Ask YC: Convert Text To Audio (Blog To Podcast)

How much of the blog(s) are you dubbing? Is there a time cutoff? I could only imagine using this on a regular basis for a daily commute, and occaisional for long travel trips.

So, as an example, I have a 45 min commute either way, so I can listen to up to 1.5 hours of blog posting. Let's assume 1 min per short post, or 5-10 mins per long post. So I could listen to up to 9-10 long posts or up to 90 short posts.

Also, there are other factors such as adverts, voice tone, etc. If you are reading an advert in between each short post and it all sounds like Stephen Hawking, then I don't think I'll listen to many of those posts at all. If I'm listening to advert-free material, maybe I could see myself paying for a rate like iTunes; 0.99$ for 15-20 minute chunks?

The other problem with this is that many blog posts are like news; their value will deteriorate over time. So, up-to-date blog posts will be worth the 0.99$, but day-old or week-old posts will be worth less.

Just my two cents, T.

I think it would be nicer if each blogger did that themselves. They'd probably find their own typos better that way too :)

I think bloggers have no time to do it themselves. To use this service will be more efficient for reader (than wait for blogger's podcast).

What about a service that reads my blog, i.e, real person, then converts it to audio? Paying radio personalities to do this during songs?

I am using odiogo now on my blog. It is free now and there is a wordpress plugin. The conversion is not in real time. The latency is around 2 hours. Their plugin will supply flash base player to playback the mp3. The quality of them is much better than windows XP's text to speech.

My humble opinion is if you really want to charge the service, you probably need to shorten the latency. If the web service guarantees any popular blog post can be converted into podcasts in 2 minutes after text is finished.

Izak30, eugenejen, ricky_clarkson, tomh, thank you for comments.