Subscribe
Sign in
Pocket Listen — Reading is hard. Listen to articles instead.
48
Replies
Thanks @rrhoover! The iOS version uses the system (Siri) voice. On Android you can use third party voices.
Umano was pretty cool. We looked at it and something we definitely still think about. The challenge was scaling it. We see millions of new articles a day in Pocket. That is a lot to get recorded :)
Plus we are working to just find a way to skip that whole listening step and just insert it into your brain. (Joking. Kind of. Maybe?)
@nateweiner Nate any plans to support Sonos? Would love to have long reads played on Sonos! Also given that you are using the iOS API - can you provide the time it might take to listen to an article? Thanks! @rrhoover
@nateweiner @rrhoover IAP for voices seems to work in other apps. Siri is very basic to me. Maybe personal preference for alternative accents
@nateweiner haha, a few years ago I asked myself the question, "If I could make ONE thing more efficient, what would it be?" My answer was knowledge transfer. I want Matrix-like learning. 😁
My short blog post on the topic (add to your Pocket).
@nateweiner Congrats on releasing TTS support for iOS! I have been enjoying it for ages on Android, not even assuming that it wasn't available on iOS until very recently. I guess, I am just curious to know what issues have prevented you guys from releasing it on iOS sooner. Were those technical issues, like lack of native TTS support, or something else?
Not as friendly as my Australian Siri - look forward to seeing improvements. If the voice was more human.....
@miriamschwab Never mind. I see that the big news is that iPhone has finally caught up to Android :)
Just to point out that Narro (http://producthunt.com/tech/narro) integrates with Pocket and gives you a much larger range of better voices - plus Podcasting support!
I always thought there should be a way for the OS to read anything to you natively. I could do that when I had an Android phone (I think it was a 3rd party app). It wasn't great because you always had to select the text you wanted it to read - and that's definitely not the smartest thing to do while driving, which I think is a massive use case for this. Looking forward to trying it out - well done Pocket peeps! ;)
As a dad with a 12-year-old who is essentially unable to read due to a genetic condition that causes significant learning issues, this seems like a nice addition.
However, the functionality already exists in iOS in the form of Speak Screen which is easily invoked by pulling down with two fingers (when configured in Accessibility). My daughter uses that to "read" content in nearly every app she uses whether it's the MLB app or news apps.
Kudos for bringing something like this to the table, but it seems Apple has it covered at the OS level already.
I love pocket and I use it constantly to read. I was very excited for this feature, but after trying it, I am very disappointed. I can't see myself actually using this. The voice (Apple's native Siri voice) is not even close to bearable and mispronounces frequently, and the has no tempo to the reading.
I really hope the Pocket team can innovate and actually make this feature useful. It would be a game changer for me if it worked well.
@dylanjha You should try @Narroapp for more voices and better quality audio - it syncs with your Pocket account! http://producthunt.com/tech/narro
Happy to see this pop up in my feed today. I'm a happy Pocket reader who also regularly listens to podcasts. This feels like a lovely mesh of the two worlds. Not to mention that I can catch up on my reading while going for a walk around the neighbourhood... :)
@rrhoover This really aggravates me to the point of disbelief. I don't understand
This is just a demo of the algorithm we were developing to integrate into Quest using a Concatenative Speech Synthesis approach which is exactly the innovation Ryan is talking about.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnkx1k...
I say this with all the love and admiration I posess that you guys have tens of millions in funding a huge team of hundreds.
My startup raised a second seed round and we are now trying to product revenue by focusing on a new project but a team of two is focusing on innovating.
But I get it..Instapaper, Google, Apple none of them offer what you are actually talking about Ryan.
Why isn't Apples $200 billion dollar cash covered war-chest going into innovation like this? WHY HAS A LOT OF OTHER AREAS SEEN disruption BUT this is still a 25 YEARS OLD experience in 2015.
We've had speech synthesis mathematics since the 40s!
Why does it still not work because most is purely “synthesized” speech and not based off of Concatenative synthesis so it's just a computationally-intensive playback that can’t transcend a monotone which is what a human does. In addition to other algorithmic approaches that make this an overall great user experience...that's where innovation comes into play. None of this is as hard as coming up with a general relativity theory..too hard to innovate toward, none of this is insurmountable.
So for the first time in a very long time a #1 product hunt post is not getting an upvote from me...you guys could have truly shined a beacon of hope on innovation in every way, especially to the big guys...true innovation is about adding incremental value that offers not creates more pain.
@alexg473 @nicholassheriff I was pointing out that their was no innovation at all tied to this offering from not a 2 member team but a company that raised tens of millions of dollars in funding and waited years to offer this....like 5 years. Was just stating facts we should all innovate period...this is just a implementation of Apples API without any edits nothing is proprietary about what they have done nothing is innovative tied to this.
@nicholassheriff they could have made it better...that's what we expect from companies to innovate. Instead they didn't everyone does it like this I was hoping for something more.
@nicholassheriff as far as I'm aware, products are not successful because of the technology they use, but because of how much value they provide.
@alexg473 @nicholassheriff I never said that the technology was what is valuable it is the innovation around the experience buddy if you view my last sentence I clearly said this "true innovation is about adding incremental value that offers not creates more pain."...we are in disagreements with the experience I think it isn't adding value..you do, so we're not seeing eye to eye with incremental value increase in this regard.
After 25 years I was expecting not new technology ( none of this is NEW ) but a Incremental Increase in value. Period that is not what is here but you disagree with me on this it seems.
Love Pocket and with this innovation they got even more love.
Hope this will not be the premium option in the future, I find that way overpriced.
I shall wade in from a different point of view, as that of a former teacher. The sell is "reading is hard" uh no, it's not. People learn in a variety of ways. Reading gets no better with hearing a robot read to you. In fact, I would think it might make the ability to read out loud worse. To say nothing of the fact, that it lacks innovation and is lazy. The "idea" is fine, but only if it had been professional narrators who were reading it. The idea of a robot reading me a 1500 word article is right up there with getting teeth drilled.
These comments are a bit of a shark tank so I'm hesitant to weigh in without reading it all, but I use Pocket with Ivona on a daily basis and absolutely love it! Mostly for reading & saving, sure, but when I'm in the zone, travelling or otherwise occupied on any non-work tast...I'm either listening to articles on pocket, or a podcast. They're an essential app for me no question. Actually just tweeted at them a few weeks ago that the only wish I had was the ability to remove the modal window on TTS so it was easy to follow along and view charts & visuals as the audio progressed. Anyway I want to mention that from the outside it's hard to judge another companies product roadmap, feature development and innovation decisions. One can never fully know what's happening behind closed doors or under the hood for that matter. Easy to get frustrated def. but just have to keep that in mind IMHO. Def upvote for anything pocket from me though. Great job Pocket team!
Just tried it out. Great potential, but still got a ways to go before I'll actually use it.
But it'd probably still be extremely helpful for the blind and others.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/braill...
TL;DL we may think Siri sucks, but works extremely well for blind people
This feature may break the "tried once and never again" record. Is it cool? Sure. Will Ryan actually listen to articles a lot next week and moving forward? I doubt it. And for those of you that compared this to podcasts. Shame on you. If a great podcast was as easy as a blogger (or robot) reading their articles there would be more. Totally different skill set than writing an article.
@chris_smth Haven't seen any comments comparing this to a podcast, just a couple of comments from podcast listeners -- myself included -- who enjoy consuming audio. I totally appreciate that podcasting is above and beyond just reading articles out loud.
Super valuable feature. I'm one of those who moved from android to iOS. Missed the text to speech a lot. Glad that it's here now.
Product Hunt