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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.

#31

Post by ether »

marquis wrote: post #27

This is brilliant. I would seriously pay for this service if it could use translation (edit: transcription) to keep my dreams sorted - I never remember dreaming after a few moments after waking up and this would fascinating for me. An important request: make entries deletable, I just tried a test and the sound quality wasn't sufficient (mobile issues).

Thank you. Yeah the reason that I've made this available for free currently is because I thought if I started out charging I would be fixed with that business model, and I don't even yet know what this can be used for other than my own cases. So I just decided to release it as beta and learn from people. Please do try out and let me know if you have any feedback :)

And about translation, did you mean transcription? or translation as in language translation?

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

#32

Post by egallardo »

Really cool. To me though they should be apps and 2 separate ones at that, even if the functionality can be used in both ways. If you were to just market one app as a 'dream catcher' that is synced to an alarm that allows people to record their dreams, I think that would clarify your value proposition. Separate from that is the app that wakes you up with a previous recording you set.

They offer different things even if they both occur when someone is waking up..

Either way, well done!

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

#33

Post by smcguinness »

jhare wrote: post #29
forgingahead wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: 1, you can set it in the database as a UTC record and then have it visually change in the HTML (using javascript) with several options. Eg: If I select 7am on 6/15 from your dropdown list, you render some inline HTML that shows some/all of the following: "7am EST" "4am PST" "6am CST" etc Timezones are definitely tricky, but if you search StackOverflow or other sites there might be some good recommended approaches…

I've worked in a lot of time/timezone related apps and Moment (Javascript) has treated me the best so far. http://momentjs.com/

http://www.datejs.com/ has been my goto js lib for handling frontend date/time.

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

#34

Post by freshhawk »

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? :)

The phone app only replays a recorded message from yourself. I have one that runs on a laptop that does text to speech (it plays my music getting gradually louder with the time spoken every minute along with any other messages you want read out (either every minute or at specific times)).

I didn't have much experience with text to speech before this so I just used the open source stuff I knew about (espeak and the mbrola voices). I want to find a good way to do this in the app because I like the functionality so much that I use the laptop app more than the phone app. I'm talking about android so there are a few options I'll look at when I get back to this project.

I can see doing it as a service if you plan to add all sorts of magic on the back end (text to speech, read news/headlines/weather to you). All stuff you could do in an app but when you have that many features you can charge a monthly fee instead of a one time app sale and you can probably monetize the user data as well somehow. So yes, it does make sense.

For some reason this kind of thing trips my privacy alarm, I would be uncomfortable sharing the messages with a third party (even if the most personal message would be something like "get your lazy ass up on time today, you haven't gone for a run in three days"). On reflection this is probably just me and wouldn't apply to most people, I have a strong bias against storing private data or messages in the cloud because I work in those industries and am aware of how common it is to trawl the user data for funny stuff to share with coworkers.

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

#35

Post by marquis »

ether wrote: post #31
marquis wrote: post #27

This is brilliant. I would seriously pay for this service if it could use translation (edit: transcription) to keep my dreams sorted - I never remember dreaming after a few moments after waking up and this would fascinating for me. An important request: make entries deletable, I just tried a test and the sound quality wasn't sufficient (mobile issues).

Thank you. Yeah the reason that I've made this available for free currently is because I thought if I started out charging I would be fixed with that business model, and I don't even yet know what this can be used for other than my own cases. So I just decided to release it as beta and learn from people. Please do try out and let me know if you have any feedback :) And about translation, did you mean transcription? o…

Right, transcription. I think Twilio has speech-to-text?

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

#36

Post by HyprMusic »

Would be cool if you could record tomorrow's message by responding to the current wakeup call - I find something like talking involves waking up more than just listening.

Although judging by my mood in the mornings, my message would be along the lines of "Don't wake up, don't do it. It's too late for me now, go back to sleep whilst you still can!"

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

#37

Post by genwin »

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.

I'm curious about that. Does every major website typically have two access points, one with "www." and one without, where one is redirected to the other?

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

#38

Post by jefflinwood »

ether wrote: post #8
forgingahead wrote: post #4

Very cool, congrats on shipping! Are you using Twilio to power the calls? Some quick feedback: 1. I'd recommend having a clock selector for the "wake up time" -- right now it's not clear whether I'm setting an alarm for minutes from now, or for a specific time in the future, and what time zone it will be in. 2. Signing up initially is a friction point -- you might want to just let people set an alarm with a phone num…

Awesome! Thanks for the feedback! Yes I used Twilio API. I went to a hackathon last weekend and built this using Twilio API, and it was cool so I decided to refine it some more and release it. 1. Yeah currently it's alarm for hours and minutes "from now" rather than actual time, because you know, time zone conversion thing is really annoying and takes up too much time. But you're right I gotta make that more clear. 2…

Was it the XHack hackathon?

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

#39

Post by dabent »

Apparently I'm already using this for something slightly different than the intended purpose and loving it.

This may be an excellent tool for me to send myself reminders for tasks I'm doing later in the day. I often write a task list in one moment, then forget it in the midst of the day's work. It's the use of the "Call yourself after" section being a timer, rather than a clock that makes that easy to think about.

I've currently got it set to remind me to leave work on time for an evening appointment.

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

#40

Post by mooreds »

genwin wrote: post #37
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.

I'm curious about that. Does every major website typically have two access points, one with "www." and one without, where one is redirected to the other?

Yes, I believe this is pretty much standard practice. Keeps Google from getting confused by duplicate content and sends all the juice from links to one url rather than two.
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