
Show HN: To Listen to Any Page Prefix the URL with Playthis.link - soheil
I was tired of having to constantly scramble to find a podcast I want to listen to when going for a walk or just running on the treadmill. I, however, usually have an abundance of blog posts or articles around the web that I&#x27;d like to read. The problem is walking is not very conducive to reading. So I made this quick and dirty site that pretty much works anywhere, no app install, no copy paste, no nothing. Just add the domain playthis.link before any URL in your browser and hit enter. It will redirect to an audio file that automatically starts playing. You don&#x27;t need to click a 2nd button to play the file either. It just starts reading the text right away. You can do this on your phone and just pick it up and go for a hike.<p>Example:
Amazing blog post: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kalzumeus.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;24&#x2F;startup-seo&#x2F;
Audio version: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playthis.link&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kalzumeus.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;24&#x2F;startup-seo&#x2F;
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gitgud
Woah this works really well! I love these handy little web projects. I just
tried it with a random site on the front page:

\- [Original] [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guerrilla-public-
serv...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guerrilla-public-service/)

\- [Audio]
[https://playthis.link/https://99percentinvisible.org/episode...](https://playthis.link/https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guerrilla-
public-service/)

Reminds me of the old Youtube Downloader "ssyoutube". I'm pretty sure it
doesn't exist anymore, but all you had to do was prefix the Youtube URL with
ss and it would take you to the download page.

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terrycody
I happen to know that URL too, but later seems the owner stopped the project
and redirection domain is on sale. Of course there are many similar download
websites online, though not same and easy as the "little trick" original one.

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terrycody
Thanks for crafting this awesome tool, btw, what the tech stack behind this? I
guess it could become much better if you can integrate the Amazon polly(text
to speech engine), but that also will cost money for sure, for a free and
casual usage, current version is good enough!

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soheil
nginx + php to do the redirect

python to talk to Google Text Speech API

newspaper python lib for article extraction

Google Text Speech API

Google Cloud Platform for hosting on a single core Debian

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hdang31416
Thank you for building this. This could be a great tool for vision impaired
people.

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HarshaSaiKC
Did you create any GitHub repo based on this project? Btw, this is awesome!!

~~~
soheil
Just made a repo
[https://github.com/soheil/playthis.link](https://github.com/soheil/playthis.link)

