Hey HN, just thought I'd share a little toy project I put together over the weekend. It's basically just ChatRoulette over the phone. Pretty sure its only appeal will be novelty, but it was one of the ideas I had when I was toying around with Twilio's API, so voila.
One idea I had for making it more interesting/useful was allowing you to select a "category" or "location" so that you could be randomly paired with people from the same location or people with similar interests. Any thoughts?
1. I launched it this morning, so no, I haven't made any money off of it yet.
2. I worked on it part-time for 2 weeks. I'd say it was about 4-5 full days to put together but a lot of that time was spent learning new technologies/APIs I hadn't used before.
The tech used to build it are on the FAQ page:
Tornado
Redis
Twilio
Google URL Shortener
ReCAPTCHA
Mako Templates
jQuery
SimpleModal
IcoJoy
WinningTheme
This was just a quick side project, so I didn't research too heavily any alternatives. I've never seen Jott before, but from a cursory glance the differences are:
Jott has a monthly fee whereas Call2Record is pay as you go.
Jott is probably much more expensive unless you record a lot of audio ($4/month and $12/month compared to $1/hour)
Jott limits you to recording only up to 30 seconds of audio at a time whereas Call2Record will allow you to record for an unlimited amount of time.
Jott seems to have a bunch of other extra services and features that are built around and compliment their product.
I agree it's a pretty niche application that most technical users wouldn't find a use for. Very interesting suggestion about a voice contact form. I agree it might be really useful for interacting with a less technical user base.
I'll probably make the service completely free if it doesn't see any uptake.
I didn't try very hard to promote it so it never passed the tipping point for adoption; too many people called in and had no one to talk to.