SoundGecko Hacker News station
Consumer and social
news reader audio
SHOW HN2013
315points
85comments
#29of 1,739 in 2013
Top 2%of 2013 by points
How HN took it
LovedMost comments that take a side are positive
20 positive, 29 neutral or asking, 5 mixed, 3 critical, out of 57 comments about the project. Thread score +0.29.
Idea: 5 for, 1 againstPerformance: 3 for, 0 againstExecution: 1 for, 2 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Changing voice between items helps separate articles
From 1 comment
I'm finding it hard to follow the TTS (but it's growing on me) but the core idea is superb and I'm catching interesting snippets. Changing the TTS voice between items is a genius…
petercooper on HN
Good for commutes and mobile use
From 2 comments
This is absolutely fantastic! I occasionally have to make 2+ hour commutes to/from jobs, and I've long been wanting a way to digest the latest tech news while driving down the…
goostavos on HNBrilliant work. Great to see that you designed it to work on phones. I look forward to the TLDR feature ;)
fudged71 on HN
TTS sounds surprisingly good
From 3 comments
Wow, amazing work. I too was skeptical about TTS but it really grows on you. Are you guys using some kind of proprietary solution? Sounds really clear.
jval on HNIt's been a while since I actively followed TTS, but the speech of this one sounds surprisingly good. The service itself is useful as well. It could be a bit more interactive for…
micheljansen on HNGreat Work! Aside from a few glitches this is fantastic! TTS is surprisingly fine.
pw7 on HN
Objections
TTS still sounds robotic and hard to follow
From 2 comments
I'm finding it hard to follow the TTS (but it's growing on me) but the core idea is superb and I'm catching interesting snippets. Changing the TTS voice between items is a genius…
petercooper on HNI actually find that Audio is my favorite way to consume content because I usually want to use my sight and hands to be doing something more proactive and creative (ie.…
charlesju on HN
Parsing includes unreadable tables and links
From 1 comment
I'd be awesome if this was on github so people could improve the parsing. For one, it reads stuff that is obviously not meant to be read "live", but are just informational…
DiabloD3 on HN
Article link goes to the service not the original source
From 1 comment
On my Macbook OSX Mountain Lion, it works great and started playing on load (Which didn't happen when i loaded in on iOS but thats to be expected) One thing that REALLY bugged me…
iambot on HN
Requests
Variable playback speed
From 3 comments
Would be great to be able to variate the audio speed.
jobigoud on HNAwesome work. Can we get an option to speed up the voice? I think I can process info a little faster than base speed. I believe I saw something where blind people who use screen…
eumenides1 on HNHi, this is a great idea, perfect for when I'm in transit. It would be nice if you could add a feature to control the speed of the voice. The output is way too slow for my liking
tersiag on HN
Offline listening and preloading over WiFi
From 2 comments
Is the audio streamed over cellular? It would be cool to preload clips over WiFi before hitting the road.
ekurutepe on HNGreat concept. One suggestion off the top of my head is to allow for offline listening. Ie, configure soundgecko to get a snapshort of HN front page at say 5pm, TTS the front…
yitchelle on HN
Read HN comments as well as articles
From 2 comments
Very cool. Now our eyes can get some rest by letting this app read the top posts. Can we also get to hear the top 2 or 3 comments from the corresponding discussion page ?
ntsh on HNNow, if only we could somehow provide the comment threads, and allow us the ability to assign voices to different handles. I imagine something like a booming Voice of God for pg,…
angersock on HN
Audio cue between articles
From 1 comment
A really cool idea, I'm going to used this extensively I think. One thing though: you need to put in audio clues as to when one article ends and another begins. I'm not looking…
dreen on HN
Questions
Is it a YC startup?
From 1 comment
Is this a YC startup?
locksley on HN
Is the audio streamed over cellular?
From 1 comment
Is the audio streamed over cellular? It would be cool to preload clips over WiFi before hitting the road.
ekurutepe on HN
Alternatives named
Umano
From 2 comments
That's pretty much what Umano is doing. I'm not sure how they decide which articles get read though. http://umanoapp.com/
bryans on HNLet the folks at Umano know - they've already got humans reading a bunch of tech news: http://umanoapp.com/
miles on HN
tldr.io
From 1 comment
I'm finding it hard to follow the TTS (but it's growing on me) but the core idea is superb and I'm catching interesting snippets. Changing the TTS voice between items is a genius…
petercooper on HN
Pocket with text-to-speech
From 1 comment
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…
alaskamiller on HN
Podcastomatic
From 2 comments
Does tldr.io provide an RSS feed? If so, just plug it into podcastomatic.com (RSS-to-TTS-podcast) and presto; you have a tldr-podcast.
hnoob on HNReally nice and useful work, longzheng! If you like these kind of services and want to be able to convert any RSS feed (not just HN) into a TTS-spoken podcast, check out the…
hnoob on HN
Hacker News Radio
From 1 comment
Yeah. Came across Hacker News Radio before but the domain has since expired. Anyone know who was behind it?
longzheng on HN