News & Views
Two new podcast developments!
By Terry Freedman
Thu, 9 Mar 2006, 09:58

OK, I admit it: I'm sad, I need to get myself a life, I really ought to get on with the work I'm actually being paid to do blah blah blah yada yada yada. Sorry, but this stuff is exciting!

Like just about everyone else I know, I never have enough time to do all the things I want or need to do. I wanted to make many more podcasts, for two reasons:

1. To make this website more accessible to blind or otherwise sight-impaired people.

2. To give people more choice about when they "read" the articles, ie by being able to listen to them in the car or when working out in the gym.

Trouble is, every time I create a podcast, because I'm doing it all by hand, as it were, and because I like to try and insert bits of music and so on, it takes me an inordinate amount of time.

Case in point: a couple of days ago it took me 90 minutes to produce an 8 minute podcast. Mind you, the day before it took me three hours to produce a 12 minute one, so I'm getting better!

But this morning I experimented with creating a podcast entirely from text-to-speech technology. Basically, it reads an article. I had to do a bit of editing, to try to get some pauses in, some intro and outro music, and to cut out the URLs (which are unlistenable to), but...

(Roll of drums, fanfare etc).. .It took me 40 minutes to produce and upload a 20 minute podcast. I'm sure I'll get faster! My intention is to cut down the production time to 30 minutes or less.

I have also created an audiocast of my RSS feed. What that means is that if you click on the picture of the town crier on the front page of the website, you'll be able to listen to the summaries of all the articles listed in the RSS feed. So you could be doing something else, but still "browsing" the website to find out if there is anything of interest.

If you visit the audiocast website you will also see a link to a free Microsoft text-to-speech program for Windows (there are also some available for the Mac, but as I don't have a Mac I'm unable to recommend any).

I will still produce "real" podcasts from time to time, but automation will allow me to really extend what I am able to offer without driving myself into the ground!

In fact, I'm so excited about all this that I am going to buy a proper voice -- it's a little hard listening to a robot for any length of time!

I should love to receive some feedback please!

© Terry Freedman Thu, 9 Mar 2006