

Ask HN: Review my app: tweetrad.io - wsbail29
http://tweetrad.io/hackernews

======
wsbail29
Tweetrad.io is a fun little side project that converts twitter feeds into
audio using text to speech.

We use a distributed network of converter bots to handle the work queue. Jobs
are placed on the queue via api calls from the javascript client that
interacts with twitter's search api directly in order to avoid rate limiting
of a centralized search server. Our app server is a lightweight Sinatra
service that handles job queueing. We stream the audio directly from our nginx
web server as they become available via the conversion process.

We are trying to decide if this app has a real use case or if it's just a fun
thing. One of the ideas we are thinking about is an iphone app for keeping up
with your tweet stream on the go. We would love to hear your feedback.

~~~
tlrobinson
An iPhone app would be great. Especially if it could read tweets from your
followers between songs, though I'm not sure if Apple gives you enough control
over the iPod to do that.

~~~
Zev
That would be a fun idea. I'd probably buy it right away and start using it
more then Tweetie (leave it open in the background while doing other work and
just passively hear tweets).

Incase anyone does want to do this, Apple doesn't directly tell you when a
song is starting/stopping, but they do tell you how long the song is (with
MPMediaItem and the key MPMediaItemPropertyPlaybackDuration) and how far into
the song you are (with MPMusicPlayerController).

------
dbr
"BreakingNews is excited to tell everyone that At least 17 people killed, 45
others injured after a passenger train collides with a freight train near
Pakistan's Karachi."

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dkokelley
Bugs/quirks:

* tried to check out the about section of your site, but the feed kept moving the footer down. Maybe lock the footer in place or put that info to the side of the feed.

* A few repeated/stuttered sections. I heard this a few times during reads, but there didn't seem to be any specific thing that caused it.

* Speech cuts off after :

Feature requests:

* Log in with twitter account. Then I can hear my friend updates.

* Customization options> voicing, announcements (says, wants it to be known, is excited... Sometimes they can get annoying)

* Pause button

* Literal reads (instead of says to @xxx, it could say ... says 'ar tee at xxxx, blah blah blah'

All in all I really like this site. It's beautifully done and is actually
quite entertaining.

~~~
wsbail29
Thanks for the great feedback. I'm Looking into the bugs.

As for the feature requests, logging in to view your personal feed and the
pause button are on our roadmap and should be added soon.

You make a good point about the lead-ins. We initially had a bunch of silly
lead-ins, but we've been getting consistent feedback that we should just keep
it simple. We've already trimmed down the lead-ins significantly. Sounds like
we should keep trimming.

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wensing
I love it. We generate weather updates, which I'm used to hearing read by
automated voices anyway. Now it's like we have our own staff of robots to do
the same: <http://tweetrad.io/?q=from%3Astormpulse>

Awesome.

~~~
egonzalez
Awesome. We are interested in learning about all the different use cases.

------
WesleyJohnson
Very interesting project and I had fun listening through the recent tweets
from HackerNews and ShitMyDadSays. A minor annoyance is the robot voice, but I
realize you may be at the mercy of the text to speech engine on that one. My
only criticism would be when reading @replies. It says the name of the person
you're replying to twice in quick succession and it's hard to understand. I'd
either say it once or just put a pause in there. ;)

------
brk
I like the concept, seems best suited for low-volume stuff. it would get
annoying listening to updates at the normal frequency of stuff on Twitter.

I didn't look too deeply at it, would be very very good to be able to filter
out dupes (ie: exclude any RT's).

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chrismendis
This application has the potential to provide an enjoyable, useful ambient
experience. Personally, I can imagine myself having this on in the background,
while I'm working. Before I would consider doing that, though, the speech
quality needs to be improved.

------
egonzalez
Thank you all for the great feedback. We will be replying to some of your
questions. Also the How It Works, blog post is in progress. We're currently
featured on the mashable.com site so we are making sure the bots continue
crunching those tweets.

------
mp3jeep01
I like the concept!

I assume the "music" in between readings is supposed to sound like the radio
is tuning for a new station? If this is the case, it's a neat idea, but it was
a little frustrating because you want to hear the music, but it's not clear -
although I'm not sure on any better suggestion (i.e. elevator music,
muzak..lol).

brk 23 has a good point about filters, that would definitely make it more
usable.

Nice work! Haven't seen any other fun web integration of text-speech like this
(I definitely don't count dictionary.com pronouncing words for me as fun!)

------
DotSauce
I like it. Love the transition audio, reminds me of Bioshock. Listening as I
type this comment and it's pretty cool. Not sure how often I would use it or
if I would use it regularly at all. Does it push live updates?

Agree with the suggestions mentioned already (mute, remove extra commentary).

Well done overall! I will be featuring TweetRad.io on
<http://TweetSocial.com/directory.php> shortly.

------
alttab
I'm impressed with the coordination and technology that went into this.

Kinda says something about America though when not only are we too lazy to
write full blogs, read full blogs, but now we don't even want to read our
tweets. This of course is not a serious comment on your project as more as it
is commentary on America's priorities.

Awesome work and amazing landing page design!

------
vital101
Great idea! It looks great too! I second (third, fourth, whatever) the calls
for a mute button. I'd also like to see the ability to change the voice being
used. I noticed that between channels it's different, any way to choose
between those voices?

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Omnipresent
its a very neat project. As said before I'd also love to see how you put it
together. Also, maybe you can put a little toggle button next to tweets that
people can click when they think a word is not said correctly.

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petesalty
I don't know if it has any real business potential, but it's certainly an
interesting little project. I'd love to see a blog post about how you put it
together.

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yesimahuman
Okay that is awesome. I love the radio sound.

One issue: When speaking the number $44B, it was pronounced as "4 B" as in
"four bee"

~~~
JacobAldridge
Similarly with other common abbreviations, like State codes. Our family
conference is at Truckee CA, pronounced - "truckee ka".

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nym
Please add a pause button. Otherwise, awesome!

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fjabre
I think TTS as a technology isn't quite there yet..

The radio sounds and overall UI/UX are brilliant though.

------
iterationx
I like it, but you should be able to turn off the words "X wants it to be
known" and just read the headline

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fauigerzigerk
Funny. You should make the embedded swf visible in some fashion or it won't
work with Flashblock enabled.

------
joubert
This is so cute. I see you use UserVoice. Are you on a Free account for Tweet
Radio?

~~~
egonzalez
Yes we are. Thank you.

------
petrolix
This is great! It should be on my iphone, so I can listen to it on my way to
work!

------
ramidarigaz
It looks amazing, but it runs _sooooo slow_ on my Ubuntu 9.10 Eeepc 701.

~~~
egonzalez
Is it the first tweet that's slow ? or overall tweet crawler ?

Thanks.

~~~
ramidarigaz
Sorry for the late reply. I think it's the svg graphics. The overall page
framerate is really low. Low enough to count.

------
mee345
I want to use it to have Mr. T read my status reports... is that possible?

~~~
zitterbewegung
Mr. T probably can't but you might be able to have Dr Who read your status
reports <http://tombakersays.com/> .

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diN0bot
can you take the feed from the longest poem ever website? i'd love to hear
that. even better if the voice can become less robotic.

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chrischen
The design looks really, really, really cool.

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mewalker
Love it--this is hilarious!

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mgcross
nice job on the randomly-generated animated stars and the SVG waves!

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tcarnell
cool! but please immediately implement a 'mute' button! :-)

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stefster
fantastic! So fun!

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Concours
very funny and great app

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scorp
wow! this is awesome!

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tdoggette
I just opened about 20 tabs, and ONE OF THEM STARTED MAKING OBNOXIOUS FUCKING
NOISE.

Not acceptable.

