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Show HN: Google Chrome – Voice Memo

30 points by alireyraa 11y ago

kisna72 11y ago
Here is what I am thinking. Using .Mp3 format probably violates the patent. But what if you roll out your own compressor using the same FFT Technology? Did you research this option? You are basically converting time domain waveform into frequency domain, then removing the frequency that doesn't matter much thus causing lossy compression of the music.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Isn't it using Opus? Much superior to MP3 for voice and the patents are royality free. RecorderJS seems to at least use Opus. But what if you roll out your own compressor using the same FFT Technology? There's quite a bit more to modern codecs than that.
rockdoe 11y ago
MediaRecorder should work in Firefox, and this appears to be a trivial demo of it? I must be missing why this is Chrome only. Edit: Tested, it "just works" in Firefox too.
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  My guess is that the github account (GoogleChrome) is simply an account of Google Chrome developers, and so that demo was probably made by them. That it works elsewhere - yay open standards :-)
  - kinlan 11y ago
    Yep, it was made by my colleague Paul Lewis. we tried to make it work everywhere where there is getUserMedia and Web Audio support.
callahad 11y ago
This works wonderfully on Firefox OS. Hooray for open standards!
daveloyall 11y ago
I'm using Firefox nightly. The first time I visited the Voice Memo page, a little notification box on the bottom left informed me that the app is ready for offline use. ...How do I access it when I am offline? I looked around for a new tool bar button, etc, but found nothing. EDIT: All I have to do is visit the same URL, while offline. ...This means that Firefox doesn't always do a DNS lookup when you type in a URL... Hm.
- kinlan 11y ago
  Yep, that is pretty much the same with any site that supports either AppCache or ServiceWorker... Wondering if the "Hm" is a frustration or something else?
  - daveloyall 11y ago
    The "hm" is frustration/resignation about the constant pressure to dumb everything down... Resulting in everything being worse. There was a time when you had to type the "http"... (You know, to distinguish from gopher://!) I was happy to type that in, because it informed my mental model of what would happen when I pushed enter: My machine would request that resource from this host. The request would be in the form specified by that protocol, as would be the response. In my mind, a URL like https://voice-memos.appspot.com/ https://voice-memos.appspot.com/ represents a remote resource. Specifically, a resource in appspot's domain... There are plenty of ways they could have addressed these local apps differently. localapp://com.appspot.voice-memos https://voice-memos.appspot.com.localhost https://voice-memos.appspot.com.localhost about:apps/voice-memos [Some Apps button on the toolbar that shows a list of those which are installed locally]
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  This sounds like a feature request in favor of an 'offline apps' drawer somewhere :) As for the DNS lookup, not sure what it does, but couldn't Firefox just fall back to looking at the offline store if it can't connect to the site? (where it looks for updates by checking the manifest)

30 points by alireyraa 11y ago

Here is what I am thinking. Using .Mp3 format probably violates the patent. But what if you roll out your own compressor using the same FFT Technology? Did you research this option? You are basically converting time domain waveform into frequency domain, then removing the frequency that doesn't matter much thus causing lossy compression of the music.

rockdoe 11y ago
Isn't it using Opus? Much superior to MP3 for voice and the patents are royality free. RecorderJS seems to at least use Opus. But what if you roll out your own compressor using the same FFT Technology? There's quite a bit more to modern codecs than that.

rockdoe 11y ago

MediaRecorder should work in Firefox, and this appears to be a trivial demo of it? I must be missing why this is Chrome only. Edit: Tested, it "just works" in Firefox too.

pgeorgi 11y ago
My guess is that the github account (GoogleChrome) is simply an account of Google Chrome developers, and so that demo was probably made by them. That it works elsewhere - yay open standards :-)
- kinlan 11y ago
  Yep, it was made by my colleague Paul Lewis. we tried to make it work everywhere where there is getUserMedia and Web Audio support.

callahad 11y ago

This works wonderfully on Firefox OS. Hooray for open standards!

daveloyall 11y ago

I'm using Firefox nightly. The first time I visited the Voice Memo page, a little notification box on the bottom left informed me that the app is ready for offline use. ...How do I access it when I am offline? I looked around for a new tool bar button, etc, but found nothing. EDIT: All I have to do is visit the same URL, while offline. ...This means that Firefox doesn't always do a DNS lookup when you type in a URL... Hm.

kinlan 11y ago
Yep, that is pretty much the same with any site that supports either AppCache or ServiceWorker... Wondering if the "Hm" is a frustration or something else?
- daveloyall 11y ago
  The "hm" is frustration/resignation about the constant pressure to dumb everything down... Resulting in everything being worse. There was a time when you had to type the "http"... (You know, to distinguish from gopher://!) I was happy to type that in, because it informed my mental model of what would happen when I pushed enter: My machine would request that resource from this host. The request would be in the form specified by that protocol, as would be the response. In my mind, a URL like https://voice-memos.appspot.com/ https://voice-memos.appspot.com/ represents a remote resource. Specifically, a resource in appspot's domain... There are plenty of ways they could have addressed these local apps differently. localapp://com.appspot.voice-memos https://voice-memos.appspot.com.localhost https://voice-memos.appspot.com.localhost about:apps/voice-memos [Some Apps button on the toolbar that shows a list of those which are installed locally]
pgeorgi 11y ago
This sounds like a feature request in favor of an 'offline apps' drawer somewhere :) As for the DNS lookup, not sure what it does, but couldn't Firefox just fall back to looking at the offline store if it can't connect to the site? (where it looks for updates by checking the manifest)