Cool platform! Thinking about using it for a game project I'm working on – at least for temp V/O. I was noticing that the player for voice acting doesn't play reliably on the search page – you have to go to the profile first. Might be a quick fix.
My company has hired some people for TTS voice training on Upwork. About 90% of the voice actors resented the implications that someone else could make their voice say stuff that they disagree with. But some of them also found the idea of becoming digitally immortal very attractive.
The same way some people like to put up a marble statue of their heroic deeds, others like to record themselves for the internet. In my opinion, both types of people want to avoid being forgotten and surely if you become a famous TTS voice, you'll have a Wikipedia entry...
Congrats man! This is the first time I stumbled upon your extension and I have to admit, it is pretty neat and useful. I too have created one vocabulary trainer extension, but haven't released it as it way too unpolished and I am using a paid dictionary.
However, do you mind sharing some of your stats? Which language pairs are mostly used on Readlang?
> Why would we not want to be able to discern life-threatening information sooner?
Because there's a good chance you'll receive a treatment that will cause you to die sooner than had you not known about the disease for another decade. C.f. why they pushed back the recommended age for mammograms this week.
1) Wouldn't you want to know say a year in advance, before you made all kinds of hospital visits and it was finally confirmed? I bet you would. Perhaps to start preparing for a different life, career, perhaps to advance future plans of things you'll gradually become less able to do. People want to know.
2) Can you imagine that if somehow, for example, you could detect Parkinson's by smell, that this would open up all kinds of findings, research and understanding about what Parkinson's is, how it works, how it's detected etc, that could potentially lead to better treatment or even a cure? I bet you can imagine there's a positive correlation between understanding something better and the ability to treat it in future.
3) it's simply interesting in and of itself. How curious, isn't it?
Looks like you never knew anyone that had a terminal illness.
And regardless while there isn't a cure per-say for Parkinson's there are treatments which can delay it's progression and the earlier you get them the more time you have.
As there is a high failure rate in startups it is very important to know though whether you are made for that kind of world. True, you'll learn a lot with every failure but not all of us want to spend years and years on miscarriages.
The blog post states that Pinboard makes around $200k a year but they charge only a one-time fee of $10. Does that mean they get 20k signups each year? Does Pinboard display ads or is there another business model behind it?
I totally agree with keeping the message short. Also I have read from several other sources that telling a story is key. But how are you supposed to tell a story in 4 sentences?
You don't have to tell the whole story in the first email. In fact, it's often better to only tell half the story so they get curious to hear the rest.
The title of my article is a decent example: "How I tricked TechCrunch into writing my startup"
Happy to give some feedback based on your individual situation if you like. Email: marc[at]betalist.com
Don't feel the need to be courteous or overly polite. In my pitch I didn't even use complete sentences.
Citing my previous example:
Hi,
My name is X and I'm a founding member of [insert name of startup]. We've developed a new way to [do awesome thing phrased as simply as possible, preferably in the context of other popular startups] and are launching today. We like your publication and wanted to give you first crack at a write-up.
Please message me if you're interested and would like more details.
This reminds me of Fredric Brown, who was able to tell a horror story in two sentenced: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."
So I don't think it should be that hard. I guess the idea is to _not_ tell everything, but let them directly see the potential of developing on some loose ends of that story.
