Which tts engine is voicerss.org using? - text-to-speech

The voices used by http://www.voicerss.org are really good. Does anybody has an idea what tts engine is used for voicerss.org?

It could be powered by anything, I can't see anything on the front-end which gives the game away. The server is running Microsoft IIS and the speech API uses ASP/.NET, which might rule out linux-based solutions like Festival. The server might be acting as a "proxy" or pass-thru for another service though. The API page lists supported codecs and languages which might also help you pinpoint it.
They offer a reasonably priced API and a good service. Why not be a customer?

Related

How to send/receive messages to/from Skype from a 3rd party application

I've been researching for quite good amount of time about how to interact with Skype, meaning how to send and receive Skype messages from another application that I'm planning to develop.
I found a lot of things which made me confused. There is Skype API mentioned and used by some libraries (like SkPy), and there is Skype Web SDK, SkypeKit, and others.
When looking on the official Skype dev website (https://dev.skype.com) nothing about these is mentioned, and looks like the Microsoft Bot Framework is where MS is moving everything to (or at least that is what I got).
My question is, what is the current situation now regarding this topic? Is it still safe to build a solution on such libraries as SkPy (which uses Skype HTTP API that I could not find a trace of in the Skype's official docs!, but still, I tested and it's working!). Or I should just think of MS Bots? And is Bot a suitable solution for such use case in the first place? (I feel it's not meant to do so).
Hopefully will get some hints.

What are the pros and cons of implementing webRTC?

I would like to implement a video / audio call feature from a browser. The goal is to allow two users to communicate remotely without having to install a third part (when I say third part, I'm talking about a software or an extension on a browser).
I know WebRTC, which is very popular today and free. However, it is very difficult to implement and the documentation is difficult to understand (not very easy for a beginner).
Here is the official webRTC documentation, and honestly, where to start? https://webrtc.org/start/
If you have an experience about WebRTC, is it possible to share with positive or negative points? This would be very useful for the community.
Moreover, if you have experience with another library, I think it would be interesting to hear it.
There is no other way to develop a call service in a website without the use of WebRTC today.
The alternatives are:
Use WebRTC
Use Flash (which is... dead)
Use a plugin (which is... dying as a mechanism in browsers)
Use an app you download (not exactly a service in a website)
Node.js is the way to go, but you will need to learn some new technology, especially when it comes to the backend.
The servers you will need are:
1. The traditional web application server
2. A signaling server (the one you plan on using Node.js for - you can use that for the web application server as well)
3. A STUN/TURN server (for NAT traversal)
4. Maybe a media server, depending on your use case
For some alternative open source and commercial products, you can check this WebRTC Developer Tools Landscape

can Dart be used for basic CRUD web application?

I just discovered this Language and I'd like to know if it's possible to make basic CRUD web app using a database.
There are libraries for mysql and postgresql, and the core library provides a web server with HTTP, HTTPS and WebSocket support.
There is a templating library which isn't part of the official release. And, there is also a community mustache port (I don't think it builds at the moment, so you may need to fix it).
So it's definitely possible. But you'll be an early adopter. If you want to get stuff done quick, I'd choose something else, but if you're wanting to learn new skills, dive in.
Sure. It's a pretty new language though so you aren't going to find the robust library support you will in other languages just yet. It's rapidly growing however so I don't think it will be long. You can either write your server in dart or write your server in another language and expose a basic HTTP interface for your Dart client to consume.
Here is an example of writing a simple web application which creates and stores "blog" posts. Both the client and server are written in Dart. The database is MongoDB.
Also check out this question for more information.

Web server to host Sencha app?

I am looking to develop some web app for my Android device. Found Sencha and think it might be a good tool to try out.
I suppose I would need to find a web server to host the Sencha app to run the app? What kind of web server is needed? I suppose one that able to run HTML5, CSS, Javascript is enough?
Can anybody recommend one (free one)?
Thanks.
++++++++++++
Thanks for the answers to the above post. I am new to this stuff, so got some more follow-up and somewhat related questions:
1) I read from the Sencha site that the app can be developed locally using things like XAMPP installed on local Windows PC. Question -- Why need this local host when I can just use an external Web Host?
2) It was also mentioned that for Windows may not need XAMPP if Window's Internet Information Server (IIS) is already running. How do I know if my computer is running this and so don't need to install another local server? (I asking this because I had installed an XAMPP before on another computer and things got quite messed up and so I want to avoid doing it if possible).
3) Once I got a web host, to have an app running, I would just have to have the JS files in the web host together with the Sencha framework right? If so, then I don't understand what is meant by "Build" in the Sencha documentation.
Thanks.
Sencha Touch is a client side framework, therefore there are no server side requirements. That said, any web host should do.
However, I'll go ahead an make a recommendation... a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySql) will work the best. Of course you can substitute any of the stack for something of your favor, this setup seems to be the most favorable. Some of my colleagues utilize Ruby/RoR instead of PHP, so as you can see it is quite flexible in terms of environment.
When searching for a hosting provider, do your research and select something that fits with your budget but still gives you the best bang for your buck. Be sure to ask them questions!
Tip: Make sure you have access to your web server's configuration file so you can add mime_types and make other mobile oriented tweaks if needed.
First you must know that HTML5, CSS and Javascript are all front end stuff that do not count when you talk about Hosting. These are taken care of by the client agent (browser).
What really matters is your server side language: PHP, Python(Django), Ruby, etc.
So it mainly doesn't matter which framework, as much as which language that framework use.
This is a generic answer that will help you decide not only in terms of Sencha but for any other framework.
Take for instance WordPress. It uses PHP and MySQL, so first I look if my Web host supports Mysql and PHP and in general this would be enough to know that I can use if for my WordPress site.
And by the way, most Web host companies allow you to ask them questions before buying. So go ahead and question them about anything that concerns your requests.
Sencha provides an app hosting service through its Sencha.io cloud services.

Load-testing xmpp server

I am looking for a tool capable of generating multiple Xmpp connections to load-test a XMPP server with a secure connection, especially starttls.
For a xmpp plain text authentication I had used jab_simul(followed this tutorial) and tsung both with success.
But I was unable to use the tolls above for the starttls,I peeked into the code of both tools and tried different configurations of the tools.
Another option I am pondering is using a xmpp library like eXmpp and make a specific load-testing tool myself with, instead of altering jab_simul (C software with comments in language i do not understand) or altering tsung(all purpose load-testing tool, so lots of place where you can go wrong).
short-story - I am looking for a tool or advice to stress-testing/load-testing a xmpp server.
We are facing exactly the same challenge right now. After deep consideration we found out that only especially build software can deliver the load we want to test. (Remember, you can configure ejabberd to something very specific :-)
For that we developed a small library called xmpp_talker https://github.com/burinov/xmpp_talker (Apache Licence) which is a kind of xmpp client made as a gen_server. I find it is a very nice starting point to build any kind of load simulation software. There is also echo_worker example included. So, you have good base to start. At the moment xmpp_talker is suited for exmpp 0.9.7. As far as I know in a few days will be out version 1.0.0. (or 0.9.9?) There are many bug fixes (trust me you don't want to know about them). On monday I will release xmpp_talker for exmpp 0.9.8 with proper service interruption handling.
In case you deside to go the same way xmpp_talker could be useful for you.
Added: Here is also great article that is realted to the topic: https://support.process-one.net/doc/display/EXMPP/Scalable+XMPP+bots+with+erlang+and+exmpp
There's also the recently started XMPP benchmarking project called xmppench which aims to be a high-performance benchmarking tool simulating some reasonable use cases of XMPP servers. It's written in C++, based on Swiften and boost.