3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty shitty reason not to share this with people.

And the bad pun award goes to jh3! Seriously, though, I'm not one to be easily offended -- and I think fake umbrage in our society has been taken to a ridiculous level (especially in politics). But the reason I like good design is because when something is well designed it gives me a sense of calm and peace. Having "I eat text and shit out whatever" is just very bad design to me. And it's offensive enough that why wo…

Changed the tag line. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#73

Post by AretNCarlsen »

mgkimsal wrote: post #7

i misunderstood it at first. i thought you meant it would parse out a text file looking for meaning/relevancy and give you videos based on the text. It's nice what you've done, just wasn't my first reaction to the Show HN text.

That is a good idea! Like Google advertising, where the ads are selected based on the textual context -- words in your search string or email or website -- but instead of ads as the output, short video clips. For long text blocks, run the videos alongside a scrolling reader such that the video and text stay synchronized. The word "respect" prompts an Aretha Franklin clip, maybe. Appeal to the [people who think they are] multitaskers! You'll have nerd users searching for which Shakespearean passages lead to the most amusing clip playlist!

If the video bandwidth is all Youtube's, and the UI is Javascript, your ongoing cost is mostly the server time to run the text against your corpus and spit out a playlist.

I love when startup ideas spring from a misinterpretation of how someone else summarizes their product.

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#74

Post by random42 »

hafifuyku wrote: post #45
ssdsa wrote: post #30

I wonder why everyone seems to get what this does from reading the description. When I read "eat and shit", I assume that the "food" is "transformed" into ... youtube videos. So I thought this would generate new videos and upload them to youtube automatically, maybe showing the txt files as a huge StarWars scroller, or something.

Sorry. that's me trying to sound cool in 80 characters (minus "Show HN:")

No need to. We prefer quality over wordiness.

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#77

Post by jaysonelliot »

miguelpais wrote: post #70

WOW! I had exactly this idea at a Hackaton festival called Codebits in Portugal in November last year and presented it[1] to the audience but didn't receive that much excitement from them about my implementation done in 12 hours using JS and Rails3. Now I see I should have stick to it. Deep inside me I knew if the service would be useful to me, it would be to some other folks, but I was a bit disappointed and didn't…

Never feel like "they got there first" - when someone does a similar idea to your own, consider it validation that you had a good idea!

If it's something you really love, and feel your implementation works in a way you prefer to the other(s), just keep building it. There's room for more than one version of everything. What if the iPhone was the only smartphone, or Ivory was the only soap?

If it's not too near and dear to your heart, and you like what the other guy has done, just go ahead and use their version and have fun with it, and move on to your next project idea, with the confidence of knowing that your ideas are good, and you should keep believing in them and making more.

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#78

Post by patrickk »

miguelpais wrote: post #70

WOW! I had exactly this idea at a Hackaton festival called Codebits in Portugal in November last year and presented it[1] to the audience but didn't receive that much excitement from them about my implementation done in 12 hours using JS and Rails3. Now I see I should have stick to it. Deep inside me I knew if the service would be useful to me, it would be to some other folks, but I was a bit disappointed and didn't…

How about iterating on your idea?

Here's an idea of mine for free (I came up with this as I was reading your comment, so feel free to critique it):

Instead of uploading a text file, a user can type in an artist and song title on their smartphone. This gets added to a playlist that's displaying on a large monitor/TV/projector screen. This could pick songs from YouTube/iTunes/Winamp etc.

Uses:

- Nightclubs. People can offer track selections for the DJ. These are displayed on the wall. Or maybe there is no DJ at all. Users can vote on their track choice that are coming up next on the screen, as well as offering their own track pick - like HN voting/article submissions. (This would be the geekiest nightclub of all time.)

- House parties. As above.

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#79

Post by jannes »

Do you think this would also work with Grooveshark? The problem with YouTube is that most music videos are geo-blocked outside the US, or at least for my country they are. (So are Pandora, Spotify, etc.) Furthermore I believe that Grooveshark's song library is bigger anyway, so it would be an improvement for everyone.

Grooveshark offers widgets, so in theory it could work. http://widgets.grooveshark.com/make

Re: Show HN: roll.io eats txt files and shits youtube videos. Useful?

#80

Post by miguelpais »

patrickk wrote: post #78
miguelpais wrote: post #70

WOW! I had exactly this idea at a Hackaton festival called Codebits in Portugal in November last year and presented it[1] to the audience but didn't receive that much excitement from them about my implementation done in 12 hours using JS and Rails3. Now I see I should have stick to it. Deep inside me I knew if the service would be useful to me, it would be to some other folks, but I was a bit disappointed and didn't…

How about iterating on your idea? Here's an idea of mine for free (I came up with this as I was reading your comment, so feel free to critique it): Instead of uploading a text file, a user can type in an artist and song title on their smartphone. This gets added to a playlist that's displaying on a large monitor/TV/projector screen. This could pick songs from YouTube/iTunes/Winamp etc. Uses: - Nightclubs. People can…

Once I thought of something like that too, but in the environment of a park with speakers and wifi (yeah, far fetched, I know). People could go to a website available on the wireless network with their smartphones and pick a track to play (from a library such as Spotify). Then everybody on the park would be able to up or down the track using their smartphones. If the track had enough up votes, that person would be able to pick another track to play.

It would be the interactive/social/sound park. :P

But since I don't know that many parks with speakers, on clubs it would probably work better. They could do it as an experiment on a tent of some festival like they did with the concept of the silent disco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_disco).

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