James' Audiolog: Indie.am

Indie.am
  • 5.0 (1)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS

Hey, I'm James, and welcome to my personal Audiolog. I mostly use this to share personal updates, via Indie.am. DM me for an invite!

  1. APR 25

    Waitlist SaaS: Good Idea, or Bad?

    Is It a Good Idea to Launch a Waitlist SaaS? What is a Waitlist SaaS? A Waitlist SaaS is a web application designed to simplify the process for founders to add a waitlist sign-up to their product launch strategy. It sounds appealing, but is it really a good idea? Why It Might Not Be a Good Idea Background The concept of using a waitlist as a launch strategy was popularized by companies like Robinhood and Clubhouse. These companies created hype around their products by making sign-ups initially impossible, allowing only a waitlist. Users could invite friends or share on social media to move up the list. This strategy became popular for SaaS launches following these examples. The Reality Behind Successful Launches However, the success of Robinhood and Clubhouse wasn't solely due to their waitlists. Their real strategy was leveraging FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and hype. They over-promised on their products, creating a buzz that compelled users to share the product to move up the waitlist. The waitlist added friction to the sign-up process, which could actually hinder conversion rates. Conversion Rates and Hype Consider this: 100% of visitors willing to sign up for a waitlist would likely have signed up for the product immediately if it were available. The waitlist conversion rates—whether a week, a month, or two months later—cannot exceed 100%. Would removing the waitlist have slowed down the hype and FOMO driving the marketing campaign? Possibly. Conclusion In conclusion, launching a Waitlist SaaS in 2026 may not be a wise idea, especially for solo founders or small teams. While hype and FOMO can be effective launch strategies, they require a level of execution typically found in more experienced teams. A SaaS that facilitates adding a waitlist sign-up process is not likely to be a mass-market strategy that inexperienced or small teams can successfully implement. These elements are probably the least challenging parts of a more complex marketing strategy that a skilled marketing team might employ.

  2. 01/06/2025

    Blogging, but with text again?

    Indie.am Blog Template Update Hey there, thanks for tuning in. I thought I'd share a little bit about what I've been working on for the past few weeks. Project Overview For Indie.am, I've been developing a blog template that allows you to publish a nicely formatted static blog. This blog is automatically generated from your audio logs recorded in the app. You simply post as you normally do, and those posts are transformed into a well-formatted blog that you can use as your primary blog. Key Features This project involves a few key elements: Automatic Generation: Your audio logs are automatically converted into blog posts. Editing and Customization: After generation, you'll need the ability to edit and add photos to these blog posts. User Interface Considerations I'm still determining whether the editing interface should be optimized for desktop or remain within the app. Since I'll be using this for my personal blog, I'll experiment to see what works best for me. Afterward, I'll share it with others to gather feedback and ensure it meets broader needs. Stay tuned for more updates as I continue to refine this exciting feature!

  3. 01/06/2025

    Did the AI bubble just Burst?

    Did the AI Bubble Just Pop? Hey, so the question on everybody's mind today is, did the AI bubble just pop? I think no. The stock market thinks yes. Let's explore why I believe that perspective is a bit short-sighted and doesn't consider the bigger picture. The Expanding Role of AI Here's how I use AI in 2025 for tasks that weren't possible just 24 months ago: Writing and Editing: AI helps me write and edit blog posts. Creative Arts: I use it to create music and generate fan art. Content Summarization: It summarizes YouTube videos for me. Transcription: AI handles a lot of audio and video transcription. Language Learning: I use AI for learning new languages. Search Replacement: In many cases, AI replaces traditional Google searches. Database Queries: It assists in writing database queries, especially those not in SQL. Calculations and Problem Solving: AI helps with back-of-the-envelope calculations and thinking through problems. Translation and Coding: I use it to translate manga and even to code and build apps, just like this one. Two years ago, these applications of AI were not possible because the models simply didn't exist. We're only a couple of years into this transformation, and the potential applications of AI are still largely untapped. Limitations and Future Potential Currently, AI can't handle tasks like doing taxes or providing legal advice. The training data exists—case law is just a collection of books that someone spends years understanding. While AI might not take over the legal industry, it could make knowledge of tax law or other legal fields more accessible through well-trained models, but we're not there yet. Demand for AI Remains Strong The demand for AI hasn't changed. Despite headlines claiming that a model was trained for $6 million to compete with OpenAI's cutting-edge model, I believe that's mostly propaganda. Significant advancements include activating fewer parameters per token and using a mixture of experts. In the coming days, OpenAI is expected to disclose how GPT-4 Turbo was made cheaper and more resource-efficient than previous versions. Infrastructure Challenges Building a data center to run these models still requires hundreds of millions of dollars. It's not like new models will suddenly run on different chips. They will continue to operate on H100s in data centers that require significant electricity and human resources to build and maintain. We are still not meeting the demand for AI infrastructure, as more people want to use tools like Stable Diffusion or ChatGPT than there is capacity for. Conclusion The assertion that AI demand has decreased is misleading. There are still new applications for AI models, and the infrastructure to support them is continually evolving. The claim that a model was trained for $6 million on half a billion dollars worth of GPUs is part of a larger story about the ongoing development and deployment of AI technologies.

  4. 01/06/2025

    How does Google Scrape library data from Itunes?

    Google's Intriguing Access to iTunes Music Library Hello! Today, I want to discuss something intriguing that caught my attention a couple of months ago and has been on my mind ever since. It appears that Google has found a way to scrape data from an iTunes music library on the same device through one of their apps. However, I'm uncertain which app is responsible, and it doesn't seem to involve any information sharing or consensual data sharing with Google. The Mystery of Unrelated Music Recommendations I have a specific set of music, primarily tracks I copied into my iTunes music library years ago, which are now part of my Apple Music library. These tracks have never left the app, and I don't search for these artists or songs on YouTube. Interestingly, this niche music from my library began appearing in YouTube notifications and recommendations around November or December, seemingly out of nowhere. Unexpected YouTube Music Suggestions YouTube started suggesting, "Hey, you don't listen to music on YouTube. Why don't you try YouTube Music? We already have all of your music from your library. You could switch right now and start listening." This was surprising because my music was siloed in iTunes and Apple Music. I'm unaware of how Google could access it without some OAuth mechanism. Potential Data Access Methods In iOS app development, there's a mechanism to add a "Sign in with Apple Music" button, allowing third-party apps to access data. However, it seems Google has found a way to scrape song names and artist names from the entire iTunes music library, possibly through one of their installed apps on my device. This data appears to be used to promote YouTube Music, a competitor app. Apple's Potential Concerns It's puzzling because one would assume Apple would go to great lengths to prevent a competitor app from scraping this data. Presumably, the only use for this data is to advertise within Google apps, encouraging users to migrate from Apple Music to YouTube Music. It's surprising that Google has managed to achieve this, despite Apple's likely efforts to prevent it. Distinguishing from Common Misconceptions Before jumping to conclusions, I've thought about this extensively. This isn't like those instances where people Google something and then see related ads elsewhere, not understanding how tracking works. I'm aware that phones aren't spying on us in that manner. While this situation might sound similar, I've considered it for months and can't think of any way Google could access this information except through an app installed on the same device. Possible Methods and Speculations Perhaps it's easier on macOS, and maybe Google used the Chrome binary to read my iTunes music library, which would be even more surprising. Whatever method they employed to obtain this data is likely interesting, and I imagine there are some Apple developers sending angry emails to Google about not adhering to developer terms. In conclusion, I find this situation fascinating and worth pondering. How Google managed to access this data remains a mystery, but it certainly raises questions about data privacy and app permissions.

  5. 01/06/2025

    Indie Maker Update

    Indie Maker Update: Final Thoughts on Indie.am All right, this is probably my last Indie Maker update specifically for Indie.am. This will be my Indie Maker update in general then. Completion of Indie.am Features I've basically completed all the features I wanted to complete for Indie.am. Most of this is around GPT and video generation, and those things are working fairly well. I'll continue to use the app and make little tweaks, but I'm pretty happy with where it is. This is more of one of those baseline things that I'm really happy that it exists again. I don't have to go through TestFlight, and I want it just so I can publish my own audio blog and see how it turns out. New Creative Pursuits Lately, I've been focusing on a different app to stream music and working on some different creative pursuits. I've been writing music, recording, and streaming a couple of games on YouTube, which has been a lot of fun. I'm trying to get in the mindset of creating content in different mediums, playing around with it, and seeing what I can learn from that. I'm having a lot of fun. Development Insights I've got like four or five of these Capacitor Framework 7 Vue apps, and each one I build feels a little bit more native and polished. I'm going back and forth between them, trying to re-implement the things I've learned from one app to the other and solving some issues. For the PWA, I basically have to swap out Framework 7's Vue router for Vue Router to use Vue with Framework 7 in a way that works and feels good. I had to figure out how to get all the animations and swipe back functionality to work. I also usually swap out Framework 7 Store for Pinia and have moved away from any Capacitor APIs unless absolutely necessary. This allows me to build the PWA straight from Vue and only use Capacitor where I need the extra functionality. Building a PWA in Vue with Framework 7 versus a Capacitor build of that PWA results in a completely different set of little works to the app. Future Plans I need to go back and update the Mastodon client that I created. I want to get short video working for when TikTok shuts down in a couple of days. I have a TikTok-style video feed inside of that app, but I need to swap out Vue Router for a Framework 7 Router to fix a few bugs and glitches. Once that's done, I can put it back up. Other than that, I've mostly been focusing on music right now. Maybe I'll share more of that in the next few days, but as far as my Indie Maker update goes, that's pretty much it. Thanks for listening.

  6. 01/06/2025

    Indie Maker Update: Create Sharable Videos!

    Endmaker Update - Wednesday Here's my update for Wednesday on the progress with Endmaker. Polishing the App I spent a couple of days focusing on refining the app. This involved: Fixing various bugs Adjusting visual elements Correcting alignment and button positions Addressing minor issues noticed during app usage Share Video Feature I developed an MVP version of the Share Video feature. This feature allows users to: Hit the share button. Create a video from a template. Preview a list of templates. Generate a video from the transcript that matches the selected template. Currently, I've added six out of the first 15 templates. I found the process a bit exhausting, so I paused to polish the rest of the feature. I plan to add more templates later, which will keep me busy and I'm excited to see how this feature evolves.

  7. 01/06/2025

    Indie.am Updates: RSS fixes, social sharing options

    Indie.am Update for Monday Recent Fixes and Improvements RSS Feed Fixes I've just published some fixes to the RSS feed. Years ago, I hardcoded 2021 as the year, which caused issues with all subsequent feeds. I've now corrected this mistake. Additionally, I'm using ChatGPT to format transcripts into blog posts, converting Markdown to HTML. This ensures that the content is nicely formatted when opened in podcast apps. Custom Component for Podcast Apps I've also worked on a custom component to integrate the old Podlog. This feature allows users to click an RSS icon in the app, redirecting them to their chosen podcast app based on their platform. It's a small but significant fix. Background Work Transcriptions with Whisper Transcriptions are now handled by Whisper, which provides high-quality results. However, it's resource-intensive on the server. I've implemented a system that queues jobs as users browse older Indie.am podcasts, re-transcribing them with Whisper for more accurate timestamps, especially for subtitles. Video Generation I've reworked video generation but haven't integrated it into the apps yet. This feature will be complex, involving 15 video templates. Users will be able to: Add a share button Create a video Choose a template from the gallery Customize options The video generation process will take about 10 to 20 seconds. If you exit, it will save back to the item and notify you once complete. This complex UI feature is still in development. Social Media Sharing Enhancements I've made several improvements around social media sharing, including meta tags and adding a share button. This is essential for sharing content to other social media feeds. You can embed it in Twitter (formerly known as X), but Blue Sky doesn't yet support audio posts. You can link to them, but playback issues occur due to their in-app browser. Blue Sky Playback Issue There's a peculiar issue with Blue Sky's in-app browser muting audio by default. If I share an audio post to Blue Sky and launch the podcast app via their browser, I can then return and play the audio file. It's a strange behavior, and I'm investigating why this happens. Conclusion I've accomplished a lot and thought it would be fun to share these updates. I'm also testing out the long recording feature. I'll stop here and see how this turns out.

  8. 01/06/2025

    New feature: Logo Idents!

    Indie Maker Update Hey there, welcome back. I'm James, and this is my indie maker update for Saturday. New Audio File Format What you're hearing is a new audio file format. Optionally, you can add a logo identity to the beginning of your personal podcast updates. This addition makes it sound a little bit more professional, a little bit more like a real podcast. However, right now, it's limited to one very generic, very inoffensive logo identity. Customization and Ease of Use I handpicked and edited the logo to be short and very easy to add to any spoken audio track without requiring many tweaks to the way you record your audio. It works best if you start your audio in a certain way, like "Hey, welcome back" or "Hey, I'm James," instead of the more typical, boring way I normally start my audio recordings. Conclusion Hopefully, if this test goes well, this will be the track that is published and introduces the new feature. Thanks for listening.

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About

Hey, I'm James, and welcome to my personal Audiolog. I mostly use this to share personal updates, via Indie.am. DM me for an invite!

Information

  • Creator
    Indie.am
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 James Futhey. All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    James' Audiolog: Indie.am