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.

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.

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.

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....

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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.

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.