Website with simple audio input capabilities

riveratom

Hi guys,

Just a quick question. If I wanted to create a website where people could input voice / speech and have it appear on the site as a file that could be listened to by anyone, how hard would that be?

So let's take two use cases:

1) I am sitting at my desk, I go onto the website, and I go to click 'upload voice message'. I can use a mic (or something else?) plugged into my computer, and record onto the site.

2) I am on my smartphone (iPhone or whatever), I create a recording, and I upload to the site.

People can also go onto the site to view and listen to each recording that has been uploaded.

What would be involved here and would there be much work involved in developing a site like this? Would this functionality be time-consuming (and therefore costly) to develop?

TonyStark

riveratom wrote: »

Hi guys,

Just a quick question. If I wanted to create a website where people could input voice / speech and have it appear on the site as a file that could be listened to by anyone, how hard would that be?

So let's take two use cases:

1) I am sitting at my desk, I go onto the website, and I go to click 'upload voice message'. I can use a mic (or something else?) plugged into my computer, and record onto the site.

2) I am on my smartphone (iPhone or whatever), I create a recording, and I upload to the site.

People can also go onto the site to view and listen to each recording that has been uploaded.

What would be involved here and would there be much work involved in developing a site like this? Would this functionality be time-consuming (and therefore costly) to develop?

It depends, what you've outlined are two different applications. One a desktop application and the other a.smartphone app.

It's actually impossible really to say how long it would take. Given the platform and technologies are all an unknown.

riveratom

TonyStark wrote: »

It depends, what you've outlined are two different applications. One a desktop application and the other a.smartphone app.

It's actually impossible really to say how long it would take. Given the platform and technologies are all an unknown.

Hi Tony,

Cheers, it's a bit of an open question alright. I don't know if the smartphone one is necessarily an app, since you could record something and then simply upload it to the site on your mobile?

Anyway, what I am really looking for a solution for recording through a mic and uploading that file onto the site, or recording onto your phone and uploading to the site.

It might also work better as an app, not sure yet.

I guess there are probably a multitude of potential solutions out there for this, I would be testing out a concept via an MVP, so I would be looking for a simple and cheap solution (think less than €1k). I would want to have a simple prototype that I could test on the market and then if the signs are good, build a more advanced solution.

TonyStark

riveratom wrote: »

Hi Tony,

Cheers, it's a bit of an open question alright. I don't know if the smartphone one is necessarily an app, since you could record something and then simply upload it to the site on your mobile?

Anyway, what I am really looking for a solution for recording through a mic and uploading that file onto the site, or recording onto your phone and uploading to the site.

It might also work better as an app, not sure yet.

I guess there are probably a multitude of potential solutions out there for this, I would be testing out a concept via an MVP, so I would be looking for a simple and cheap solution (think less than €1k). I would want to have a simple prototype that I could test on the market and then if the signs are good, build a more advanced solution.

Well being a .NET guy I guess in this situation, I'd probably be looking at a Silverlight 4.0+ solution. There are a few examples of this on the web already. Might be worth looking into so you can keep an eye on your costs etc.

sf80

Microsoft are dropping silverlight? Might be a bad choice, and certainly would limit your audience.

Flash and Java have support for accessing microphones. You might find some open source plugins you can use (check out Moodle - lot of plugins for students to upload audio).

HTML5 might have something eventually, although I don't think it's there yet.

Procasinator

sf80 wrote: »

Microsoft are dropping silverlight? Might be a bad choice, and certainly would limit your audience.

Flash and Java have support for accessing microphones. You might find some open source plugins you can use (check out Moodle - lot of plugins for students to upload audio).

HTML5 might have something eventually, although I don't think it's there yet.

HTML5's WebRTC allows you to capture the mic. I believe new versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera support WebRTC to differing degrees. Like a lot of HTML5 features, It's not really ready for wide distribution.

sf80

Here's an applet you could use, you'd have the site you're looking for in no time with it:

http://nanogong.ust.hk/

riveratom

sf80 wrote: »

Here's an applet you could use, you'd have the site you're looking for in no time with it:

http://nanogong.ust.hk/

Cool cheers, that looks to be exactly what I'm after - I presume it's a simple case of creating a simple website (e.g. via Wordpress), and then installing the applet onto it?

It's a pity that since it's Java-based, it won't work on the iPhone / iPad. Not that big a deal though.

sf80

You will have to do some coding to integrate it, but it will be very basic; the applet will just POST the file to you and you can process it, in whatever scripting language or CMS you use.

I've no experience of mobile development, but you might have a nicer mobile experience if you created native apps that integrate well with the mobile OS, posting to an API on your site to upload/get listings.

I guess flash is no use for iPhone/IPad either, native might be your only route there.

ChRoMe

sf80 wrote: »

You will have to do some coding to integrate it, but it will be very basic; the applet will just POST the file to you and you can process it, in whatever scripting language or CMS you use.

I've no experience of mobile development, but you might have a nicer mobile experience if you created native apps that integrate well with the mobile OS, posting to an API on your site to upload/get listings.

I guess flash is no use for iPhone/IPad either, native might be your only route there.

Native for mobile is definitely the way to go. For desktop web, flash is the natural choice here, stay the hell away from silverlight tbh.