Converting digital text to audio on the fly
Roy Lindemann is CIO and a co-founder of ReadSpeaker, a great plug-in that enables an audio version of digital text. Essentially, the service converts text, reading the HTML tagging and punctuation, to provide an audio version that is streamed or downloaded as an mp3. It’s a nifty way to allow your blog or website to be listened to on the fly, on your iphone or ipod (etc…), via a podcast.
ReadSpeaker provides a paying service to businesses around the world. It offers 35 different languages and 88 different voices including accents (e.g. Australian, English and American English) and sex (female & male voices).
Digital Marketing Bonus: HTML tagging & accessibility also equals good for Readspeaker
My takeaway from the interview for digital marketing: One of the keys to a website text that is apt for an optimal ReadSpeaker experience is to have good punctuation and HTML tagging. As with the charter for accessible web sites, having a well-tagged HTML site is also beneficial for Search Engine Optimization. Two for the price of one, I say.
ReadSpeaker was originally founded in 1999 by Niclas Bergstrom (in Uppsala, Sweden). Roy is also a fellow INSEAD alumnus. Another of ReadSpeaker’s key executives is my good old friend and INSEAD classmate, Joop Heijenrath (COO).
To find Roy Lindemann & ReadSpeaker:
- ReadSpeaker
- Follow ReadSpeaker via Twitter
- Find Roy on Linkedin Roy Lindemann
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With the internet we have access to so much information in a short time, we no longer have time to read all this information available! Thus the idea of ReadSpeaker is extremely interesting and innovative, as in another podcast, was certainly an idea of a smart marketer!
ReadSpeaker also helps in the assimilation of information, it also helps in bringing mobility to the information from the moment that we can listen to information on smartphones, etc. On the other hand we can not visualize the information and choose what we want to absorb, what is crucial today! Information technologies have given us the power to read what we want, where we want and when we want. But the tool ReadSpeaker is a very interesting and useful product to us and to business.
Agreed Helena. What's exciting is to see how the taxt-to-audio technology is improving. Check out the TED talk done by Roger Ebert, where the importance of this technology takes on a whole other meeting: http://themyndset.com/2011/04/roger-ebert-tedbran…