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Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

soundgecko.com

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Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#61

Post by alaskamiller »

moioci wrote: post #55
alaskamiller wrote: post #12

Pretty cool in itself. Good demo of SoundGecko too. I've been doing something similar on my iPhone for awhile: 1. Send articles to Pocket 2. Highlight article 3. Two-finger tap to bring up context menu then tap Speak With TTS voice speed set to 1.6x and British Female and it's a good way to wake up in the morning and absorb in wikipedia entries or news.

I agree, please clarify, because this sounds extremely useful. Within the Pocket app, if I tap on an article's title, it doesn't highlight, it opens. Then two-finger tap does nothing. Long tap in a paragraph highlights one word with the option to speak that word.

Now I feel bad since I used to write the support docs at Apple and I messed up here.

1. Go to Settings then Accessibility. Check that Speak Selection is On.

You can also choose Dialects and set speaking rate or if you want words highlighted as they're speaking.

2. In Pocket app select a body of text by tapping and holding on a text. Selector bars will appear, drag them to the start and the end of an article.

You can do this for anything now, websites, emails, etc. I set my voice to be South African English (since it oddly sounds natural to me) and set my speed at about a little to the left of middle.

Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#62

Post by yarone »

shaunxcode wrote: post #60

I wonder how difficult/viable it would be to crowd source actual people reading the articles? I am sure there must be radio journalist students who wouldn't mind reading pieces for feedback from listeners (on their reading?).

Some thoughts on this exact idea from a couple of years ago: http://www.yarone.com/2011/03/recording-top-web-content-plai...

Still haven't seen. Still would love to it for my commutes.

Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#63

Post by bryans »

shaunxcode wrote: post #60

I wonder how difficult/viable it would be to crowd source actual people reading the articles? I am sure there must be radio journalist students who wouldn't mind reading pieces for feedback from listeners (on their reading?).

That's pretty much what Umano is doing. I'm not sure how they decide which articles get read though.

http://umanoapp.com/

Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#64

Post by ippisl »

longzheng wrote: post #31
jobigoud wrote: post #28

Would be great to be able to variate the audio speed.

We investigated this. Unfortunately HTML5 audio (especially mobile devices) doesn't offer a lot of capability in that regards.

I think it's possible to change the speed at the server, after you generate the file/s[1].

[1]http://superuser.com/questions/519649/tool-to-bulk-speed-up-...

Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#65

Post by sunwooz »

If you click on, "What is Soundgecko", there's a forever looping background movie that looks really cool. It looks like it's downloading 2.8mb of the movie every time the previous 2.8mb finishes downloading, how does this work? Is it something like Node.js file streaming? [Link here](http://soundgecko.com/)

Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#68

Post by fudged71 »

longzheng wrote: post #2

I find I don't have enough time to read all the stuff on Hacker News, but I spend heaps of time on the train where I’m usually listening to music. Since I work at a startup doing some stuff with text-to-speech, I hacked together this text-to-speech "radio station" so I can listen to Hacker News on my mobile instead of music. It uses native HTML5 audio that worked fine with iOS and Android in my testing (though some O…

Brilliant work. Great to see that you designed it to work on phones. I look forward to the TLDR feature ;)

Re: Show HN: Built a Hacker News radio web app I can listen to

#69

Post by hnriot »

longzheng wrote: post #2

I find I don't have enough time to read all the stuff on Hacker News, but I spend heaps of time on the train where I’m usually listening to music. Since I work at a startup doing some stuff with text-to-speech, I hacked together this text-to-speech "radio station" so I can listen to Hacker News on my mobile instead of music. It uses native HTML5 audio that worked fine with iOS and Android in my testing (though some O…

Audio is the worse way to consume content, why not just use Evernote or whatever and read what you've missed? Then you can continue to listen to music and catch up with what you've missed while you're on the train.
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