Friday, December 16, 2005

Using Text to speech as a means for Podcasting

Feed2Podcast is an interesting concept. Folks behind the site, have used Text to Speech to convert an RSS feed into a Podcast. Its not a perfect voice that speaks when using the converted podcast, but its a start. Its a dead giveaway that the voice is computer generated. In addition, the intonation is incorrect at times.

I couldn't resist giving it a try and so I did sign up.

Feed2Podcast currently support only RSS feeds and not atom feeds. Since, this blog is on blogger, there is support only for atom. So, the first thing to do, is to sign up with Feedburner. Next, sign up Feed2Podcast, and point the Feedburner RSS feed to Feed2Podcast. Viola!! Its done. The podcast can be subscribed to from here.

There are number of ways to listen to Podcasts. Since podcasts are essentially mp3 files, they can simply be downloaded and listened to on a PC or an MP3 Player.

At first, I tried downloading different podcasts and listening to them on my ipod. But two things got in the way - firstly the download was taking way too long, and secondly, listening to podcasts on an ipod is seriously overrated. This is especially the case when you are trying to get some work done. I rather listen to music while working or in the gym.

The solution? Podnova and Yahoo Podcasts are two options that stream the podcast from the net.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

GYM ?...LOL