Yesterday was so cool, I got a great amount achieved.
About 2 months ago I was flippantly commenting on Twitter that wouldn’t it be so cool if my Twitter rss feed was converted into speech. When I say “cool” I actually mean a total hoot! I’d not have a great need for hearing my twitter friends, I can read them fine, but as it happens, it does turn out to be hilarious. Read on.
A friend suggested (please remind me who that was) that I approach Xfruits and propose the concept to them, so sure enough I did.
After some chats back and forth with Gilles Le Cocguen, and a few beta runs, Gilles has now gone and publicly launched the service and called it Vocalfruits.
The service is awesome, once you have created an account it’s simply a matter of pasting your rss feed into the system, you get options for what type of voice you’d like associated with your feed.
You can hear my twitter feed here. Yes depending on when you check and who has posted, you might find it pretty bloody hilarious.
Now of course I probably won’t use this service for my twitter feed, but this did initiate the idea that this is an awesome service for well constructed text, and that’s important, which could be converted into, actually amazingly good, speech.
So I went forth and installed a Blog concerned with SecondLife academics and other forward thinkers (let me know if you want to join), and of course immediately obtained a podcast by default, albeit a computerised voice. Remember a podcast is simply content pushed down an rss feed.
The way it works on SLEDucating is:
1. SLEDucating rss feed fed into Vocalfruits – new rss feed created
2. VocalFruits rss fed into Feedburner (I like stats). – new feed created
3. Feedburner rss feed added to SLEDucating Blog and a player added from Bigcontact (means people can listen on site)
4. Added Feedburner rss to iTunes (or any aggregator you choose)
This, at least for me, is very useful. I’m one of those people that learn and digest a great deal more if the content is in an audio format. Reading through long Blog posts of text is not my gig, so with this service I can simply grab the podcast from iTunes and listen to the latest content while on the move in the car, train, plane, and other dead time.
There are some glitches which will get fixed I’m sure, I’m also sure Gilles would appreciate the feedback if you get into this.
I love it.
Would YOU use this service, would YOU have a use for this in YOUR life?