The Highland Park Public Library is using a tool called Speakwire. Follow the link to Speakwire from their blog (Highland Park has the link near the bottom of the right navigation column — “Want this blog to read to you? Click Here”) and after a few seconds’ pause, you’ll start to hear the blog entries read to you. The voice is synthesized but utterly understandable.
Bridging the gap between blogs and podcasts, Speakwire opens an interesting set of possibilities to reach vision-impaired patrons with library news and announcements.
Another tool, called “Talkr,” goes a bit further — it will turn blog entries into podcasts that you can download to play on your MP3 player while you’re offline. Talkr offers three podcasts for free; you can subscribe to their service to receive more.
[Via Shifted Librarian and Web4Lib.]
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Talkr: text to audio feed
The other day I mentioned Speakwire (converts your blog to audio and reads it to you)…by the way, somewhere down the bottom of the sidebar I have a button to listen to this blog via Speakwire.
Now another tool has come my way via rss4lib, calle…