Automated Audio Blogging To Simplify News Consumption?

It looks like automated audio blogging is growing increasingly popular these days. We reviewed Odiogo back in January, recently we have also talked about Talkr and when browsing podcasting apps on Simple Spark, the Web 2.0 categorized catalogue I was so impressed with on Thursday I have found another similar application named BlueGrind. This product has not been reviewed on Profy but anyway it is really a very new service (it only has a handful of already registered feeds and some pages of their website do not even work at all) working in the same field with the Odiogo and Talkr. I tested BlueGrind for Profy and registration of the blog took merely a couple of minutes. After your blog is registered, it is available for you to share on BlueGrind for users to download audio versions of your posts. Blogs' owners can also add audio directly to their blogs (the service supports WordPress and Blogger platforms). If you choose to use this service on your blog it promises to feature a small flash audio player under each post. I actually tried to try this out on our special Blogger-based test blog but it never worked. I don't know if it is my own lack of proper HTML knowledge or glitch on the part of BlueGrind the results are absolutely the same and I had to download an audio file to listen to it to be able to evaluate the quality of the automatic creation of audio files.

But anyway I have created an audio feed for Profy on BlueGrind and the posts are available to listen (I don't really know where the service got some ancient Digg links as Profy posts and why the latest post is a few days ago but I hope it will be resolved - the service is beta, of course). So the quality of the audio files created automatically is quite impressive and it even sounds rather emotionally and absolutely similar to a real human person reading a post. But unfortunately BlueGrind does not provide for any customization of your submitted blogs, like choosing if you would need a male or female voice for your posts.

It is also useful that here you can browse various submitted blogs and news sites for content and add them to your list to download when ready. But this definitely is not flexible when we talk of frequently updated content - after all, we already have podcasting clients. On the contrary Talkr provides a user with an opportunity to subscribe to the complete feeds of his or her favorite blogs. Talkr synchronizes your computer with your MP3 player for you to listen your chosen feeds on the go. Talkr speaks in a more gentle female voice and it sounds more meditative compared to the previous example. Talkr actually makes the process fully automatic for both parties - bloggers do not need to do anything after setting a podcast for their blogs and readers need not worry about anything but plugging the MP3 player once in a while to get fresh content from their subscriptions.

After our initial report Odiogo had some time for development of additional features and recently they have introduced their ListenButton that works as a plugin showing a small button for blog readers to be aware that they can actually listen to the currently displayed post. When a reader clicks the button, it shows a small player and a proposal to subscribe to this feed using MP3 player. Actually Odiogo website only serves as a service for content creators - bloggers and mainstream media while there is no place for the end users to browse content available for listening via Odiogo. Readers can only access audio content from the websites of publishers via the ListenButton. Currently the button is available for WordPress and Blogger but the developers promise more platforms will be available soon. Anyway I have listened to a post on Odiogo blog about the instructions on how to install the plugin for WordPress and in this event I have found certain imperfections in the pronunciation - for example, the word "plugin" was pronounced in 3 different ways. But on a less technical article from Jerusalem Post which utilizes Odiego player as well it was absolutely smooth. I have also created an audio version of Profy so if you are among the early adapters of all things audio feel free to subscribe to the feed and listen on your favorite podcast client. You can also listen to examples of the recent posts from Profy here to evaluate the quality of Odiogo giving voice to our blog.

As a summary I can definitely tell that the competition is growing rather intense in this field of text-to-audio services. And right now the services send their sales pitches to bloggers who are too lazy or simply unwilling to turn into podcasters (due to pronunciation or any other reasons) obviously expecting that the more blogs and mainstream media websites adapt their technology the higher user base they will eventually build (and will be able to monetize via advertising, that's for sure). I think it is because of the new players entering the market Talkr is now a free service while it used to be a paid one - ranging from $5 to $9 a month depending on the number of feeds a user chose to listen.

Sure, all of these applications have a long way to go in their development in terms of customization of audio feeds, their distribution, search of data for interested readers and monetization of the services. But even now an audience for these services already exists and there is a potential of growth with more and more users willing to spend more time away from their computers listening to news and opinions instead of consuming them online. But I somehow doubt that such approach will actually ensure for me more time away from my laptop: instead I will spend the same time online (finding other tasks to do) and then I will add some time to my working hours listening to blogs when driving back home from office, walking my dog in the evening or riding a bicycle on Saturday. And I daresay I would prefer to leave my work in the office and think of something pleasant listening to my favorite jazz melodies relaxing in the evenings.