BuzzVoice 3.0 for the iPhone and iPod Touch
The BuzzVoice iPhone app lets users listen to their favorite news and blogs when reading is inconvenient. A robust, server-side text to speech engine converts story text into mp3s which are then played via the app’s audio player player. The full version of the app includes tools for feed and playlist management. This project involved refactoring much of the existing codebase and adding several new features.
The previous versions of the app handed audio off to QuickTime for playback. This version introduced a custom player built with Core Audio’s AudioStream and AudioQueue APIs.
One of the memorable (or maybe I mean annoying?) parts of this project was converting the existing synchronous HTTP requests from the previous version to asynchronous calls for better performance.
Versions: 3.0, 3.0 Lite
- Features:
- progressively downloaded and “streamed” audio.
- seekbar
- batch play
- feed search
- keyword search
- saved searches
- trending topics
- Ads (Lite version)
- Tech:
- iOS SDK
- Core Audio
- Other contributors:
- John Atkinson: graphic design
- Jess Taylor: previous version
