Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Blog Audio: Odiogo, FeedForAll, and TextAloud iTunes decreases my blog consumption After all this time, I'm finally blogging again. I think the issue has been the lack of time (other things are more important?) and the lack of motivation (i.e., burning desire). Oddly enough, I think podcasts have taken me away from blogging. Since I no longer use NewsGator and FeedStation to download podcasts (I use iTunes instead), I spend less time in my news aggregator. Oh, I still consume blogs, and I think that they're still a great innovation, but I'm not using them like I used to. A twist on blog consumption: Text-to-Speech conversion One new product that puts a twist on consuming blogs is Odiogo. It's software that will "audify" RSS content to create MP3 audio consumable by your media player or portable audio device. This is similar in concept to a combination of products I saw a while back: mixing FeedForAll, an RSS publisher, with TextAloud from NextUp.com. This combo allows you to create a "podcast" version of your blog. TextAloud also has other uses for text-to-speech conversion as a stand-alone product. Odiogo, on the other hand, combines an RSS aggregator with a text-to-speech converter in one product. The price is fairly accessible at $29.99. I may try it. There are some sample audio clips of Odiogo available. One thing I noticed is that Odiogo seems to offer only one voice (male). TextAloud, on the other hand, offers multiple voice options with a range of sampling rates from vendors including AT&T (Natural Voices), NeoSpeech, Cepstral, and ScanSoft (RealSpeak). TextAloud comes only in a Windows version and costs $29.95. FeedForAll costs $39.95 and is available for Windows and Mac. They have an interesting set of partners offering complimentary products related to RSS feed consumption, RSS-friendly web hosting, and podcast creation. Conclusion I may try the audio blog content option. Unfortunately, most of my podcast solutions involve a lot of manual labor to put it onto my player (my Palm Zire 72 with an SD card). The other downside is that the text-to-speech output can sound somewhat bland, causing me to zone out instead of actively listening. I'll put it on my Someday/Maybe list (GTD).

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	Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Don't like "Podcast?" How about "Syndicast?" Some people are confused about what the term "podcast" really means. While it originally involved a reference to Apple's iPod, the term has expanded to mean much, much more. I heard somewhere that Microsoft was trying to find a way to refer to a "podcast" without calling it a "Pod-cast." "Blogcast" was the substitute I heard offered. However, that was only a rumor. I think there's a better word, still: syndicast. Syndication and broadcast combined. Jason Dunn of PocketPC Thoughts describes several alternative names for podcasts in his article on Microsoft's site. The problem with coining a new term and supplanting the old term is difficult. "Podcast" is already a powerful meme. I don't suspect that it will make much difference proposing it, but I couldn't keep a clever idea to myself. And for another perspective, Chris Pirillo says some people think it's "not important": "This is Simply Smarter Broadcasting." It's nothing more than Internet radio at its core, folks. It's audio, on-demand, that's easily synchronized with your computer system / portable media device... Podcasting, or syndicated downloadable content, by whatever name, is definitely here to stay.

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	Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Podcasting Peeves Michael Lehman's BuzzCast kept the music loop for the running for an entire ten minutes while talking to Jeremy Mazner about Microsoft's PDC 2005! Dude, kill the music! It's sooo distracting! Even worse than that, MSMobiles.com released an hour-and-a-half podcast rambling about cellphone news, with opera-style music playing in the background almost the whole time! Dude, the music has to go, and I'm not going to listen for an hour and a half. Sorry.

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	Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Michael Lehman and NewsGator podcast filtering I searched for Michael Lehman today, after listening to the first Buzz Cast on MSDN's Channel 9. I found his Radio weblog. After browsing his list of podcasts I came across this one and left a comment about a typo. As I was typing, I decided to throw in this tip (reposted here for the benefit of readers): I filter podcasts through NewsGator Online Edition. I subscribe to podcast feeds via NG online and review them occasionally. I pick the ones I like and save them to a My Clippings feed for podcasts. I am subscribed to that feed on my home PC via Radio Userland's news aggregator. Radio Userland downloads enclosures in the background at a configurable number of hours after midnight. The next day, the podcasts I selected are cached on my PC. This allows me to selectively download podcasts instead of wholesale downloading anything that comes across in the feed. Of course this technique means that the downloads are a little time-delayed, but I like the control. Michael Lehman has a pretty cool radio voice. He can read fast too. Just listen to him give the contest information for the PDC event in the Buzz Cast! Michael's podcast, the Manic Minute is available on his Radio weblog via this feed.

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	Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Podcasting expands my mind Ready or not, Microsoft is podcasting. [Scripting News] This is exciting. I've said for a long time, that if I could get someone to read a computer book onto audio, that I would listen to it. Sure code samples don't translate to audio well, but a lot of the content could work. Podcasting (not just Microsoft's stuff) is a nice substitute, plus you get personality and flavor. You get to hear experts talk about technical topics and provide insights that you might not otherwise get to absorb quickly by reading blogs. I'm not trying to pigeon-hole podcasting to technical topics, but this is a great use of it for me.

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	Saturday, June 04, 2005

Make Magazine Podcasts After my rants about podcast content, I thought it might be good to point to O'Reilly's Make magazine's online blog, complete with an audio show podcast feed and del.icio.us links. I'm not that much of a geek (electronic construction is beyond me), but Make seems to have a lot of coverage on trends in electronics and technology. You can sneak a peek at how to run Linux on an iPod or a Greasemonkey script that reminds you to "get back to work you surfmonkey!" Here's another post about running Linux on an iPod. And here's a Make post on running DOS games under Windows XP. Thanks to Grady Booch for the Make link. Be sure to read the bit (and watch the video) of the Morse code vs. SMS text messaging contest on the Tonight Show. L-O-L.

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	Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Why Blog? Because Neil Cox Says So! I like Neil Cox's content. I don't read enough of it, though, so I'm going to highlight some of my catching up here. Let me start off by saying that this is probably going to sound like I'm kissing up. Whatever--think what you want. In preparing for a presentation on a Drupal community website implementation for a ministry in Columbus, Ohio, I wanted to find material that would reinforce my recommendation that the participants start blogging. Blogging is great stuff, but explaining why to the uninitiated can be a challenge. After all, you don't want it to sound lame, right? To gather ammunition for my persuasion, I searched Google for the phrase "Why Blog." I found a few good hits, and I'll probably go back for more goodies. Ironically, though, I found Neil's "Why Blog" through other means. I was exploring the site, again in preparation for the presenation. I use his site as an example of a weblog that is relevant to ministry. It's obvious from the themes on his website that Neil enjoys making change happen. If nothing else, the names "Got Change?" and "Loving Change" should make that obvious. I can tell that he's making a splash in Indy, spreading hi-tech to ministries that need it very much. Next, Why Feed RSS to the Aggregators makes compelling arguments for why people should use RSS. He personifies news aggregators as the modern "secretary" (very funny, LOL): Secretaries used to run the world. We all know that, right? ... But then came the information age, economies tightened, and we lost our secretaries. ... Our organizations failed. Global competition overtook us. Enron had to take shortcuts. Gas prices went up. Our dog ran off. Maybe our wife. Life was chaos without our secretaries. Well, baby... SECRETARIES ARE BACK! And they have voracious appetites for digesting & prioritizing information. In fact, now we've gone beyond calling them secretaries or executive admins, we now call them 'aggregators'. Unfortunately, (and I know this is a stereotype), my aggregator doesn't take dictation or make coffee. :-) I haven't gotten to meet Neil in person yet. I hope to someday soon. We met through this wonderful medium we call the Internet, and he introduced me to someone who has become a dear friend and colleague, Jeff Koenig. Jeff K. was working just seven miles from where I live, and I would have never met him if not for Neil. God works in very cool ways.

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