yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] boodies:
Good stuff. I think the success of this thing hinges on it's voice capabilities. Voice quality to be exact. I hope it's pretty good. Looking forward to it.
[Android Apps and Games] trekkie1701c:
I want custom greetings now.
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
set up the alarm last night (around 7:08pm I guess) - hit the 'screen off' button and left it to go off at 5:40am this morning.

It just went off but the time it said was 7:08pm - I guess this is because the screen was off the whole time till the alarm went off .... is this fixable?
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Good catch. I'll fix this. Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Hey everyone,

This is Eddie again. I just released a new update (v1.4) which has the most-often-requested feature: Integration with Google Calendar! It now reads your appointments for the next 24 hours (Android 2.0+ required).

Thanks for all your feedback and help!

Also. Very good news! Smarter Alarm made it to the semi-final round of Verizon's power you app contest! This is probably due in large part because of this community! I'd really appreciate if you could vote again (voting starts over) for Smarter Alarm for this next round! I'd really appreciate your help!

Please vote here (in the "Information" category): http://www.poweryourappcontest.com
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Quick question for ya (I'm trying to duplicate this issue): Did you leave your phone with Smarter Alarm running when you went to bed? Or did you exit the app before you went to bed.

Thanks
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
app open - screen off.

I think - if not i pressed the home button from the app then hit screen off..

I'll see if I can make it do it again though :)
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
When I attempted to give SmarterAlarm permission to integrate with Google Calendar, the process would crash without fail. Any suggestions?
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
worked ok when i gave permission - although i dont have much in my google calender
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
hmmm... It crashes as soon as I hit the button. Is it using the phone's existing google un/pass to log in, or is it supposed to ask me for those credentials after I 'click'?

If it's already got my login info, then we'd need to troubleshoot peculiarities in my schedule. If not, then it's something else.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
It uses the AccountManager class to authenticate you. When you hit the authorize button, it should popup a menu asking you to select one account linked to your phone. Once you select that, it takes you to a new screen asking you to authorize SmarterAlarm access to your google calendar feed. You just hit OK, without entering your user/password directly (you should be wary of any app that asks you for your user/password).

Can you tell me where in the process its crashing? Also, if you could, can you send me a log file as soon as the crash happens? There is a an app called Log Collector that you can use for that.

Thanks,

Edward
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
THANK YOU! I was finally able to track down and fix this bug thanks to your log file. I really really appreciate it. Now unfortunately, I have the app in an nonworking state because of some new features I'm adding, so I can't send you an update just yet. The update should be ready sometime tomorrow.

Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
Sweet! Glad I was able to help out. I'll look forward to the update! ^^d

EDIT:

Just had a thought on a new feature: It wouldn't need to read them out, but having the option for 'Jarvis' to tell me something like 'You have 5 unread E-Mails, 3 unread text messages and 1 voicemail waiting for you. You have missed 2 incoming calls.' would be pretty handy as well.
[Android Apps and Games] alovell83:
I've been using the alarm for a while, and while I'm mostly happy, I've noticed something big that's a problem. IIRC, I updated within the last 24 hours, I updated about 6 apps at once and my battery has been getting sucked down. So, I did a reboot, tried to find out what was draining battery and smarter alarm came up on my list as one of the highest drainer besides my screen, so this was killing my idle. I checked the details, it was using the GPS for over 11 straight minutes, I force stopped, I turned off GPS, etc., then I even noticed that it had my city right, so it was doing this largely unnecessarily. A potential cause is, I was indoors, so maybe it wasn't getting a perfect lock...I wonder it was looking for too precise a location??? Being able to turn off geolocation would be a good short-term fix.

So anyways, after my force stop, the icon is still on my notification bar, there is no way to stop the program so I'll uninstall and look into it again after you put out another update. Overall, I'm happy and I know these things happen.

Besides that, I had an issue within the past 2 days, not sure if it was before/after update, but the alarm didn't go off, when I opened the program it said there was an TTS problem, and then wouldn't let me access the alarm again until I reboot the phone (can't honestly remember if I tried a force stop), still, it'd be nice if there would be a way to access the program easier after a failure.

GL, hope to get back to using your program in the future.
[Android Apps and Games] Jasper_Ward:
Not sure if this has been asked for, but I work Graveyard half of the week, and day shift the other half, could it be possible to do multiple alarms & set alarms to certain recurring days?

Thanks, I love this app so far except the limitation I mentioned :-p
[Android Apps and Games] Shadomastr:
Watch out dev, the app wakevoice is offering much of the same features as smarter alarm. I'm very supportive of this app however, I live how you respond to our feedback so quickly.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Hi,

Yes, most likely this was due to your GPS not being able to get a fix on your location, so it stayed on. In the update I just put out, there is now a watchdog timer that will shut off the GPS if a certain amount of time has passed without getting a gps lock. hopefully, this update will use your battery more judiciously. Really sorry about that
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Please check the latest update! It now has multiple alarms and day-of-week alarms
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Thanks for letting me know! I'll be sure to keep an eye out for them
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to give you a quick update on the newest release! This is a major release so I bumped the version number to 2.0! Here's what's in it:

- MULTIPLE ALARMS

- Normal (ringtone) alarm can play BEFORE reading of information starts (so you wake up a little before having to process information).

- Fix Google calendar bug.

- Fix snooze and MUCH improved alarm scheduling system. Basically, you should not have any problems of missed alarms anymore. Let me know if you still do.

- Status bar icon when alarm is ringing or snoozing

- Configurable snooze time

- Many bug fixes

- Keyguard fix

- Many more bug fixes

I'm really liking the direction this app is taking, thanks to all your feedback. A little note: I've spent about 16 hours each day for the past 2 weeks working on this app, and I hope that you enjoy the product of my efforts. I'm delusional at this point so I hope I'm coherent. You'll notice that this release does have ads, and I hope that you all understand my need to do so. There is also a paid version ($3) on the market now that removes the ads, if you'd like to support me even more.

One final note again. I'd really appreciate if you could vote for the app on verizon's "power your app contest". There are some big companies competing, and as an indie developer, I hope to at least place in the contest with your help. Voting goes until tomorrow and you can vote here: www.poweryourappcontest.com

Thanks for your support and time for bed!
[Android Apps and Games] azzledazzle:
I LOVE THIS APP !!!!

If i turn the pitch up to maximum and the speech rate to minimum. she sounds quite sexy lol. especially now its programmed to read out a dirty message to me in the mornings lol.. too explicit for this site. but the app is awesome. well done for making this..
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
Thanks.

Saw this update and updated the free one for now. Noticed paid is version 2.1... are ads the only.difference?

Love the.ability for multi alarms now. Keep up good work!
[Android Apps and Games] IronDoctorChris:
This has just about edged out Good Morning in my book and I'm really impressed by the way you respond to requests, bugs etc. 3 things:

1. I'm getting an FC if I try to get into the app's settings (as opposed to an individual alarm's settings). This bug wasn't present in the free version.

2. The TTS seems a little odd. I put my name in, 'Chris', but it reads it out with a strange intonation. It almost sounds as if it's saying Chriis. With any other program using the TTS it sounds normal. I'm using SVOX Clasisic with the British Victoria voice. It's a minor annoyance but a strange one, given your app isn't responsible for the TTS.

3. I assume more sports leagues are coming but I'd just like to request English Premier League since sometimes apps tend to be more US oriented.
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
Nice work! Was able to hook up with the Calendar just fine this time. ^^d
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
I fixed the force close on the settings screen. Sorry about that!

as for the English premier league, I'll have to try to find a free feed for that. Sports feeds are hard to find without paying an arm and a leg, so if you can point me to a free one, that would help me out a ton!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Its mainly just removal of ads in the full version. One small thing is that sports scores was moved to full version only, because the feed that I am using limits me to 2,000 queries/day. I'll keep it this way until I can find a better sports score feed.
[Android Apps and Games] Shadomastr:
So happy with this app! One thing I would like to see implemented in the future is google tasks integration. I use taskos on my phone but it integrates with google tasks. It would be awesome to wake up to the things I need to remember for the day. You are doing a fantastic job dev, keep it up!

I voted!

Sent from my Epic 4G
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Thanks for voting! I'll look into Google tasks integration!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Hi! I looked into google tasks, and unfortunately, there does not appear to be an api just yet. The good new is that its planned for 2011 (see: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/top-tasks-for-google-tasks.html) . I'll keep an eye out for it and integrate it into Smarter Alarm as soon as the tasks api is available
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
When I attempt to 'Hear Alarm', the 'Updating Information' prompt takes a long while. If I hit the 'Back' button, it'll play the alarm, but it won't include my Calendar entries.

I use Google's Calendar a lot, including multi-day entries and repeating daily entries for my work schedule. If it's trying to download EVERYTHING, this could be the cause of the hang-up.

Also, because it hasn't been able to complete an update, it's reading the last few news headlines from the last successful alarm.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Unfortunately, there are SO many feeds that need to be gathered from various corners of the interwebs, it can take a while for the updating information prompt to complete. That is why the phone will automatically gather this information about 15 minutes before your alarm is about to go off. That way, it will have all the information it needs when the alarm rings.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Just wanted to let everyone know that I added NHL sports scores to the Smarter Alarm feeds.

Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
Ah, OK. I'll see how it goes tomorrow morning and report back. ^^d The only reason I mentioned this now is 'cause there was only ONE change in my feed list: The Calendar.
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
No go on the real deal. It still told me about Keith Olbermann's departure, and said nothing about my daily tasks.

Sadly, I couldn't get to the Log dump quickly enough to find any useful information.
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
I wonder - has anyone else thought that the news stories could do with a small gap between the headlines?

Sometimes it sounds a bit garbled and I can't work out where one story starts and another ends... maybe it would be possible to add in - even as an option perhaps - a second or so gap between the headlines...

i.e. sometimes I think I hear two stories;

1) Apple have reached their billionth download

2) Android phone to be launched to the moon

come out like: Apple-have-reached-their-billionth-download-android-phone-to-be-launched-to-the-moon

it probably doesn't look right written down... and also probably bad made-up-stories to try and link - but I hope I made sense :)
[Android Apps and Games] sonof:
I can't run the app on Samsung Galaxy S. I get FC as soon as I start the app.

Running latest Insanity ROM JS3 0.5.2 and latest Hardcore Speedmod Kernel K12Q
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Do you have TTS installed on your phone (i.e. if you start google navigation, do you get the lady speaking to you?) The most frequent cause of FCs when the app starts is that there is no TTS on the phone.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Thanks for pointing that out. I added about a .75 second pause in between news headlines. You'll notice a much better news hearing experience in the next update. Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
hmmm...unfortunately, the logs weren't too helpful in figuring out why your are not getting information on your phone. It looks like the crash has something to do with the TTS service crashing =/...if you are in an area with good connectivity, are you still not able to get news? maybe try clear data on the app? Sorry I'm as a loss of what else to try..
[Android Apps and Games] TesseractE:
There was no data to clear, but an uninstall/reinstall did the trick. ^^d
[Android Apps and Games] sonof:
Thanks for pointing this out. I don't have TTS on the phone so that must be the reason :)

At some point I will install TTS and try your software again as it seems nice.

Edit: I just installed Finnish SVOX from the market and now your app starts. I just can't hear anything. "Updating information" seems to take forever. I added a RSS feed also to make sure it has something to read but no.

Is this only available for English TTS?

Edit2: Now I installed the default English Pico TTS but still I only get stuck in the "Updating information" screen with Smarter Alarm. Speech examples play fine in system settings.

Edit3: SayMyName works fine with SMS reading etc. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Needs further testing.

Edit4: Finally got it working with English. Although, I have to press Back button when in "Updating information" to have it say atleast something. Gonna try to get Finnish RSS Feeds working now :)

Edit5: If I select Finnish (SVOX Classic TTS) as default text-to-speech language in system settings I get this in Smarter Alarm "There was an error configuring the Text-to-speech engine. Please try again."

Edit6: Seems to be that this is missing 'Android 2.1 compatibility (TTS Extended) for other text to speech engines (like SVOX)'. Please, add this feature!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Thanks for your updates. Currently, Smarter Alarm only reads text in English. At some point, I'd love to get help translating the app to different languages, but until then, trying to get a Finnish TTS to speak English text will lead to interesting results.

Support for other English TTS engines should work though! I'll double check this now
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
version 2.3 is out!

This includes:

* option to override silent mode (alarm can play when phone is on silent mode)

* option to repeat alarm alarm (for the heavy sleepers

* links to SVOX UK and US voices

Sorry for the frequency of updates. There's just a lot of features I feel are missing, but I promise the update frequency will slow down from now on.

Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] Tirinoarim:
Keep up the great work edward.

Just a quick question, where do your news feeds come from? I heard a headline this morning that I wanted to read more about but couldnt find it on the web. Maybe a nice option would be to display any configured feeds on screen so you can touch/click the headlines it reads to open the relevant article in the browser?

Hopefully that may be doable without having to practically code an entire RSS reader into it!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Hi! Putting a note of the feed source is a good idea. The feeds come from google:

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59255
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
noticed and it seems to flow much nicer now in my opinion - thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
I was showing the app to a friend the other day and they asked this question - and now i have an answer!

Also I have no problem with the frequency of updates - I find its nice to see updates in the market place for stuff - especially when there's so many great ideas on how to improve it flowing around! :)
[Android Apps and Games] sonof:
Thank you! If I understand correctly, if we translate the app to for example Finnish, we will have Finnish TTS/SVOX support?

If so, is it possible for you to open translating in crowdin.net for example or send me the files needing translation and I will do my best to help with the translation.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Yes.

I'll do that. I have to clean up some of the hard-coded string and move them to the strings.xml file first, but I'll try to get translations started on crowdin soon!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Finalist in Verizon's app contest!

Great news everybody!

Thanks in large part to you, Smarter Alarm has made it to the final round of Verizon's Power Your App contest! That means that its down to 5 apps, and Smarter Alarm is one of them, competing for a $50k prize.

This final round of voting is open to all Verizon customers. If you like the app, I'd REALLY REALLY appreciate if you could go onto your Verizon VCAST app store and vote for "Smarter Alarm" (and "Car Locator" too, my other app that's a finalist).

Incidentally, I believe you can get the full version (no ads) for free from the VCAST app store.

Thank you so much everybody! I really appreciate you taking the time to vote for Smarter Alarm!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
I've moved all my strings to the strings.xml file and made a project for translating it on crowin. Here's the link: http://crowdin.net/project/smarter-alarm

Thanks!
[Android Apps and Games] Shadomastr:
I'm really loving this app but there's still one thing I would like to have fixed. When I use the app, I can't turn the screen off to black (which I prefer over the dim setting) so I back out of the app to kill the screen, however, it seems as though android is killing the app. I get a notfication in the notification tray about the alarm but the alarm doesn't go off. Can this be fixed? I'm going to try to fix the problem tonight. Perhaps I did something wrong.

Sent from my Epic 4G
[Android Apps and Games] farfromuman:
After the alarm goes off my Google News app/widget no longer works, only the weather part does, then after some time the news tabs show back up. Is this normal?
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Definitely not normal. Are you sure its due to my app? I'll look into this as well.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Hey everyone!

I just wanted to share the latest update, which is something I'm very excited about. Very useless, but exciting to me nonetheless. It's basically a visualization effect while the phone is speaking to you. I've attached a screenshot.

Also, if you have access to the Verizon VCAST app store on your phone, PLEASE PLEASE download Smarter Alarm and rate it 5 stars. Really appreciate your support!
[Android Apps and Games] Phateless:
If I had Verizon I would definitely vote for you!

Feature request: multiple custom keywords instead of only one? On my news and weather widget I've added Android and Solar to my news topics.

Thanks!! :D
[Android Apps and Games] ilhe1s:
I absolutely love your app. It has become my daily alarm and I've been excited and eager to tell others about it.
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
I'm also now using this as my daily alarm :)

but I just noticed this morning that the description for 'repeat alarm' is the same as 'snooze' (I think - its the one above it anyway.)

I guess this is the setting that the alarm now repeats over and over till you snooze it? :)

Keep up the great work!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Oops! Nice catch! I've updated the description in the next release (along with some other bug fixes, like the screen not turning off)
[Android Apps and Games] sonof:
Finnish translation is ready! It was quite an easy task, only 303 strings to translate so I suggest other people to translate it to your language as well! :)

Eagerly waiting for edawerd's implementation.
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Wow. you are quick! I'll get on this today!
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
Has anyone else experienced this slight issue where news topics are read out and you get something like:

"Microsoft"

"Lindsey Lohan Hyphen hyphen"

"android 3.0 honeycomb sdk released"

it's probably more to do with the feeds, so unsure if there's any checking you can put in there or not - but some headlines are not that informative.

edit: also had one this morning - "single quote"

As I say - its probably the feed and the formatting of it... but wanted to mention it in case :)

Fantastic app by the way!
[Android Apps and Games] Lothaen:
I thought for a moment this morning Smarter Alarm was going to say 'Today is your birthday' - but it didn't - would that be a really silly feature? :)
[Android Apps and Games] CallMeAria:
haha that would be great!
[Android Apps and Games] bernabap:
Portuguese BRA Translation

Edward,

with your project on crowdin plus the hope to get your app speaking my language (PT-BRA) I felt like obligate to translate. Is done.

Your app works perfect for me, no problem at all. My only request would be to speak portuguese.

Until now I have to use SVOX US Grace voice but I would love to use my SVOX Brazilian Portuguese Luciana voice. Hope you can add it soon. :rolleyes:

Thanks for sharing!
[Android Apps and Games] Robrecht:
Great app, I am so looking forward to a multilanguage version (don't mind hearing the weather forecast in English but it's just weird for my appointments and my friends' names)! I'll have a look at the Dutch translation as soon as I have the time.

And here's a feature request: I think it would be cool to include the option to start a music playlist after the spoken announcements, so it would really be like having your own personal radio news station.
[Android Apps and Games] Robrecht:
Another idea: perhaps you could allow users to edit the strings for the spoken announcements through the app interface. That way people could easily customize their wake-up call ("Hello x, time to rise and shine!"). :-)
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Ha! It actually crossed my mind before that I should write the code to do that. Happy birthday, by the way!!
[Android Apps and Games] edawerd:
Thanks for the suggestion. next update will have ability to add custom message =)
[Android Apps and Games] Shadomastr:
Go a small problem here as well. I left the app running last night and turned the screen off. At some point in the night I got a phone call that took the phone out of the app and in the morning the alarm did not ring but showed up in the notification tray. Trying to replicate....

Sent from my Epic 4G
[Android Apps and Games] Phateless:
Sounds like you need to check your notification settings... was the phone on silent mode? This alarm should bypass silent mode, right?