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Show HN: We made a web app so that our parents can keep reading to our daughter

185 points by benja123 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anymane 7y ago
Such a cool idea!
- benja123 7y ago
  Thanks. It's been pretty useful for us and let us keep some type of normalcy during these strange times.
tagolli 7y ago
This looks really cool! I only see 7 books in the bookshelf. Are you planning to add more?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- benja123 7y ago
  Thanks. Yes - I will be adding more over time.
  - seige 7y ago
    Are these 7 books on public domain? Dont you have to run through buying rights or something to use books written by others?
    - benja123 7y ago
      They are all CC licensed books. See the footer and bookshelf where I include the license and link back to the sources
scott113341 7y ago
Awesome idea, and nice work! Is this open source, and if so, would you mind sharing a link to it? I am beginning work on a slightly similar project [1] to help facilitate speech therapy (girlfriend is a speech-language pathologist) over video chat and would be interested to compare with your approach and tech stack. I saw this [2] Chess + video chat project the other day, and drew heavy inspiration from its approach [3]. [1]: https://github.com/scott113341/slp-memory https://github.com/scott113341/slp-memory [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790728 [3]: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/rootshirechess https://glitch.com/edit/#!/rootshirechess
- benja123 7y ago
  I have not made it open source atm, but it is something I am considering. Tech stack: Elixir/Phoenix (liveview mostly) WebRTC code is based off: https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/webrtc-web/#0 https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/webrtc-web/#... I setup a turnserver using https://github.com/coturn/coturn https://github.com/coturn/coturn What do you need help with? Maybe I can help you now.
  - fareesh 7y ago
    +1 for open source, I like Phoenix and it would be great to improve my knowledge from an example like this.
  - palerdot 7y ago
    I'm interested more about how you are doing deployments of elixir/phoenix app, and your dev setup ... like do you use docker for developing and production and stuffs like that ...
    - benja123 7y ago
      edeliver + distillery Followed this tutorial https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-automate-elixir-phoenix-deployment-with-distillery-and-edeliver-on-ubuntu-16-04 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-auto...
ldenoue 7y ago
Very nice. Testing on my iPhone 6s landscape, I noticed the prev and next buttons were not aligned with the book page. I also created a similar tool a few weeks ago available for free as well here https://www.appblit.com/bookcafe https://www.appblit.com/bookcafe
- benja123 7y ago
  That is really cool! Honestly we didn't focus on the "look" beyond making sure it was functional.
mataug 7y ago
This is so cool, My mom is a school teacher, and the school is trying to get her to make videos for her students. She struggles with video editing software to make videos. This could help a lot, especially if I could have custom stories. She could do a story session with my and I would just record the screen.
- benja123 7y ago
  You can! Right now you can upload a PDF and that becomes your story.
  - mataug 7y ago
    Thank you !! I was thinking about building something like this over the weekend. You saved me a lot of effort. I'm willing to self-host / donate some money if that helps with server costs.
    - benja123 7y ago
      Anytime. You should still build one! It was a lot of fun to build. Thanks for the offer, but right now I don't see a need for any donations/self hosting. Maybe that will come, but at the moment a relatively small single DO box is handling it pretty well.
_benj 7y ago
Thanks for sharing! It such a great idea :-) Talking with my wife (SLP) she observed how important is interactive reading and I was wondering if you had that planned or if open sourcing this was an option so I could contribute to something like that. Just as a reference, some therapy platforms allow the users to draw on the book, or put stickers and such... and even though this is not full-blown therapeutic, being able to draw (a transparent HTLM canvas on top of the image? websockets communicating x,y?) would add a lot to this, I think. Thanks for sharing!
- benja123 7y ago
  I thought about adding a transparent layer so that my daughter and parents can draw on a story. I never thought about it from a therapy point of view, but that is just not an area I am familiar with - interesting though. I would be super happy if this can be used for that. As far as open sourcing it goes - I have not made it open source ATM, but it is definitely something I am considering.
  - anticsapp 7y ago
    Is there any way you could apply here: https://apply.ycombinator.com/session/new?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fapply.ycombinator.com%2F https://apply.ycombinator.com/session/new?continue=https%3A%... and rush your build in April/May? You have ten days left to apply but it looks fine in the current state. You really have something here. I have no affiliation with YC/HN.
cs44 7y ago
How has your experience with LiveView been?
- benja123 7y ago
  Pretty great. It let me write this really quickly with minimal effort. There were some quirks and some weird hacks I had to make when it came to working with JS, but that could also be me doing it wrong. My biggest complaint would be around some latency issues when the connection is bad, but I knew that would be an issue when I chose it. I would definitely choose it again.
nicois 7y ago
Add in the WHO book for children to help with dealing with covid too: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-04-2020-children-s-story-book-released-to-help-children-and-young-people-cope-with-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-04-2020-children-s-s...
- benja123 7y ago
  Done!
- JuanJew 7y ago
  Uh, I wouldn't expect the WHO to have a progressive agenda here as well but why all people in the book is dark skinned and no one is white?
war1025 7y ago
I just tried this and couldn't get anything to load (Firefox). Maybe I'm just doing something wrong? Didn't see any errors in the console
- benja123 7y ago
  Mobile or desktop?
  - war1025 7y ago
    Desktop. I went into an "Anonymous Room" and it showed the interface, but there was no book. I tried selecting a book from the "Bookshelf" and nothing happened
    - benja123 7y ago
      Interesting - I tried it and it worked in firefox. Are you blocking Websockets by any chance? Perhaps it's your firewall. I am using phoenix liveview which uses websockets for everything.
      - war1025 7y ago
        So I tried again and it seems to be working this time. But the page of the book is ~240x190px and I can't read a darn thing.
        benja123 7y ago
        Can you send me a screenshot? Send it to ben@readastorytome.com
        war1025 7y ago
        Third time is apparently the charm and now it's working just perfect. If it messes up again I'll send something.
sshah1983 7y ago
Caribu is an app in this space as well. Essentially video calls with sync’ed storybooks.
anticsapp 7y ago
This is a really good idea. This has nothing to do with the current crisis but if you could somehow credibly guarantee hosting for 50+ years people could read stories to their yet to be born grandchildren. People with terminal diseases and a two year old could still read to their children after their passing. Consider it.
- amerine 7y ago
  You could probably hash the recording names/details and store that on a world-readable unique public URL and feed those to your users through internet archive links.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- juliushuijnk 7y ago
  I created an app that allows you to do that. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.juliushuijnk.tools.mypicturebooks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.juliushuij... You create a book in the app by taking pictures. Add audio to a page. You can export the book in a .zip file, that you can put on your desktop and view in your browser. To be honest, de sharing experience sucks (ever tried getting a big .zip file from a mobile phone to a desktop..?), also the browser view doesn't have the flipping pages. It's a pet project I've often neglected for a couple of years, and then put some extra effort in. But I'm now working on the online part, where you can upload the zip file, and share the book via an URL, and does have the flipping pages. Would love to get feedback, so if someone wants to try it out, contact me and I can create account for you. Would be great to make a commercial product out of it, but I used to not have the tech skills, and now pretty much have the skills, but finding the time is the challenge. Also I refuse to add ads :)
  - blue_devil 7y ago
    We've created a lightweight app that creates a custom format of audio + photo + your metadata (tags, notes etc): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.pointo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.pointo You can share a specific recording by creating a link valid for 24 hours, intended for p2p sharing. We've heard people use this for similar things: teachers teaching kids, journaling, voice memos, tracking investment decisions, recipes etc. Limitation is that there's one photo per recording atm.
TheYahiaBakour 7y ago
It would be great if you could save them for extended periods of time so parents could pre-record stories for their kids
hoomank3 7y ago
Nice app. It could also be used to help the medical students who's exams have all been cancelled. I would like to help if this is open-sourced. One feature request: my Microsoft surface has a front and back camera. For some reason, the app started with the read camera on. Would be nice if there was a way to pick which camera you want, if there are multiple cameras on the device.
- _benj 7y ago
  I think that what camera is used doesn't depend on the app but on the browser. In mine (Firefox) it asks me if I want to give permission to the app to use the my camera AND it asks me which camera I want to give permission to. Chrome also has something like that (I think it's in the URL bar, an icon that looks like a video camera?) Anyways, hope this helps!
  - benja123 7y ago
    You are correct - that is one way, but with webrtc there is also a way to give users an option to pick which audio/video source
- benja123 7y ago
  Thanks hoomank. I will look at adding that option in the future. When you say it could be used to help people study for their exams, do you mean in one on one sessions or do you mean group sessions?
brianforde 7y ago
This feels a lot like Caribu app https://caribu.com/ https://caribu.com/
license2e 7y ago
This is an awesome idea, I had one yesterday that was similar but for a different purpose: LastMessage.to/<someone> After reading this article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/us/costa-luminosa-passengers-ordeal/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/us/costa-luminosa-passengers-... "Kevin and Ryan Sheehan will never know whether their father heard them say goodbye on speaker phone." My thought was to create a place where you can leave your last message to someone or to the world.
- benja123 7y ago
  That story really gets to me. With Covid-19 it's not just getting sick, it's getting sick and then being isolated from your family and loved ones knowing you may never see them again. Then you have the health care workers who are providing life saving care while isolating themselves from their loved ones so as not to risk getting them sick. The closest thing I have experienced to that type of fear is military service, but at least in that case my family and I had time to prepare for it mentally. Luckily I got through that experience okay. I couldn't imagine being in the situation that these people are in today. Anyways - I find it kind of hard to put into words how Covid makes me feel
zoom6628 7y ago
This is wonderful. Truly one of those 'make a difference' kind of projects! Kudos.
- benja123 7y ago
  Thank you!
Dedatbc 7y ago
Looks pretty neatsf!
artur_makly 7y ago
I just wanted to personally thank you for making this. My 7yr old and his grandparents in NYC are LOVING this. Please keep uploading more great books to the library!
- benja123 7y ago
  Thank you so much for this comment. Really made my day.

185 points by benja123 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

anymane 7y ago

Such a cool idea!

benja123 7y ago
Thanks. It's been pretty useful for us and let us keep some type of normalcy during these strange times.

tagolli 7y ago

This looks really cool! I only see 7 books in the bookshelf. Are you planning to add more?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
benja123 7y ago
Thanks. Yes - I will be adding more over time.
- seige 7y ago
  Are these 7 books on public domain? Dont you have to run through buying rights or something to use books written by others?
  - benja123 7y ago
    They are all CC licensed books. See the footer and bookshelf where I include the license and link back to the sources

scott113341 7y ago

Awesome idea, and nice work! Is this open source, and if so, would you mind sharing a link to it? I am beginning work on a slightly similar project [1] to help facilitate speech therapy (girlfriend is a speech-language pathologist) over video chat and would be interested to compare with your approach and tech stack. I saw this [2] Chess + video chat project the other day, and drew heavy inspiration from its approach [3]. [1]: https://github.com/scott113341/slp-memory https://github.com/scott113341/slp-memory [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790728 [3]: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/rootshirechess https://glitch.com/edit/#!/rootshirechess

benja123 7y ago
I have not made it open source atm, but it is something I am considering. Tech stack: Elixir/Phoenix (liveview mostly) WebRTC code is based off: https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/webrtc-web/#0 https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/webrtc-web/#... I setup a turnserver using https://github.com/coturn/coturn https://github.com/coturn/coturn What do you need help with? Maybe I can help you now.
- fareesh 7y ago
  +1 for open source, I like Phoenix and it would be great to improve my knowledge from an example like this.
- palerdot 7y ago
  I'm interested more about how you are doing deployments of elixir/phoenix app, and your dev setup ... like do you use docker for developing and production and stuffs like that ...
  - benja123 7y ago
    edeliver + distillery Followed this tutorial https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-automate-elixir-phoenix-deployment-with-distillery-and-edeliver-on-ubuntu-16-04 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-auto...

ldenoue 7y ago

Very nice. Testing on my iPhone 6s landscape, I noticed the prev and next buttons were not aligned with the book page. I also created a similar tool a few weeks ago available for free as well here https://www.appblit.com/bookcafe https://www.appblit.com/bookcafe

benja123 7y ago
That is really cool! Honestly we didn't focus on the "look" beyond making sure it was functional.

mataug 7y ago

This is so cool, My mom is a school teacher, and the school is trying to get her to make videos for her students. She struggles with video editing software to make videos. This could help a lot, especially if I could have custom stories. She could do a story session with my and I would just record the screen.

benja123 7y ago
You can! Right now you can upload a PDF and that becomes your story.
- mataug 7y ago
  Thank you !! I was thinking about building something like this over the weekend. You saved me a lot of effort. I'm willing to self-host / donate some money if that helps with server costs.
  - benja123 7y ago
    Anytime. You should still build one! It was a lot of fun to build. Thanks for the offer, but right now I don't see a need for any donations/self hosting. Maybe that will come, but at the moment a relatively small single DO box is handling it pretty well.

_benj 7y ago

Thanks for sharing! It such a great idea :-) Talking with my wife (SLP) she observed how important is interactive reading and I was wondering if you had that planned or if open sourcing this was an option so I could contribute to something like that. Just as a reference, some therapy platforms allow the users to draw on the book, or put stickers and such... and even though this is not full-blown therapeutic, being able to draw (a transparent HTLM canvas on top of the image? websockets communicating x,y?) would add a lot to this, I think. Thanks for sharing!

benja123 7y ago
I thought about adding a transparent layer so that my daughter and parents can draw on a story. I never thought about it from a therapy point of view, but that is just not an area I am familiar with - interesting though. I would be super happy if this can be used for that. As far as open sourcing it goes - I have not made it open source ATM, but it is definitely something I am considering.
- anticsapp 7y ago
  Is there any way you could apply here: https://apply.ycombinator.com/session/new?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fapply.ycombinator.com%2F https://apply.ycombinator.com/session/new?continue=https%3A%... and rush your build in April/May? You have ten days left to apply but it looks fine in the current state. You really have something here. I have no affiliation with YC/HN.

cs44 7y ago

How has your experience with LiveView been?

benja123 7y ago
Pretty great. It let me write this really quickly with minimal effort. There were some quirks and some weird hacks I had to make when it came to working with JS, but that could also be me doing it wrong. My biggest complaint would be around some latency issues when the connection is bad, but I knew that would be an issue when I chose it. I would definitely choose it again.

nicois 7y ago

Add in the WHO book for children to help with dealing with covid too: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-04-2020-children-s-story-book-released-to-help-children-and-young-people-cope-with-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-04-2020-children-s-s...

benja123 7y ago
Done!
JuanJew 7y ago
Uh, I wouldn't expect the WHO to have a progressive agenda here as well but why all people in the book is dark skinned and no one is white?

war1025 7y ago

I just tried this and couldn't get anything to load (Firefox). Maybe I'm just doing something wrong? Didn't see any errors in the console

benja123 7y ago
Mobile or desktop?
- war1025 7y ago
  Desktop. I went into an "Anonymous Room" and it showed the interface, but there was no book. I tried selecting a book from the "Bookshelf" and nothing happened
  - benja123 7y ago
    Interesting - I tried it and it worked in firefox. Are you blocking Websockets by any chance? Perhaps it's your firewall. I am using phoenix liveview which uses websockets for everything.
    - war1025 7y ago
      So I tried again and it seems to be working this time. But the page of the book is ~240x190px and I can't read a darn thing.
      - benja123 7y ago
        Can you send me a screenshot? Send it to ben@readastorytome.com
        war1025 7y ago
        Third time is apparently the charm and now it's working just perfect. If it messes up again I'll send something.

sshah1983 7y ago

Caribu is an app in this space as well. Essentially video calls with sync’ed storybooks.

anticsapp 7y ago

This is a really good idea. This has nothing to do with the current crisis but if you could somehow credibly guarantee hosting for 50+ years people could read stories to their yet to be born grandchildren. People with terminal diseases and a two year old could still read to their children after their passing. Consider it.

amerine 7y ago
You could probably hash the recording names/details and store that on a world-readable unique public URL and feed those to your users through internet archive links.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
juliushuijnk 7y ago
I created an app that allows you to do that. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.juliushuijnk.tools.mypicturebooks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.juliushuij... You create a book in the app by taking pictures. Add audio to a page. You can export the book in a .zip file, that you can put on your desktop and view in your browser. To be honest, de sharing experience sucks (ever tried getting a big .zip file from a mobile phone to a desktop..?), also the browser view doesn't have the flipping pages. It's a pet project I've often neglected for a couple of years, and then put some extra effort in. But I'm now working on the online part, where you can upload the zip file, and share the book via an URL, and does have the flipping pages. Would love to get feedback, so if someone wants to try it out, contact me and I can create account for you. Would be great to make a commercial product out of it, but I used to not have the tech skills, and now pretty much have the skills, but finding the time is the challenge. Also I refuse to add ads :)
- blue_devil 7y ago
  We've created a lightweight app that creates a custom format of audio + photo + your metadata (tags, notes etc): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.pointo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.pointo You can share a specific recording by creating a link valid for 24 hours, intended for p2p sharing. We've heard people use this for similar things: teachers teaching kids, journaling, voice memos, tracking investment decisions, recipes etc. Limitation is that there's one photo per recording atm.

TheYahiaBakour 7y ago

It would be great if you could save them for extended periods of time so parents could pre-record stories for their kids

hoomank3 7y ago

Nice app. It could also be used to help the medical students who's exams have all been cancelled. I would like to help if this is open-sourced. One feature request: my Microsoft surface has a front and back camera. For some reason, the app started with the read camera on. Would be nice if there was a way to pick which camera you want, if there are multiple cameras on the device.

_benj 7y ago
I think that what camera is used doesn't depend on the app but on the browser. In mine (Firefox) it asks me if I want to give permission to the app to use the my camera AND it asks me which camera I want to give permission to. Chrome also has something like that (I think it's in the URL bar, an icon that looks like a video camera?) Anyways, hope this helps!
- benja123 7y ago
  You are correct - that is one way, but with webrtc there is also a way to give users an option to pick which audio/video source
benja123 7y ago
Thanks hoomank. I will look at adding that option in the future. When you say it could be used to help people study for their exams, do you mean in one on one sessions or do you mean group sessions?

brianforde 7y ago

This feels a lot like Caribu app https://caribu.com/ https://caribu.com/

license2e 7y ago

This is an awesome idea, I had one yesterday that was similar but for a different purpose: LastMessage.to/<someone> After reading this article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/us/costa-luminosa-passengers-ordeal/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/us/costa-luminosa-passengers-... "Kevin and Ryan Sheehan will never know whether their father heard them say goodbye on speaker phone." My thought was to create a place where you can leave your last message to someone or to the world.

benja123 7y ago
That story really gets to me. With Covid-19 it's not just getting sick, it's getting sick and then being isolated from your family and loved ones knowing you may never see them again. Then you have the health care workers who are providing life saving care while isolating themselves from their loved ones so as not to risk getting them sick. The closest thing I have experienced to that type of fear is military service, but at least in that case my family and I had time to prepare for it mentally. Luckily I got through that experience okay. I couldn't imagine being in the situation that these people are in today. Anyways - I find it kind of hard to put into words how Covid makes me feel

zoom6628 7y ago

This is wonderful. Truly one of those 'make a difference' kind of projects! Kudos.

benja123 7y ago
Thank you!

Dedatbc 7y ago

Looks pretty neatsf!

artur_makly 7y ago

I just wanted to personally thank you for making this. My 7yr old and his grandparents in NYC are LOVING this. Please keep uploading more great books to the library!

benja123 7y ago
Thank you so much for this comment. Really made my day.