7 ms·

Tired of typing in Slack? Use Webspeech recognition API to chat hands-free

36 points by crackleware 10y ago

rgun 10y ago
Nice! Better solution would be a chrome plugin
- crackleware 10y ago
  Definitively!
throwanem 10y ago
Something something open plan something something noise. Neat hack, though!
mrits 10y ago
I don't understand the appeal of slack over IRC.
- adentranter 10y ago
  Its laziness for me. But, this comment has prompted me to get some info on setting up a good local IRC server.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Our team switched to Slack a few weeks ago (coming from IRC), and the most frequent reasons for liking Slack that I've overheard are: - looks more polished - /giphy is hilarious
  - Benjammer 10y ago
    There's also this: http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/ http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/
- alexpersian 10y ago
  It's far more polished, the integrations are endless and easy to use, and setting it up for non-technical people is a breeze. Along with its easy availability on mobile.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Damn, do we have to go over this in every single thread about Slack, or instant messaging?
- pilif 10y ago
  embedded media, searchable archive, ready-made webhook integration, synced history across machines, proper support for multiple logged-in clients (and lately, I'm really impressed with how well the voice chat works compared to, say, skype). Yes. There's a solution for all of this with IRC, but some of it requires specialised clients, servers running somewhere and some of it requires you to write additional code. We're in the business of writing code for our core product, not for our internal chat server. I'm not entirely opposed to writing code for our infrastructure that's not completely product-related but if I can have something that works out of the box for a reasonable amount of money, then I will go that way. OTOH, when the problem concerns some dependency of the product in any way, then I'm totally willing to go much greater lengths of doing the work on our end than most of other people. Because every single piece of the puzzle you control fully is a piece you won't have to find a replacement for in a hurry sometime in the future. But company-internal chat? If Slack breaks (or gets too expensive), there are ton of alternatives all of which would be more or less equal replacements.
  - xPaw 10y ago
    IRC clients already exist that can do most of these things, like https://thelounge.github.io https://thelounge.github.io /Shameless plug
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      It looks like I have to run and administer my own server, and I don't see any support for uploading media or searching previous conversations. The demo is pretty, though.
      - problems 10y ago
        Uploading media is best done by using something like ShareX pointed at an internal server though so that you don't send important information outside the company. The number of times I see people write root passwords or financial info in Slack is scary.
    - lima 10y ago
- petercooper 10y ago
  As someone who almost lived on IRC in the 90s and now employs several people who use Slack almost all day, my take: - it's an integrated system with a reliable client on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC that all work somewhat similarly and support all of the features - dragging and dropping media just works - the way URLs are expanded is nice, I've not seen any IRC client do this as well as Slack - 'reactions' on chat items - the search is great and it's integrated with every client on all those aforementioned platforms - you can set quite complex sets of notifications for specific channels or conversations.. such as don't mobile notify me between certain hours, but then never mobile notify me for our #random junk channel.. stuff like that. Employees are very thankful for this feature. - custom emojis, we use these more than you'd think. - having our backend systems ping messages onto Slack is very easy, basically a single liner - I'd probably have to write some sort of HTTP to IRC bridge to replicate this. - syncing of read/unread messages across clients It all adds up.
- berkay 10y ago
  Forget about whether IRC can do everything that Slack does. I can give you number of reasons (many already have in this thread and others) but it does not matter. Millions have decided that it is better for them. We can either decide they are all dumb or choose to throughly understand why they choose it. I think that understanding why people prefer Slack over IRC is an excellent exercise for developers. I am highly doubtful that one can build software for non-developers without understanding this.
vt100 10y ago
I'm also tried of reading in Slack. Please add TTS too.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  A product with these two features already exists under the name of skype ;) Technically, you'd just need this STT solution to write a log somewhere (pastebin?)
  - the_af 10y ago
    And before Skype, actual phone calls! :)
- crackleware 10y ago
  text-to-speech (WIP), https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/d63564850d9794798182a7dbfc7d2d6f95dff0d8 https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/d63564...
afandian 10y ago
By the time I'm speaking to my computer so it can TTS into Slack so I can converse with my colleague sitting at the next desk I might as well rotate my head 90°... (EDIT: I should also add that at any point in time my colleagues may be spread over Massachusetts, New York, California, Oxfordshire, London, Britanny, Victoria, Lower Saxony and that's when they're not travelling. But we also use it for conversations when we're in the same office.)
slack_sucksdick 10y ago
Slack fucking sucks dick. All its developers should be hanged like Saddam Hussein himself. How can just a fucking chat app use so much goddamn memory and be such an unresponsive pile of satanic shit? Of course by being done in some pile of shit JS UI engine. These fuckers don't know the first thing about memory or how it works. I want to chop all their nuts off.
- ferdbold 10y ago
  Well at least you were able to contain your anger long enough to create a throwaway account.
- witty_username 10y ago
  What happened? Why are you so angry? Cool down; this is not such a big issue as it may seem to you right now.
tootie 10y ago
I use Slack because I'm tired of speaking.
dsr_ 10y ago
I've been wondering how long it's going to be before we have enough computrons in our phones to do real-time full text voice recognition, with the aim of sending over a voice model to the other side (or not) and subsequently sending only text. You get huge compression for long conversations, making phone calls possible under stupidly bad bandwidth and packet loss constraints.
- afandian 10y ago
  I wonder what modern AI could do with vocoded signals. That's super low bandwidth (and sounds it) but I'm sure some modern software could do a good reconstruction.
adwww 10y ago
Yeah caus everyone (outside of America at least) loves speaking out loud to inanimate objects.
amelius 10y ago
Why should this be specific to Slack? Can't this just use OS-level speech-to-text functionality? (Just like other input devices, e.g. keyboard and mouse)
- Rafert 10y ago
  Because the JS targets Slack HTML to insert the recognized text from the webkitSpeechRecognition API.
imgabe 10y ago
Now they just need a voice synthesizer on the other end to convert the text back into speech to the person doesn't have to look at it, but can just listen to it instead. Man, that would be convenient!
grafelic 10y ago
I'm not tired of typing in Slack, I'm tired of the fact that most of my co-workers use it, which in turn forces me to type and waste time in it.
crackleware 10y ago
I packaged it as Chrome extension: https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/afae0670ca1783f0c3186d65ffe82b862eb59a08 https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/afae06... Featuring TTS (optional).

36 points by crackleware 10y ago

rgun 10y ago

Nice! Better solution would be a chrome plugin

crackleware 10y ago
Definitively!

throwanem 10y ago

Something something open plan something something noise. Neat hack, though!

mrits 10y ago

I don't understand the appeal of slack over IRC.

adentranter 10y ago
Its laziness for me. But, this comment has prompted me to get some info on setting up a good local IRC server.
majewsky 10y ago
Our team switched to Slack a few weeks ago (coming from IRC), and the most frequent reasons for liking Slack that I've overheard are: - looks more polished - /giphy is hilarious
- Benjammer 10y ago
  There's also this: http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/ http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/
alexpersian 10y ago
It's far more polished, the integrations are endless and easy to use, and setting it up for non-technical people is a breeze. Along with its easy availability on mobile.
enraged_camel 10y ago
Damn, do we have to go over this in every single thread about Slack, or instant messaging?
pilif 10y ago
embedded media, searchable archive, ready-made webhook integration, synced history across machines, proper support for multiple logged-in clients (and lately, I'm really impressed with how well the voice chat works compared to, say, skype). Yes. There's a solution for all of this with IRC, but some of it requires specialised clients, servers running somewhere and some of it requires you to write additional code. We're in the business of writing code for our core product, not for our internal chat server. I'm not entirely opposed to writing code for our infrastructure that's not completely product-related but if I can have something that works out of the box for a reasonable amount of money, then I will go that way. OTOH, when the problem concerns some dependency of the product in any way, then I'm totally willing to go much greater lengths of doing the work on our end than most of other people. Because every single piece of the puzzle you control fully is a piece you won't have to find a replacement for in a hurry sometime in the future. But company-internal chat? If Slack breaks (or gets too expensive), there are ton of alternatives all of which would be more or less equal replacements.
- xPaw 10y ago
  IRC clients already exist that can do most of these things, like https://thelounge.github.io https://thelounge.github.io /Shameless plug
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    It looks like I have to run and administer my own server, and I don't see any support for uploading media or searching previous conversations. The demo is pretty, though.
    - problems 10y ago
      Uploading media is best done by using something like ShareX pointed at an internal server though so that you don't send important information outside the company. The number of times I see people write root passwords or financial info in Slack is scary.
  - lima 10y ago
petercooper 10y ago
As someone who almost lived on IRC in the 90s and now employs several people who use Slack almost all day, my take: - it's an integrated system with a reliable client on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC that all work somewhat similarly and support all of the features - dragging and dropping media just works - the way URLs are expanded is nice, I've not seen any IRC client do this as well as Slack - 'reactions' on chat items - the search is great and it's integrated with every client on all those aforementioned platforms - you can set quite complex sets of notifications for specific channels or conversations.. such as don't mobile notify me between certain hours, but then never mobile notify me for our #random junk channel.. stuff like that. Employees are very thankful for this feature. - custom emojis, we use these more than you'd think. - having our backend systems ping messages onto Slack is very easy, basically a single liner - I'd probably have to write some sort of HTTP to IRC bridge to replicate this. - syncing of read/unread messages across clients It all adds up.
berkay 10y ago
Forget about whether IRC can do everything that Slack does. I can give you number of reasons (many already have in this thread and others) but it does not matter. Millions have decided that it is better for them. We can either decide they are all dumb or choose to throughly understand why they choose it. I think that understanding why people prefer Slack over IRC is an excellent exercise for developers. I am highly doubtful that one can build software for non-developers without understanding this.

vt100 10y ago

I'm also tried of reading in Slack. Please add TTS too.

dmichulke 10y ago
A product with these two features already exists under the name of skype ;) Technically, you'd just need this STT solution to write a log somewhere (pastebin?)
- the_af 10y ago
  And before Skype, actual phone calls! :)
crackleware 10y ago
text-to-speech (WIP), https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/d63564850d9794798182a7dbfc7d2d6f95dff0d8 https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/d63564...

afandian 10y ago

By the time I'm speaking to my computer so it can TTS into Slack so I can converse with my colleague sitting at the next desk I might as well rotate my head 90°... (EDIT: I should also add that at any point in time my colleagues may be spread over Massachusetts, New York, California, Oxfordshire, London, Britanny, Victoria, Lower Saxony and that's when they're not travelling. But we also use it for conversations when we're in the same office.)

slack_sucksdick 10y ago

Slack fucking sucks dick. All its developers should be hanged like Saddam Hussein himself. How can just a fucking chat app use so much goddamn memory and be such an unresponsive pile of satanic shit? Of course by being done in some pile of shit JS UI engine. These fuckers don't know the first thing about memory or how it works. I want to chop all their nuts off.

ferdbold 10y ago
Well at least you were able to contain your anger long enough to create a throwaway account.
witty_username 10y ago
What happened? Why are you so angry? Cool down; this is not such a big issue as it may seem to you right now.

tootie 10y ago

I use Slack because I'm tired of speaking.

dsr_ 10y ago

I've been wondering how long it's going to be before we have enough computrons in our phones to do real-time full text voice recognition, with the aim of sending over a voice model to the other side (or not) and subsequently sending only text. You get huge compression for long conversations, making phone calls possible under stupidly bad bandwidth and packet loss constraints.

afandian 10y ago
I wonder what modern AI could do with vocoded signals. That's super low bandwidth (and sounds it) but I'm sure some modern software could do a good reconstruction.

adwww 10y ago

Yeah caus everyone (outside of America at least) loves speaking out loud to inanimate objects.

amelius 10y ago

Why should this be specific to Slack? Can't this just use OS-level speech-to-text functionality? (Just like other input devices, e.g. keyboard and mouse)

Rafert 10y ago
Because the JS targets Slack HTML to insert the recognized text from the webkitSpeechRecognition API.

imgabe 10y ago

Now they just need a voice synthesizer on the other end to convert the text back into speech to the person doesn't have to look at it, but can just listen to it instead. Man, that would be convenient!

grafelic 10y ago

I'm not tired of typing in Slack, I'm tired of the fact that most of my co-workers use it, which in turn forces me to type and waste time in it.

crackleware 10y ago

I packaged it as Chrome extension: https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/afae0670ca1783f0c3186d65ffe82b862eb59a08 https://github.com/crackleware/slack-webspeech/commit/afae06... Featuring TTS (optional).