longzheng

I've published a desktop Windows app before with a freemium strategy. It was developed by a team of 3 after hours.

We didn't make a living out of it because we wanted to keep it as a hobby project but it paid out well enough to be considered a small business.

I don't have any advice on whether your app should be a desktop or web, it all depends on what is the app, who your users are, where are your users using it, what are your competitors, what is easier to develop, etc.

All I can say is that desktop apps can still be profitable in recent years, but I can't say it will be profitable for your project.

(Author) Yep there is definitely an instant download page. Strange it's not the #1 result on Google. The #1 result is actually the thing as I've annotated.

Normally I am usually very susceptible to motion sickness from FPS games, reading in cars/trains and theme park rides which can all easily make me feel like throwing up, but I've not had effects of any degree from using iOS 7 since the very first betas.

I'm using the Google Maps JavaScript API which now has the option to enable the new visual style. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...

Of course it has a daily rate limit of 25,000 free requests so if it goes down that would be why.

That's weird. It should definitely switch to the new article if you click the picture/play icon or the title. As a workaround, could you try "up/down" arrows? It's possible the HTML5 audio player in FF19 is buggy.

I think early on I investigated getting comments for posts but couldn't do it reliably or "say it" in a consistent way that made sense. May add it as a future feature.

Forgot protip: you can also use up/down arrows and spacebar for play/pause.

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

The feeling is mutual. :)

We applied but never got in :P

Yeah parsing is a tough challenge for something as diverse as Hacker News where the content could be anything between a thesis, a blog post, to a picture gallery.

Will investigate Shoutcast but there might not be enough content to have a continuous stream of content.

You'll be glad to know it already switches voices between entries and automatically plays the following entry :)

Thanks Peter. Already drafting email.

You're absolutely right about the TTS uncanny valley problem. We're betting on the fact that this is an industry effort. Currently we don't have the resources to really invest in the core TTS technology but always on the look-out for breakthrough/experimental tech.

I'm a co-founder of the startup that built SoundGecko. But more specifically I had a bigger part in building this "feature" for Hacker News since it's something I actually wanted to use personally.

Yeah. Came across Hacker News Radio before but the domain has since expired. Anyone know who was behind it?

Glad you're pleasantly surprised. You'll probably come across a few oddities sooner or later.

My startup has licensed some premium text-to-speech engines for a pretty penny so you get what you pay for!

Yeah I came across tldr.io the other day and really like the concept. Would love an introduction.

PS: the codename of the backend that powers all this is actually "tldr" since I can't be stuffed reading :)

Yeah unfortunately there isn't a lot of control over HTML5 audio AFAIK. There is a preload option but it's specific to the individual <audio> element.

Maybe as a hack I could change it so each article has a hidden <audio> somewhere that preloads it in the background, then when you actually play back it should use cache.

I don't know if that's wise over a cell connection though, downloading all the MP3s.

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 OEMs like HTC screw up the player skin), and uses the RSS feed to grab top articles. Obviously TTS isn’t perfect, but I find most articles except coding ones are comprehensible.

Let me know of any suggestions.

A friend of mine at MS said the same thing, the IT department blocked the IP.

My friend just found this gem in their privacy policy

“We gather personally identifiable and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, operating system, language setting and information regarding whether recommended advertiser software has been accepted, downloaded, installed and any reason for failure installing. None of his information is personally identifiable.”

It wasn't Ask or Conduit. It was actually a company I had trusted. That is before I received their email...

Sorry about the delay. Our email outbound provider dropped the ball and there's a big backlog of emails. Trying to get it sorted now.

(part of SoundGecko team)

If anyone has any questions or feedback, would love to hear it.