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Yes! When I was on Windows, I wrote a program that starts music, pausing every few minutes to read out (using Windows's text-to-speech) the time, the weather (s

Yes! When I was on Windows, I wrote a program that starts music, pausing every few minutes to read out (using Windows's text-to-speech) the time, the weather (scraped from BBC's site; I was in England), which of my favorite blogs had updated in the last day, and any reminders I had for the day. The program was cool enough that my girlfriend anthropomorphized it; we called the voice Grizwelda, and she had the capability to add her own reminders. Last year I switched to Ubuntu and had some trouble with text-to-speech at first, so my current alarm clock is just a program that just tells Rhythmbox to start playing at a certain time. (I just got Festival text-to-speech working reliably today, so I'm planning to add all my old features I had in Windows days.) I'd be very interested to hear about your startup. Put the details in your profile?

paul7986 18y ago
It's called http://sleep.fm http://sleep.fm & it's similar to Iron Man's alarm clock in the movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXH2K2ZlrjQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXH2K2ZlrjQ and also to what you created! Right now wakes you to various types of weather forecasts, time and also the day and date. We'll be adding more sounds and options too! Please...would be great if you used our service :) Less hassle for you to create something on your own. Were all ears too for other forms of wake up communication people will find useful!
- michaelkeenan 18y ago
  Thanks, I signed up and sent feedback. That Youtube video is marked as private so I can't view it; I thought I'd let you know in case it's something you often send to people as a demo.
- pwim 18y ago
  Sorry, I don't understand Fahrenheit.
  - paul7986 18y ago
    Currently a web app but soon available on other platforms and we'll be adding Celsius soon too! Though for your forecast for today we currently speak the temperature in descriptive yet general terms...i.e. freezing temperatures with heavy snow or your forecast for today will be warm with showers.
- streety 18y ago
  Am I right in thinking this is solely a webapp at the moment? I wouldn't really want to leave my computer on overnight. Can you recommend an app for waking from hibernation ready for your service to kick in?
  - jodrellblank 18y ago
    You could look into an Asterisk telephony solution - anywhere you have access to an asterisk server, setup a cron job to get it to ring you (and text-to-speech something to you). Perhaps possible with http://www.twilio.com/ http://www.twilio.com/ ? (As a way to get information to you without leaving your computer on - but some BIOS's have a wake-on-modem option so this might work for that with some tweaking).

paul7986 18y ago

It's called http://sleep.fm http://sleep.fm & it's similar to Iron Man's alarm clock in the movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXH2K2ZlrjQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXH2K2ZlrjQ and also to what you created! Right now wakes you to various types of weather forecasts, time and also the day and date. We'll be adding more sounds and options too! Please...would be great if you used our service :) Less hassle for you to create something on your own. Were all ears too for other forms of wake up communication people will find useful!

michaelkeenan 18y ago
Thanks, I signed up and sent feedback. That Youtube video is marked as private so I can't view it; I thought I'd let you know in case it's something you often send to people as a demo.
pwim 18y ago
Sorry, I don't understand Fahrenheit.
- paul7986 18y ago
  Currently a web app but soon available on other platforms and we'll be adding Celsius soon too! Though for your forecast for today we currently speak the temperature in descriptive yet general terms...i.e. freezing temperatures with heavy snow or your forecast for today will be warm with showers.
streety 18y ago
Am I right in thinking this is solely a webapp at the moment? I wouldn't really want to leave my computer on overnight. Can you recommend an app for waking from hibernation ready for your service to kick in?
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  You could look into an Asterisk telephony solution - anywhere you have access to an asterisk server, setup a cron job to get it to ring you (and text-to-speech something to you). Perhaps possible with http://www.twilio.com/ http://www.twilio.com/ ? (As a way to get information to you without leaving your computer on - but some BIOS's have a wake-on-modem option so this might work for that with some tweaking).