I’ve just come across a neat little tool thanks to Lynn Terry’s blog, Clicknewz. Odiogo allows bloggers to add another distribution channel to their content, by translating any written blog post into the spoken word.
No only this, but Odiogo also turns blog posts into a podcast, and offers a whole range of subscription offers, including iTunes. Great for those of us who hate the sound of our voices, or have no idea how to go about pod-casting.
Ok, so if you’re listening to the podcast for this post, you’re hearing him right now and maybe thinking his voice is a little tedious to listen to. Right? But Odiogo’s digital voice, is a leader in the new generation of computer generated speakers. He will inflect nicely, and an appropriately placed comma will generate pauses in all the right places. Text can flow pretty well, if you’re au fait with your grammer.
Integrating Odiogo into your wordpress blog is a breeze, even for techno-phobes. All you’ve got to do is upload the plugin and activate, just like any other wordpress plugin. Within minutes, you’ll have instant audio posts on your blog pages, a feed to your podcasts on itunes, and various other syndication options on your own Odiogo page.
Will the service work for large blogs? I installed the plugin on another blog of mine and Odiogo was able to can more than 50 pages into audio format in less than 50 minutes, from the time I signed up for the service. Pretty impressive?
Once installed, all of your previously published posts will be odiogo-ified, and new posts should become available for listening within a few hours, even minutes. What’s more, it will syndicate all your posts into feeds that can be added to your RSS reader or whatever program you use to pull down podcasts for listening on the go. While it’s certainly not as efficient as reading blog posts in Google Reader, the service is excellent for listening on the go, to your favorite blogs on your ipod or portable media player.
Ok so it does have some quirks. The tedious voice issue, that lacks inflections found in natural speech, will undoubtedly put some people off. The integrated flash player can be a slight pain in the ass. Sure, it’s quick to load and can squeeze long posts into tiny files, but there’s no volume control, and it is inclined to blast at ya, so keep your thumb on the manual volume control and be prepared to jack it right down. As for wearing headphones, don’t go there!
Check out Odiogo’s demo page if you’d like to explore more. You might also want to take a look at this cool Firefox plugin, ClicK, Speak, which add stext-to-speech functionality to any site you’re browsing. Pretty neat!
