Blogcasting: Adding voice to blog
I just added an option to listen to my posts quite literally. My blogcast, I call that since it’s actually a readout of my blog post (and not in my voice, ofcourse) in mp3 audio format and is powered by Talkr. If you click on the Play link, you’ll be asked to download or play mp3, which is a text to sound conversion on the fly by Talkr to bring you a podcast of my blog posts.
How do I do this? Quite easy really. I created an account on Talkr, added my blog URI to it’s list. Then, I added this following code in my template:
<a href="http://www.talkr.com/app/fetch.app?feed_id=564
&perma_link=<?php the_permalink() ?>">Listen to this post</a>
The whole thing above should be in one single line. Notice that the URI points to Talkr that has my feed_id and the post permalink tag, so that Talkr knows which post it will be reading out loud.
I think it’s quite nice, except that the voice pronounces my name, Chétan sound totally wrong =)
Update (June 28): I received an email from Chris Brooks today. He said:
Thanks for the post on Talkr. Sorry that we’re not pronouncing your name correctly. Is the “Ch” in Chetan a soft “ch” (like in the word “cheese”) or a hard “k” sound? If you can send me a phonetic spelling, I’ll re-train our speech engine.
We ask that bloggers agree to our Terms of Service before they implement (it’s not a problem to implement first, however — I realize that the 2-day wait is annoying. We are going to eliminate that waiting period in the next week or two.)
Notice that I had enabled it without signing the terms of service (because I was asked to wait for 2-days as well), and yet, my feed was allowed to be played from Talkr’s servers. Generous guys, and they really care.
that’s very interesting. i just listened to this post of yours. Its an interesting concept but the monotone of the voice makes it not as worthwhile as expected. The pronounciation and the breaths between words, at times, are incorrect as well.
I thought about it, to use this, but then I use too much Hindi @ times …so that wouldn’t be really worthwhile either. Its a nice concept, but would have been better if was your own voice.
Jun 26, 05 at 15:36Poonam: You’re right, especially about certain pronunciations. I couldn’t possibly have a synthesis of my own. Quite a bit of a hassle actually, not to mention lack of time for doing something like this.
For now, I look at it as an accessibility feature, which I think is quite good, really.
Jun 26, 05 at 16:02This is an amazing addition and a great value-added service for bloggers. I’ll try to add this on my blog too. If nothing else, it is a great tool for visually-impared readers.
Jun 26, 05 at 23:36Damn! they asked me to wait for 2 days in order to add my blog to their list. Also, is it only Wordpress specific?
Jun 27, 05 at 00:35Patrix: No, it’s not WordPress specific. Any blog software that has a permalink structure can utilize this. Just replace the WordPress permalink tag with whatever your software or service uses as permalink tag, so that when your blog software processes the tag, it converts it to the actual URI of the post (which is what Talkr needs).
Jun 27, 05 at 01:20