Thursday, August 9, 2007

Day 88

So I am now starting to realize this next couple of weeks are going to be busy... We have a whole bunch of paperwork to do before our next meeting with our investor. Schedules, schedules, schedules, I have to have a two year development schedule laid out. Along with some other schedules. Ryan has the fun part of getting contracts laid out, haha, he has it worse then I do, because man that crap is boring I would rather be coding. Which I need to do a lot of in the next 2 weeks as well. None the less, I am really happy that have some one wanting to invest. Its pretty cool that someone believes enough in us to put down some cash money.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Day 87

Well, we just got done meeting with a soon to be investor, our next meeting will be in 2 weeks where will hammer out the details of the contract and exact $$ amounts. Hard to believe in just under 3 months we are discussing figure amounts with an investor. Not to mention just a touch over 3 months we could be spending thousands of dollars on equipment and legal fees.

Its nice to see we are growing...I have to wonder what we will look like in 3 more months.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Day 75

So the Text to speech is still causing major issues. We have another server that will be used for text to speech only. We are trying to create our own PHP wrapper for Microsoft SAPI. We have several ppl that are willing to sell VocalNoise just need it get this TTS to work. No one said this was easy, I guess this is our big stumbling block.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Day 54

So we have the user generation system done. However after working some 10 hours to find an online service to do text to speech with multiple language support... turns out there are no such companies. Our web hosting does not want to install FestVox on shared server, understandable. But we do have a possibility, Cepstral (www.cepstral.com). I am calling there CEO on Monday to see if we can use there demo site, which does exactly what we are looking for.

side note: this past week has sucked... I mean really sucked. The text to speech issue is a big ugly beast which will take a couple weeks to nail down, thus hosing our deployment schedule. I now know why so many businesses fail... persistence.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Day 46

Ah... development that takes longer then you though. Well at least that's how I feel. This weeekend I have convienced my programmer to meet with me on Saturday and having a coding marathon. Currently he is working on an automated user subcription/registration system. This saturday we are going to redo the user interface and upload a lot of symbols. Should be fun times.

Oh, on a side note we have a meeting with a speech and pathologist professor at IU to look at the product and try to get the first steps into getting it into the IU clinics.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Day 39

So we officially have another developer. We really need this, it should greatly improve the development. We are setting up an appointment with a clinical speech and pathologist at IU which is the first step in getting VocalNoise to the public/clinic at IU. This would be big if we can get it into this clinic. I am going to try to get a video of someone using the product and post it as things are starting to come together but we have a long way to go.... I hope I can make it....

Monday, June 18, 2007

Technorati Profile

This blog is now available on Technorati!

Day 36

So we have sound working now...finally.. but only for IE. This is not the best situation but we are working on fixing that.

The buzz is starting to build amongst myself and Ryan. Once I finish the auto placement algorithm, I am going to enable the upload script and he can start uploading symbols. Also, the new tab script is almost finished.

Once the symbols are sent up we are going to user testing. Today I am going to start emailing some initial users.

During alpha user testing we are also going to be looking at fixing our "engineer-art" of an interface.

On a side note, I have figure that if we get 100 users to sign up for a year, or 1000 user-months, I can quit my current job and pursue this full time. I have decided to make a post after each of these following goals are met: 1 user month, 10 user months, 50 months, 100 months, 250 months, 500 months, and 1000 user months.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Day29

Well we have the different modes implemented. Next need to fix the edit mode to add lock mode, so it will save the position and size of all the images. Progress is coming along slowly but with each coding session something comes out of it, however it just seems like it is taking forever.

We are moving the alpha release back at least a week likely two.

Once the auto movement script is working, Ryan will have the job of upload hundreds of icons, for the site, that will be fun.

Finally, I still can not get the sound to work, it has to be something very trivial. I am going to have a fellow employee here at work take a look but man this is bugging me.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Day26

So the upload script is done, except for commenting out the insert line to the database.

Now tackling the ability to use modes, an edit mode and a locked mode. In locked mode we should be able to get the sounds working finally.

Last night, I met with a speech and pathology graduate student to get the lay of the land from their proscpective. She gave me loads of good marketing material from other companies, it looks like we are on the bleeding edge of aac. Also found out some useful information from her in regards to icons and the general process of selecting an AAC device. Finally, she gave me the names of IU professors to contact to try to get VocalNoise in some clinical trials, now that would be awesome.

This Saturday I am forcing myself to get at least 8 hours of development done. It should make for an interesting day.

4 days till our planned alpha release, this ought to be a busy weekend.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Day 22

Looking back at what is done right now, I suppose I should be happy, but I feel like there is some much left to do. Anyways, I have the my upload icon system/processor pretty much working. One thing left to do is have my main layout page auto create the positioning for the newly created icons.

Some things I need to get done before creating and implement a new GUI:

1.) finish upload script
2.) create auto positioning for new images
3.) get sound working on click
4.) ability to create new tab

I am calling Ryan tonight, he is going to have the privilege of finding an uploading all the default icons, ha ha.

By day 30 I want this sucker running good and a client using it, we will see how that goes.

Finally, I am going to do some updating on Vocalnoise and possibly some screenshots of Vocalnoise in action.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Day 21

I did not get as much done this weekend as I would have liked to. I did however get absolute positioning and resizing based off a database for my icons. This is a nice hurdle to cross, but after screwing with that for a while, I tried to implement sound on a click, no big deal on normal sites, however everything is dynamic and my javascript to make the images dragable is causing some hickups. Well hopefully tonight I can get the sound working, then tommorrow night the uploading working.

So much for being ahead of schedule

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Day 16

We have success in uploading an image to the site, one less thing to do. Its amazing how wonderful PHP, cPanel, and MySQL. I love it when determined individuals make software that is free and works really, really, good.

Next on the list is to complete the form image upload and sound uploads, then its on to populating the sounds.

I think we can hit our goal for user testing. Its starting to get more exciting with each passing day. A couple more days and we should be able to slap on our first real GUI, but first grammar corrections on the website, ehhh... grammar.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Day 15

Ok, we come what seems to be a long way in a couple of weeks, but we have so much more to go. I implemented a new login from the main site. Also created the first layout, made the initial mysql database, and implemented some image retrieval scripts. So far you can log in and test out two sample tabs each containing only one image. I plan on creating a master login to add default images to the site and then regular logins that can add images just to there userids. Tonight I am planning on implementing an image upload script and possibly a sound upload script.

I feel that we have reached a peak and are headed back into a valley in regards to this project. Hopefully we charge through this valley, as I am really tired from coding a lot this weekend. I think that 5 or 6 more 4 hour coding sessions and we should have something usable. Then we will need to get a whole bunch of contents (icons and sounds).

Friday, May 25, 2007

Day 11

So after working for a couple hours to increase our pagerank and submitting to search engines, you can now google us although just using VocalNoise. We are going to have to work hard to improve that. Anyways I am excited about this weekend because the development is starting, and we are contacting our first tester!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Day ...

So its been a couple of days since my last reply, but hey now we have a good site up at www.vocalnoise.com , go there and check it out. Currently, I am trying to figure out this whole SEO thing to get our site some more PageRank at google and other search engines.

Anyway, this weekend the real fun stuff starts, making VocalNoise. Since its labor day weekend I am foreseeing alot of progress made in a short amount of time, who knows maybe we will even be ahead of schedule.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Day 5,6,7

Well, we now are offically on the internet, however its merely a parked page. We are launching a more informative new site on Day 9. Also we have found what sounds like a good connection to test our product, but the product needs to be developed first which will take a while. Check out the temporary parked page: www.vocalnoise.com

Going to be doing a lot of web design tonight.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Day 4

This weekend were are having our first meeting, we will see how that goes. Also going to finalize the back end and get it built. We are going to create a test server on one of my computers, before we upload to our new host which is yet to be finalized. Right now, webhostingbuzz is the winner. I mean come on 30gigs of webspace for 3 dollars a month.

Hopefully with a week, we will have a good parking page up advertising and the next a working alpha prototype.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Day 3

Well, we now officially have another member on board, Ryan. Ryan is going to be the business brains of the operations. He brings to us a wonderful can-do attitude and the ability to talk to anybody and make connections for us. We are having our first meeting this Saturday to go over inital stragety for Vocal Noise and to finalize our hosting service.

We have our login page developed, not really a big deal, but we are mapping out our backend systems, which is a big deal.

Also, we might have an excellent programmer joining up.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Day 2 cont'd

I am now the proud owner of www.vocalnoise.com pretty cool domain name. Really surpised that no one has purchased this yet.

Day 2

So I have my solid idea, still working on the domain naming. I have recuirted though a solid business brain in one of my friends to go in on this with me. Now I need to get another coder which could be a little hard to come by. Anyways at least progess has been made all be it slow.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Journey into Web 2.0

My journey into Web 2.0 will truely begin, I have a wonderful Web 2.0 idea that I am going to follow through with. Since I am tired (really burnt out) of my current job I am going to concentrate the majority of my energy to it. I plan on also blogging my adventures, who knows I might even make some spare change to buy beer with or even possibly a motorcycle. I am purchasing the domain today, wish me luck.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Space

I have found myself reading more and more about space. Along with drawing several space designs. However upon reading and learning more about space I am started to truly believe that we as a society are at a threshold when technology in the right hands with few resources can accomplish more then the same technology in lazy hands with lots of resources. Burt Rhutan and Scaled Composites built Space One in only a couple of years for the X-Prize. It would be amazing if someone created a Rocketry Wiki to promote the sharing of information from companies like Scaled Composites. With the collobration of these smaller rocket companies I believe you could see the first private space station with in the decade. NASA has seems more about looking good these days then actually exploring space. I am sure when the Dems win the next presidential election (which will suck) NASA's budget will be cut even more, which is a sad sad thing.

Monday, February 26, 2007

IRS and eBay

Read an article today that the IRS is working with eBay to make sellers pay the taxes off of there earnings. Apparently this has been an issue since 2003 and they are just now getting around to it. Gotta love the government. Kinda makes you wonder if there is some money-laundering going on via Second Life.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Snow Storm / Wintery Mix

We are in the middle of a nice wintery mix and my tires on my car are not at all meant for snow. Driving to work today was really interesting.

I am trying to finish my portfolio for my design experience and random thoughts. Having not learned Flash before this has provided me with a good learning experience however, the I am less then enthusiastic about ease of use in Flash. I am starting to learn a lot more and it is coming easier, but man the usability of Flash8 for beginners just sucks. You are overwhelmed with buttons, frames, and concepts. Then lets throw layers and actionscript in, I can tell this will be a semester long project to become an advanced user of Flash.

Check out google news or engadget for the Virgin Atlantic downloadable game service announcement. $5 USD says iTunes will have downloadable games in several days, cause they are just as sneaky and steal just as much stuff as M$FT.