6 ms·

I read/listen to a lot of books and the only book on there I’ve read so far is The Managers Path, which is about the transition of the software engineer in his/

by lbacaj 8y ago

I read/listen to a lot of books and the only book on there I’ve read so far is The Managers Path, which is about the transition of the software engineer in his/her career. It’s a great book for any software engineer, it’s short too. Given that I haven’t heard of many of the other books on the list, I’d say this is a good list I’ll be checking out a few of the titles. One trick about “reading” (listening) to a good chunk of books has been Audible, to retain the content I’m listening to on my commutes and on the go I take a lot of notes. As a little self promotion I created a cross platform App that lets you listen to any Article from the web by using great sounding AI/ML to convert the text to audio. I built it recently because I feel really strongly that Audio is a great way to learn and maximize that dead on the go time rather than waste it. If you’d like to check my app out it’s here: https://articulu.com https://articulu.com

siddharthgoel88 8y ago
Thanks for sharing your insight. I am not able to access your app in my country. Do you have some country restriction to it?
glerk 8y ago
Your app looks really promising and I’m thinking of buying a subscription. Is there any limit on the article length? Btw, small bug with an empty history (iOS): https://ibb.co/C2hT5Jq https://ibb.co/C2hT5Jq
- lbacaj 8y ago
  Really appreciate you checking it out, I’ll get on that bug ASAP. At this time there is no limit to the size, it’s distributed on the backend so could technically do a whole book.
weugek 8y ago
I was actually looking for something like this, it's a shame I can't install it. It says that it's incompatible with my Note 8.
- lbacaj 8y ago
  Sorry about that, tried to hit as many devices as possible. Cross platform App development turns out to be really hard, especially the behavior on different devices.
DevX101 8y ago
Can you post an audio sample on the landing page? A narrator's voice has a big impact on if I want to listen to an audiobook. With this being automated my first concern is that this will sound way too robotic. Also if you don't mind sharing, how did you get the voice library?
brm 8y ago
Counterpoint: while I agree that audio is useful for learning, I’d encourage everyone to not consider mental downtime wasted. And that we should resist the urge to fill it with content constantly. We must be able as humans to simply sit alone with our own thoughts. It’s as important for creativity and mental output as anything learned in those “dead”, “wasted” times.
- lbacaj 8y ago
  Makes sense actually.. we all need time to think. I thinn walks where one could just let their mind wander are great. If I didn’t spend some time thinking I would’ve never built this thing :) Still though on these busy commutes, especially while standing, I find the time much better spent staying informed and learning but that’s just me.
  - marxama 8y ago
    That's why I prefer to listen to podcasts when taking walks etc, rather than full-on audiobooks - if my mind wanders and I start thinking about something else, it's not a big deal if I missed an episode of some tech podcast. With an audiobook, I have to try and find where my mind left off! (which is usually a lot more cumbersome than when the same thing happens while eye-reading)
    - HNLurker2 8y ago
      Contra argument: this means podcast too. You need total solitude. Most podcast are useless, the only one I found useful (people in podcast just shit talk unlike audio books or/and crafted essays). Econ talk is great one (was recommended on HN) and every other where the guest is smart
kitten-smuggler 8y ago
This app is awesome!
- lbacaj 8y ago
  Mom, is that you? lol, appreciate that, thank you for trying it.
lnkmails 8y ago
In the last few months, I have leaned more towards audio based learning but I have realized that personally audio is great for shorter content (less than 1 hr). After 1 hour, I get distracted because I feel like I could listen and do something else. Then when I pause and think what I got out of the last few mins of hearing, I realize I wasn't paying real attention. I also tried listening for 1 hour, taking a break and listening for another hour. I am unable to recollect what I listened last time while I have no problem recollecting material I read. For example, I am "reading" two books simultaneously now - one from kindle and another via audible. If you asked me what I learnt from the audible book,I would struggle to summarize. I am part of a book club and one of the women I see there has great notes on every book she has read. She was telling us how audiobooks aren't any good because to truly understand content, you need to pause, assimilate what you just read and process it (she writes it down). Audiobooks do not give that break. I usually ask Alexa to pause and resume but it plain sucks to do that.
- bkanber 8y ago
  I'm an avid audiobook reader. (My wife gets annoyed when I call it "reading", but still.) I personally wouldn't use audiobooks for learning and assimilating brand-new content to a high level of detail. It's just too tough that way. But I also find that that's rarely my goal when listening to an audiobook. Fiction is the obvious example. Unless you're studying a book for school or something, I think audio is a great way to take in a book. There's also "non-critical" non-fiction which I find works really well. Books like Sapiens or People's History of the United States, or books on management techniques, where you're more interested in the concepts and high-level material rather than retaining specific details. I would happily do audiobook for a book club, but not for a school assignment. That's just my experience though, results may vary.
thisisit 8y ago
I am curious how do you take notes while using audiobooks? I have been trying audiobooks but somehow I find it distracting. And the notes taking process to be cumbersome too, as I need to go back and replay something over and over again. So for now I prefer ebooks/hard copies.
bckmn 8y ago
If you're interested in this space/solution, we've been running Narro (https://www.narro.co https://www.narro.co) along the same lines (with a TON of integrations now). It also supports dozens of languages/voices, PDFs, ebooks, videos, yadda yadda yadda
snori74 8y ago
Looks great but "Not available in your country". ?!?#@!!? Shhesh, for a while there we thought we had achieved Cyberspace - now we're moving back to thousands of fuedal kingdoms all guarding their borders....
Perseids 8y ago
> One trick about “reading” (listening) to a good chunk of books has been Audible, to retain the content I’m listening to on my commutes and on the go I take a lot of notes. While I share your enthusiasm about audiobooks, I encourage you to leave Audible behind: - Audible is heavy on DRM, for no particular reason except for platform lockin and control. There are plenty of DRM free alternatives e.g. https://audiobookstore.com/ https://audiobookstore.com/ or https://www.downpour.com/ https://www.downpour.com/ . To this day Audible doesn't sell Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, because they insist on adding DRM (which the author doesn't permit – he has strong principles regarding digital freedom). - Audible, like Amazon, is becoming too much of a monopoly, which in general harms the product/user (remember IE6?). You don't even have to look for alternatives because of lofty principles, but just for your selfish interests to have a prospering alternative at hand, when Audible/Amazon screws you over.
- dalore 8y ago
  Nice and I agree. But the convenience from Audible is hard to beat especially if you have an Echo.
interestica 8y ago
You should be upfront that this app is limited to 30 "articles" (or partial listens). Your app description makes it seem that the premium version adds only: "Subscribe to create your own playlist, download for offline listening, or browse through playlists that are tailored for your interest to discover new articles." Premium is required beyond the 30? Listening to 5 seconds of an article counts as a play? Overall really cool app though. Could see it branch out with an awesome feature set.
tsbertalan 8y ago
It would be nice if the Android sign up/log in forms allowed password paste, for use with a password manager.
HNLurker2 8y ago
Not available in my country(Romania). Guess I'll stick to TTS reading of epub/PDF version of them (I enjoy the Google TTS to avoid cognitive ease bias).
garfieldnate 8y ago
The one thing I wanted to find on your site I could not find: a sample audio generated from an article.
dalore 8y ago
How do you take notes on your commute? I find when I'm driving I can't take notes, any voice note taking app is too cumbersome. I assume your commuting let's you use your hands though.

by lbacaj 8y ago

siddharthgoel88 8y ago

Thanks for sharing your insight. I am not able to access your app in my country. Do you have some country restriction to it?

glerk 8y ago

Your app looks really promising and I’m thinking of buying a subscription. Is there any limit on the article length? Btw, small bug with an empty history (iOS): https://ibb.co/C2hT5Jq https://ibb.co/C2hT5Jq

lbacaj 8y ago
Really appreciate you checking it out, I’ll get on that bug ASAP. At this time there is no limit to the size, it’s distributed on the backend so could technically do a whole book.

weugek 8y ago

I was actually looking for something like this, it's a shame I can't install it. It says that it's incompatible with my Note 8.

lbacaj 8y ago
Sorry about that, tried to hit as many devices as possible. Cross platform App development turns out to be really hard, especially the behavior on different devices.

DevX101 8y ago

Can you post an audio sample on the landing page? A narrator's voice has a big impact on if I want to listen to an audiobook. With this being automated my first concern is that this will sound way too robotic. Also if you don't mind sharing, how did you get the voice library?

brm 8y ago

Counterpoint: while I agree that audio is useful for learning, I’d encourage everyone to not consider mental downtime wasted. And that we should resist the urge to fill it with content constantly. We must be able as humans to simply sit alone with our own thoughts. It’s as important for creativity and mental output as anything learned in those “dead”, “wasted” times.

lbacaj 8y ago
Makes sense actually.. we all need time to think. I thinn walks where one could just let their mind wander are great. If I didn’t spend some time thinking I would’ve never built this thing :) Still though on these busy commutes, especially while standing, I find the time much better spent staying informed and learning but that’s just me.
- marxama 8y ago
  That's why I prefer to listen to podcasts when taking walks etc, rather than full-on audiobooks - if my mind wanders and I start thinking about something else, it's not a big deal if I missed an episode of some tech podcast. With an audiobook, I have to try and find where my mind left off! (which is usually a lot more cumbersome than when the same thing happens while eye-reading)
  - HNLurker2 8y ago
    Contra argument: this means podcast too. You need total solitude. Most podcast are useless, the only one I found useful (people in podcast just shit talk unlike audio books or/and crafted essays). Econ talk is great one (was recommended on HN) and every other where the guest is smart

kitten-smuggler 8y ago

This app is awesome!

lbacaj 8y ago
Mom, is that you? lol, appreciate that, thank you for trying it.

lnkmails 8y ago

In the last few months, I have leaned more towards audio based learning but I have realized that personally audio is great for shorter content (less than 1 hr). After 1 hour, I get distracted because I feel like I could listen and do something else. Then when I pause and think what I got out of the last few mins of hearing, I realize I wasn't paying real attention. I also tried listening for 1 hour, taking a break and listening for another hour. I am unable to recollect what I listened last time while I have no problem recollecting material I read. For example, I am "reading" two books simultaneously now - one from kindle and another via audible. If you asked me what I learnt from the audible book,I would struggle to summarize. I am part of a book club and one of the women I see there has great notes on every book she has read. She was telling us how audiobooks aren't any good because to truly understand content, you need to pause, assimilate what you just read and process it (she writes it down). Audiobooks do not give that break. I usually ask Alexa to pause and resume but it plain sucks to do that.

bkanber 8y ago
I'm an avid audiobook reader. (My wife gets annoyed when I call it "reading", but still.) I personally wouldn't use audiobooks for learning and assimilating brand-new content to a high level of detail. It's just too tough that way. But I also find that that's rarely my goal when listening to an audiobook. Fiction is the obvious example. Unless you're studying a book for school or something, I think audio is a great way to take in a book. There's also "non-critical" non-fiction which I find works really well. Books like Sapiens or People's History of the United States, or books on management techniques, where you're more interested in the concepts and high-level material rather than retaining specific details. I would happily do audiobook for a book club, but not for a school assignment. That's just my experience though, results may vary.

thisisit 8y ago

I am curious how do you take notes while using audiobooks? I have been trying audiobooks but somehow I find it distracting. And the notes taking process to be cumbersome too, as I need to go back and replay something over and over again. So for now I prefer ebooks/hard copies.

bckmn 8y ago

If you're interested in this space/solution, we've been running Narro (https://www.narro.co https://www.narro.co) along the same lines (with a TON of integrations now). It also supports dozens of languages/voices, PDFs, ebooks, videos, yadda yadda yadda

snori74 8y ago

Looks great but "Not available in your country". ?!?#@!!? Shhesh, for a while there we thought we had achieved Cyberspace - now we're moving back to thousands of fuedal kingdoms all guarding their borders....

Perseids 8y ago

> One trick about “reading” (listening) to a good chunk of books has been Audible, to retain the content I’m listening to on my commutes and on the go I take a lot of notes. While I share your enthusiasm about audiobooks, I encourage you to leave Audible behind: - Audible is heavy on DRM, for no particular reason except for platform lockin and control. There are plenty of DRM free alternatives e.g. https://audiobookstore.com/ https://audiobookstore.com/ or https://www.downpour.com/ https://www.downpour.com/ . To this day Audible doesn't sell Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, because they insist on adding DRM (which the author doesn't permit – he has strong principles regarding digital freedom). - Audible, like Amazon, is becoming too much of a monopoly, which in general harms the product/user (remember IE6?). You don't even have to look for alternatives because of lofty principles, but just for your selfish interests to have a prospering alternative at hand, when Audible/Amazon screws you over.

dalore 8y ago
Nice and I agree. But the convenience from Audible is hard to beat especially if you have an Echo.

interestica 8y ago

You should be upfront that this app is limited to 30 "articles" (or partial listens). Your app description makes it seem that the premium version adds only: "Subscribe to create your own playlist, download for offline listening, or browse through playlists that are tailored for your interest to discover new articles." Premium is required beyond the 30? Listening to 5 seconds of an article counts as a play? Overall really cool app though. Could see it branch out with an awesome feature set.

tsbertalan 8y ago

It would be nice if the Android sign up/log in forms allowed password paste, for use with a password manager.

HNLurker2 8y ago

Not available in my country(Romania). Guess I'll stick to TTS reading of epub/PDF version of them (I enjoy the Google TTS to avoid cognitive ease bias).

garfieldnate 8y ago

The one thing I wanted to find on your site I could not find: a sample audio generated from an article.

dalore 8y ago

How do you take notes on your commute? I find when I'm driving I can't take notes, any voice note taking app is too cumbersome. I assume your commuting let's you use your hands though.