While the quality of what I'm seeing is very nice for AI generated content (I still can't believe it) but the fact thay they are mostly showing short clips and not a long connected consistent video makes it less impressive.
WithAudio a one-time payment, desktop text-to-speech app that helps users read better by highlighting text as it's spoken.
Current Challenges:
Technical: It's difficult to consistently parse text from various document formats. The I also wants to expand to more platforms but I know I need to focus on marketing.
Non-technical: The product has seen some success with minimal marketing, but I keep getting distracted by spending too much time on technical work. I know I need to do more for marketing but I keep going to my safe space (my IDE).
I believe in the product but it keeps reminding me how difficult is to get somethig to a polished, finished state for all users. 90% of the project takes 90% of the time and the other 10% takes another 90% of the time.
Just imagine you are investigating a bug and everyone is trying to express their opnion on whose fault is this. What happened to not having a blaming culture?
I think there should be way more local apps with sync capabilities. I haven’t finished the sync feature in WithAudio and you have very nice ideas there. Specially the eventual consistency. That’s what will work.
But I must say for sure the most difficult part of local apps is debugging customer issues. For someone who is used to logs and traces and metrics and most of users using a one version of the code in the backend, debugging an issue in customers computer on an old version without much insight (without destroying all your premises of privacy) is very challenging.
i recently discussed the development of a new application for a customer. one of the important aspects was that the app would handle data that would have to stay local. despite that my thinking went like this:
if i develop it as a webapplication, then i can do all the work on my computer, test with various browsers and deliver a working result. if the customer has issues, i can likely reproduce them on my machine.
but if it was a desktop application, my feeling was that testing would be a nightmare. i would have to set up a machine like my client, or worse visit the client and work with them directly, because my own machine is just to different from what the client uses. also not to forget distribution and updates
When it comes to Information Retrieval, you can get anything between links to existing documents or generated content based on those processed information. I agree that the second one is really powerfuly and just amazing and seemilngly useful. But the fact that it can also be wrong in more cases and I won't know keep being reminded to my using it for things I'm not good at and they just don't work s they should.
I just wish the business models could justify a confidence level being attached to the response.
I initially didn’t remember but as soon as he started writing I remembered him. He is the reason I write in all caps on the paper.
I watched his AI course like 10 years ago or so and learned a lot!
I thought he looked familiar but just because I initially thought this is a different type of course I just didn’t think of that AI course.
I read in the comments that he is passed away, god bless him.
I'm Working on WithAudio https://desktop.with.audio
A one time payment - text to speech app with text highlighting and exporting audio capabilities. I mostly use it as an enhanced reading solution because helps me read better when I enable text highlighting.
Its not a subscription based product because it works locally.
my current technical challenges:
- parsing text out of various document formats to a consistent format is not easy. Don’t make start on PDFs!
- I'd like to support more platforms specially non pc ones but at the same time I think I should force myself to spend time on marketing.
my non technical challenge:
- Not spending time on dev and tech work as I keep being pushed towards my comfort zone.
- Product has been fairly succesfull in amount of sales considering the amount of marketing was done (just some random Reddit posts and a couple of HN comments). But figuring out larger or more consistent solutions is definitely challenge.
- Finding larger audience -> ive been trying to reach out to microinfluencers and bloggers or app reviewers to see if I can setup partnerships with them or not. Haven’t been very successful in even getting them get back to me. To initiate the chat.
- Finding more consistent marketing solutions -> been playing with ADs in different platforms with minimal budgets.
Any feedback, comment or thought is really appreciated.
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