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.
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.
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).
To add why, it's rare that I'd want to listen to something when it's quicker for me to scan. The only time I'd do that is if it's inconvenient for me to read, ie when I'm on the move or driving. Then, I'd like for it to be fed to me audibly.
Good job getting it up and running. What do you use for text to speech conversion?
I like it too, zen, especially the female voice.
Would be neat to add special effects in the audio stream, e.g. if the tweet is about "happy hour" or "party", or if it's news you could have background clip like CNN.com headlines
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.