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Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

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Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#11

Post by freshhawk »

I have this same thing as an app on my phone (that I wrote myself and is not polished but who cares, it works).

I think the idea is awesome, and it does work well to hear yourself when in that just-5-more-minutes-mom half awake state of mind.

Why a service rather than an alarm app? That strikes me as pushing the user into a less effective/usable solution to the problem that gives other parties access to personal information in order to ... I'm not even sure why, but I can't think of any reason the customer would prefer this.

Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#12

Post by IbJacked »

Nice. I did something like this (tho MUCH more limited!) back in the 80s. I created a little Turbo Pascal program that let you enter the wake-up time, and at that time it would make my home phone ring, which was guaranteed to always wake me up.

It used the AT commands of the modem to do a little onhook/offhook toggling and then dialing my own number and then going back onhook. The local phone company would interpret the sequence as a ring-test request and call my number.

It was fun to write and I used it for years.

Good luck!

Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#14

Post by sprobertson »

Great idea! My only complaint - I copied your URL without the "www." and thought the site was broken, but apparently it's just a subdomain issue. Other than that I like the clean design and usability. Also I imagine you did the hours until time instead of time itself because of tricky time zone issues, but if you had both options it'd be even easier to use. Good luck.

Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#16

Post by ether »

freshhawk wrote: post #11

I have this same thing as an app on my phone (that I wrote myself and is not polished but who cares, it works). I think the idea is awesome, and it does work well to hear yourself when in that just-5-more-minutes-mom half awake state of mind. Why a service rather than an alarm app? That strikes me as pushing the user into a less effective/usable solution to the problem that gives other parties access to personal info…

How does your app do text-to-speech, if you don't mind me asking?

The reason for building this as a service is because I thought there's more to this than just a single player alarm system if enough people want to use this. I just wanted to test it out and see enough people will like this. Hope this makes sense? :)

Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#17

Post by ether »

sprobertson wrote: post #14

Great idea! My only complaint - I copied your URL without the "www." and thought the site was broken, but apparently it's just a subdomain issue. Other than that I like the clean design and usability. Also I imagine you did the hours until time instead of time itself because of tricky time zone issues, but if you had both options it'd be even easier to use. Good luck.

Yeah I kind of struggled with time zone thing for about an hour and decided not to bother with it, just to build the minimal version. But I think for the sake of usability, I should add it in the future.

Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#18

Post by TheKidCoder »

ether wrote: post #16
freshhawk wrote: post #11

I have this same thing as an app on my phone (that I wrote myself and is not polished but who cares, it works). I think the idea is awesome, and it does work well to hear yourself when in that just-5-more-minutes-mom half awake state of mind. Why a service rather than an alarm app? That strikes me as pushing the user into a less effective/usable solution to the problem that gives other parties access to personal info…

How does your app do text-to-speech, if you don't mind me asking? The reason for building this as a service is because I thought there's more to this than just a single player alarm system if enough people want to use this. I just wanted to test it out and see enough people will like this. Hope this makes sense? :)

More than likely using the Twilio Text-To-Speech API: http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/twiml/say

Re: Show HN: WakeMyself. Get a wakeup call from your yesterday's self.

#20

Post by ether »

joshmlewis wrote: post #13

I've tried services likes this before but it's too easy to know what it is and ignore it and then fall back asleep. Maybe I'm just more stubborn than everyone else.

Have you ever tried something that tells you what to do? I've tried things that wakes me up with music or all kinds of things, but the key here I think is the message you can write to yourself. If you could tell yourself all the things you need to do for the day, that would be a really good way to start the day. Because I find that even when I do wake up most of the times I just do nothing productive. I think it's great to hear a todo list when waking up.
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