Audio Added for Your Listening and Downloading Pleasure

I added a new widget to the Art Print Issues blog today. Odiogo allows blogger to "Voice Your Content" by digitizing the blog text and creating an audio file read in some bloke's pleasant computer voice. You can also choose to download it as an mp3 and listen to it on your iPod or other audio players. I think it is a cool service some will appreciate having. It will be interesting to get your feedback. Click the icon to start listening.

As with all new technologies, Odiogo comes with some features that are less than perfect. One is it sometimes rambles from one sentence to the next without a natural pause making casual listening difficult in those instances. Another is it doesn't read the list numbers as in my previous "Thirteen Sure-Fire Rules..." post. Lastly, its attempts to pronounce giclee are downright humorous. Given giclee is a French word, it's easy to see how this could happen. It sounds very much like the way many people I've heard try to say it when they first encounter the word. I've heard it as "jie klee" and as "gick lee" but all in all it's pretty impressive. I'm sure as the service gets older it will improve, the model is advertising free now, but it intends to monetize the free service by adding that as a feature sometime in the future.

Odiogo has a blog; its Deploying the Odiogo service on a blog: Why and How is a good read. The Daily Cup of Tech blog recently had a very good post about Odiogo, Now with Audio Goodness, offers some additional insight. If you are a techie type, check it out for its other posts as well. If you want to add it to your Blog or mainstream media Web site, simply go to www.odiogo.com and sign up for the free service.