October 09, 2004
RSS Feeds By Audio - An Emerging Delivery Channel
Independent Publishing
Interface and Navigation Design
As an existing or budding NewsMaster, creating your own unique RSS newsfeeds from your personally evaluated and selected sources, the ultimate destination of your content is almost certainly going to be your subscribers' newsreaders or aggregators.
Your subscribers have plenty to choose from. Some are web-based, whilst others are installed on your PC. Most are available for free.
The one thing thay all have in common is that they are 'readers'. In other words, they enable subscribers to read the text-based content that you have created. However, the receipt and consumption of information as ready-to-read 'text' is only one way in which people can receive information. Listening to information, in the form of audio broadcasts is another.
In June 2004, Robin Good reported on the release of version 1.0 of NewsAloud from NextUp.com. NewsAloud uses Voice Synthesis (Text To Speech or TTS) to read RSS-based news stories aloud on a PC. Its automatic audio file creation can keep the 100 most recent stories available as MP3 or Windows Media files ready for playback on your iPod, PocketPC, or even on your TV with Tivo's Home Media Option.
Making your feeds available in other formats apart from text enables you to reach your subscribers in many other personal contexts. So, where they might have typically read your news sitting at a desktop computer, they can now consume your news elsewhere, for example while working on something else at their PCs, or whilst driving, or exercising.
Another interesting recent development is the launch of WebNews.TV, a unique program from a Ukraininan developer that reads out the content of feeds using "funny animation movies".
The 'newsreader' is a cartoon-like image of a penguin that you see in a TV-like screen. For each news theme (Politics, Business & Finance, Entertainment, General News, Technology & Science News, Weather) you get a different penguin 'character'. You can also choose your own penguin characters.
Sounds absurd? Perhaps, but it demonstrates very clearly the potential for alternative distribution channels for your RSS feeds and certainly provides a great deal of food for thought.
You can freely download the trial version and should you decide to buy, it costs $19.95. I dare you to try it.
posted by Francis Good on Saturday October 9 2004
updated on Tuesday November 9 2004
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