
Show HN: We brought iOS dictation to Windows - shanselman
http://www.myechoapp.com
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dang
This post set off HN's voting ring detector, but we turned that off because we
want to see original work on HN.

Please don't ring-vote posts, though. It's against the rules, makes it likely
that your post won't be seen (I only caught this one by accident), and will
eventually get your account dinged.

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shurcooL
What does it mean to "ring-vote" posts?

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RaphiePS
A voting ring is a group of people that all upvote each other's posts. But
most of the time, it lacks that level of organization -- usually, ring-voting
just refers to having all your friends upvote your post for you.

One really easy way to trip HN's voting ring detector is to send your voters a
direct link. However, in my experience, this acts less to detect voting rings
than to weed out HN newbies. All my friends just post on facebook with
something along the lines of "go search the New page for <x> and upvote,
please!"

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shanselman
Ah, so are you (and is @dang) saying that tweeting or facebooking a link is
Ring Voting? I didn't ask for upvotes, I apologize if this was a violation of
netiquette. Thanks for explaining this!

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RaphiePS
I can't speak for dang, but if you didn't ask for votes, I don't think you
violated netiquette at all.

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glhaynes
One of those ideas that seems obvious in retrospect. Nice work!

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shanselman
Thanks!

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chime
Just tried out and am really impressed with the entire setup and pairing
process. Very clever use of QR Code. It works just as featured in the video.
The 2-3 second wait for uploading/processing is annoying but I can get used to
it. However, having to click 'Done' disrupts my chain of thought and makes
concentrating harder. I don't think I can get used to manually clicking 'Done'
after every other sentence/paragraph. I wish there was a way you could auto-
click 'Done' when my sentence was completed.

A neat UI could be a buffer that slowly grows, maybe showing the # of seconds
recorded. Once it's near 30-60s length and I pause for 1-2 seconds OR shake
the phone backwards, auto-click 'Done'.

Also what does the "Log Dictation on Desktop" option mean?

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shanselman
It shouldn't take 2-3 seconds to process. Where are you in the world? We have
servers in West Europe, South East Asia (for Asia and AU/NZ) and Chicago. If
you are far from one of those, or your phone isn't on Wifi you might see some
slowness.

Good point about the Done thing, but we're limited to what iOS allows. If we
do anything that modifies Siri then we could get booted from the store.

Log Dictation on Desktop literally keeps a text file on your desktop of
everything you've dictated. For your records.

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TheAnimus
Why would I want to use my phone, and public network latency, to do what
windows already offers built in.

Is it really that much better dictation? Or is it one of those I'm lucky I
speak the 'way' that windows is expecting.

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gshackles
A fair question! If the built-in tools are working for you then you might not
need myEcho. Our inspiration for writing the app was that we found the built-
in dictation to be lacking, and wanted to have the same quality we were
getting on iOS. myEcho is free to try, though, so you can decide for yourself!
:)

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aaronem
Interesting app; I'd thought about doing something similar with a web socket
and the (non-Siri) iOS dictation capability, but never got around to it, so
this might come in useful.

No points, though, for autoplaying your demo video in the middle of Domingo's
_Nessun dorma_. That's just rude.

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nppc
Finally an app that is compelling enough to make me want to upgrade from my
iPhone4 !

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raynesandrew
Thats cool!

