New Text-to-Speech Capability Turns Written News into Spoken News
By TMCnet Contributing Editor
Dow Jones & Company has introduced a new capability to enable users to listen to the news that drives their business. This new “text-to-speech” capability in Dow Jones Factiva needs only one click to allow users to listen to a news article rather than read it.
The “Listen to Article” link is currently available in beta format and the link appears at the top of any full-text article with fewer than 4,000 words. Listeners can select English, French, German, Italian and Spanish languages and the application can automatically default to reading in the interface language previously selected.
“Dow Jones Factiva continues to set itself apart from the competition by being the first to offer text-to-speech technology in the current awareness, news and research market,” said Dennis Cahill, senior vice president and chief product officer of the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group, in a Wednesday statement.
“This new capability builds on our commitment to provide customers with relevant news when, where and how they need it and to reinforce our No. 1 position in the marketplace.”
Provided by VoiceCorp, the listen capability is a Web-based service that converts text into speech on the fly. It is available to users wherever full-text articles are found, including alerts, search results and newsletters. Once the link is clicked, the listen capability uses a Flash player to read the article.
The addition of text-to-speech is meant to further build on Dow Jones’s goal of integrating various forms of multimedia content into Dow Jones Factiva.
In our multi-tasking society, we are constantly on the look-out for solutions that can make our day a little less hectic by combining tasks. Why not try out a solution that reads an article to you so you can catch the important news, while also skimming e-mails, looking at reports, or finishing that paperwork?
While multi-tasking may not be the end goal, this solution can provide a great tool for those individuals who are concerned with the issues, yet lack the time to sit down and reach about them. Such a solution can also have even broader applications and could find another niche in which to market the solution.
Provided by VoiceCorp, the listen capability is a Web-based service that converts text into speech on the fly. It is available to users wherever full-text articles are found, including alerts, search results and newsletters. Once the link is clicked, the listen capability uses a Flash player to read the article.
The addition of text-to-speech is meant to further build on Dow Jones’s goal of integrating various forms of multimedia content into Dow Jones Factiva.
In our multi-tasking society, we are constantly on the look-out for solutions that can make our day a little less hectic by combining tasks. Why not try out a solution that reads an article to you so you can catch the important news, while also skimming e-mails, looking at reports, or finishing that paperwork?
While multi-tasking may not be the end goal, this solution can provide a great tool for those individuals who are concerned with the issues, yet lack the time to sit down and reach about them. Such a solution can also have even broader applications and could find another niche in which to market the solution.
5 comments:
Hi Ken,
Such functionality already exists on the biggest polish web site: onet.pl and was created used IVONA technology. Good to know, that others follow our path... :)
regards
pj
Hey, I wanted to let you know that I just joined a team that is offering a very similar service, but making it available to bloggers and website operators for free. We are in beta tesing, but you can check out the Text to Speech service on www.ReadTheWords.com It is 100% web based with no software to download.
Users can create audio conversions from text, ms office docs, and pdf's. They can embed the readings into their website or blog so all the website visitors can listen to the text, just like the Dow Jones companies.
The quality is really great compared to the products out there. I was wondering if you could text my site and possibly give it a good review if you like it. You can even create your own reading and post it in your blog.
Give it a shot.
Here is another good software to listen to the web
www.mytextreader.com
regards
Mike
We have already speech enabled about 2000 websites world wide with this technology. Dow Jones are just one of our latest customers. We also recently announced the ReadSpeaker service on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in English and Japanese (!). Soon we will also launch our speech enabling services for private websites and blogs. Actually, for blogs, we have the www.audiofeedcreator.com as well as the www.vocalfruits.com that can both transform RSS feeds into podcasts on the fly :-)
Niclas Bergstrom
Founder, ReadSpeaker
CEO VoiceCorp Group (www.voice-corp.com)
Hopefully they can upgrade the Kindle text to speech. For the moment, Obama rhymes with Alabama!
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