Nice idea -- I have an iPhone so I can't try it out, but I've been thinking this would be really nice for running or driving. Hope it all goes well for you.
I'd pay $2 to trial it, and I'd use it while jogging and listening to music. I have no idea whether it'll work out -- twitter timelines tends to be very fragmentary so I don't know if I'd be able to follow conversations well. However, it just needs to hit that 'cheap enough that I'll buy it anyway' price point for apps.
Trying to be as honest and helpful as possible, I generally prefer to avoid fragmenting features over lots of apps. For instance, the other day I wanted to send >140char tweets, and was annoyed that my main twitter client didn't auto-split tweets. I have a separate app (TweetSplit[1]) which allows me to flip between apps to do the work, but it's not great. The feature (split tweets) was implemented in a separate app and that was annoying.
Reading out tweets seems like a very similar proposition. I don't know if I'd sustainably use one app for reading, and another for TTS. There's friction around logging in to separate apps, switching between apps, and keeping your reading position in both apps.
I think, then, I'd ideally like to see this integrated into my main twitter app. So maybe another group to sell to are developers of twitter clients?
Also worth noting that Abvio's Runmeter app [2] will read out your mentions during a run, which is where I got the idea. I don't use this running app any more, but would still like the feature.
Lastly, maintaining reading position between apps has been looked at by Tweet Marker[3] and might help mitigate the problems of having separate apps for reading the same timeline.
I think you need a Windows Azure account, not a windows box -- I've seen someone using VS Online on Macbook Pro/Chrome, IIRC. (Can't remember where, though.)
Scott Hanselman used an Azure VM to run VS2013 and tools, and remoted into it from a coffee shop using a Surface 2 (the 'RT' flavor, not a full desktop). It's a nice way to work from lower power machines. To do this, of course, does require an Azure account, and after your 'intro' phase would be paid.
The support services provide things like source control, work item tracking, and similar 'in the cloud' but they work with your VS2013 install, wether on a desktop or on a VM on Azure.
"The theoretical nature of computing is currently based on what we call the mathematical worldview. We discuss this worldview next, contrasting it with the interactive worldview."
"Habitability is the characteristic of source code that enables programmers, coders, bug-fixers, and people coming to the code later in its life to understand its construction and intentions and to change it comfortably and confidently. Either there is more to habitability than clarity or the two characteristics are different. Let me talk a little bit more about habitability before I tackle what the difference may be.
"Habitability makes a place livable, like home. And this is what we want in software - that developers feel at home, can place their hands on any item without having to think deeply about where it is. It’s something like clarity, but clarity is too hard to come by."
As a Brit, my reaction was one of complete lack of surprise. I wonder if that is widespread, and accounts for the muted reaction.
The US operates big, obvious surveillance facilities from inside Britain. For instance, I like to hike, and two places very close to me are the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors national parks. So every time I drive out there I will pass either of these two installations;
These are two big, public surveillance facilities -- the first is run by the NSA, the second run partly for NORAD. They are really large, obvious physical structures built for surveillance. It is then no surprise to find out that the NSA and GCHQ have been working together to do actual spying, is it?
Imagine as a US citizen that you were living in San Francisco, and knew that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service had a 500-acre intelligence-gathering base in Mountain View, CA. Would you be in any way surprised to find out the Russians and your own government were spying on you?
Developers are often That Guy because they foresee what will happen when they get to writing code; they realise all the thousands of small problems the work is going to throw at them, and they spew that out to their colleagues.
Foreseeing the problems is good engineering, but it can be a bad move politically to spend a lot of time describing the issues. That's what makes you That Guy.
It's a terribly quandary -- I have to stop myself from being 'a lawyer for the compiler', if you get my drift.
