OfflineSergio

I'm still working on WithAudio (https://desktop.with.audio). A one time payment Text To Speech Desktop App. Because I think everything doesn't have to be a subscription.

In October I finished the PDF parser. It was a big challenge extracting PDF contect with correct paragraph breaks on user's computer locally. I'm gonna write about this soon.

Now I'm working on a web extension that talks to the app that run locally on your system so you can use WithAudio in your browser with very good performance, 100% local and private.

I don't think its worth it, but lets say I did it, what if others that I depend on dont do it? I still won't be fully functional and only one of us have spent a bunch of money.

Currently working on the web reader of WithAudio. Just add with.audio/ to begining of a public URL and get the text and audio in your browser. It runs the TTS in your browser so its free and unlimited.

You can read more about it and watch a demo: https://blog.with.audio/posts/web-reader-tts

I buit this to get some traffic to my main project's website using a free tool people might like. The main project: https://desktop.with.audio -> a one time payment text to speech app with text highlighting and export mp3 and other features on MacOS (ARM only) and Windows.

While the quality of what I'm seeing is very nice for AI generated content (I still can't believe it) but the fact thay they are mostly showing short clips and not a long connected consistent video makes it less impressive.

WithAudio a one-time payment, desktop text-to-speech app that helps users read better by highlighting text as it's spoken.

Current Challenges:

Technical: It's difficult to consistently parse text from various document formats. The I also wants to expand to more platforms but I know I need to focus on marketing.

Non-technical: The product has seen some success with minimal marketing, but I keep getting distracted by spending too much time on technical work. I know I need to do more for marketing but I keep going to my safe space (my IDE).

I believe in the product but it keeps reminding me how difficult is to get somethig to a polished, finished state for all users. 90% of the project takes 90% of the time and the other 10% takes another 90% of the time.

Appreciate any feedback.

https://desktop.with.audio

Just imagine you are investigating a bug and everyone is trying to express their opnion on whose fault is this. What happened to not having a blaming culture?

I think they enough unnecessary content in universities that there be room for both DSA and testing.

I’ve been working on https://with.audio which is a local app.

I think there should be way more local apps with sync capabilities. I haven’t finished the sync feature in WithAudio and you have very nice ideas there. Specially the eventual consistency. That’s what will work.

But I must say for sure the most difficult part of local apps is debugging customer issues. For someone who is used to logs and traces and metrics and most of users using a one version of the code in the backend, debugging an issue in customers computer on an old version without much insight (without destroying all your premises of privacy) is very challenging.

When it comes to Information Retrieval, you can get anything between links to existing documents or generated content based on those processed information. I agree that the second one is really powerfuly and just amazing and seemilngly useful. But the fact that it can also be wrong in more cases and I won't know keep being reminded to my using it for things I'm not good at and they just don't work s they should.

I just wish the business models could justify a confidence level being attached to the response.

- Do I relaly get "Unlimited documents" for $14.99? Or there is a an actual limit preventing me from converting, like 10 Million characters?

- Why should one use this and not Speehify?

Also, I just uploaded a PDF and its reading the footers of each page as well. I prefer to upload text so I can edit it myself.

I initially didn’t remember but as soon as he started writing I remembered him. He is the reason I write in all caps on the paper. I watched his AI course like 10 years ago or so and learned a lot! I thought he looked familiar but just because I initially thought this is a different type of course I just didn’t think of that AI course.

I read in the comments that he is passed away, god bless him.

Came here to say this. I’m using Microsoft Clarity and I’m very happy with it.

Maybe less known tools have a better chance bypassing AdBlockers?

I'm Working on WithAudio https://desktop.with.audio A one time payment - text to speech app with text highlighting and exporting audio capabilities. I mostly use it as an enhanced reading solution because helps me read better when I enable text highlighting.

Its not a subscription based product because it works locally.

my current technical challenges:

- parsing text out of various document formats to a consistent format is not easy. Don’t make start on PDFs!

- I'd like to support more platforms specially non pc ones but at the same time I think I should force myself to spend time on marketing.

my non technical challenge:

- Not spending time on dev and tech work as I keep being pushed towards my comfort zone.

- Product has been fairly succesfull in amount of sales considering the amount of marketing was done (just some random Reddit posts and a couple of HN comments). But figuring out larger or more consistent solutions is definitely challenge.

- Finding larger audience -> ive been trying to reach out to microinfluencers and bloggers or app reviewers to see if I can setup partnerships with them or not. Haven’t been very successful in even getting them get back to me. To initiate the chat.

- Finding more consistent marketing solutions -> been playing with ADs in different platforms with minimal budgets.

Any feedback, comment or thought is really appreciated.

Does apple allow you to to sell both through App Store and direct through another payment echo system? I thought they are more strict than that.

https://menial.co.uk/base/buy/

can't a guy just create something anymore? :D They have to have a business model or a grand plan ?

I don't think having new search engines would be a challenge. The problem is attracting new users and making them realize there is benefit it diversifying what they use. There are already other search engines but the majority still use Google.

If this works as you say in iOS you would be my new hero! Joined the wait list, would be happy to be part of any test you like to run.

It’s wild seeing AIs ace IQ tests so quickly. But those tests already have cultural bias baked in and if the models are also overfitting to them, that’s bias squared. Still, the pace of progress is hard to ignore.

I was happy being absolutely right and now I keep noticing that constantly.

this is great. one suggestion, it would be nice if I can filter based on subscriptions vs. one time payments.

I'm obsessed with "simultaneously read the book and listen to it". Thats why I built WithAudio. You can checkout the demo here: https://desktop.with.audio/reader-demo

I'd love to hear any feedback you have. "prefer a good human-written book with an additional AI voice on top to enable that feature for me" is exactly what I prefer when it comes to reading.

amazing! can't wait to integrate it into https://desktop.with.audio I'm already using KokorosTTS without a GPU. It works fairly well on Apple Silicon.

Foundational tools like this open up the possiblity of one-time payment or even free tools.

Thanks I'm using https://huggingface.co/spaces/hexgrad/Kokoro-TTS

"WithAudio", a text to speech solution for Desktop.

https://desktop.with.audio

The most important features (for me) are: One Time Payment and 100% local and private. I don't send any data to any server. Just enough to verify license keys.

- Its one time payment, user can import any text, URL or ebooks and use the reader with read along text highlighting or export the audio as mp3 or m4a (audiobook specific format).

- Currently only supports MacOS with Apple Silicon I was doing Windows too but its making development slow, so I'm pausing that for now. - The most recent feature I added is Global Capture where user can setup some hotkeys to import any text and URL. Text parsing and extracting text is one of the hardest part of this. - Also, just added the a Reader view to website. Its goal is to mimic the app featuers as much as the browser limitations allow. I don't have a free Tier but a 7 days money back gurantee.

I mostly have a dev and engineering background but the most exciting aspect of this marketing and those stuff. Still trying to figure that.

I'd be happy to hear any feedback and ideas.

Edit: Only English at the moment. Adding more languages is in my plan but its very difficult for me since I don't know any other languages. But I think it would be great to add those as well.

https://www.helcim.com/ and https://www.koho.ca/ come to mind as ell but didn’t see anyone mention them.

Sadly not at the moment. I need some help to confirm other languages as I only understand English.

I’m working on a desktop app called With Audio https://desktop.with.audio a one time payment desktop app.

— it turns ebooks, articles, and documents into synchronized audio with real-time text highlighting. It’s great for people who prefer listening while reading (or want to stay focused), and it works fully offline with a one-time purchase — no subscriptions.

I’m bootstrapping it and trying to figure out how to market it effectively. So far, I’ve had some traction and early sales just by posting on Reddit, but I’m still learning the marketing side — especially how to reach people who’d benefit from it most.

Would love to hear how others approached early growth for similar bootstrapped tools.

I've used this repo and its great. It was one many things that inspired me in building a similar tool. I built https://desktop.with.audio

It was important to me that it be 100% private and local and wanted it to be a one time payment solution. Because it locally process your data it can be a one time payment text to speech app.

If you are interested in creating audiobooks from epubs check this demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOHzo6Oq0lQ If you are interested in listening while reading with text highlighting check these demos: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yJ-lsbzAuw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8wi4d8xmnw

I'm not writing, I'm building and this post and these comments is exactly what I needed to read this morning.

Of course. Its very early days of doing this. I released the early access last month and then spent some time compiling it for Windows as well (before that it was only Mac arm). I'm promoting it again. At the moment I have 5 customers that are not friends and families by posting on Reddit audiobooks subreddit. My plan is to just keep promoting on social media, or communities like study groups or students for a while. I believe I should be able to get first 100 customers without paying for ads. It might be too naive but I think it not being a subscription can be a very good selling point and also it being local.

I'm a dev, I'm very much new to sales and marketing world. I think its fair to say I have no idea about next steps after dev work is finished (enough to attempt to sale). Mostly trying to figure that out.