Turn your blogs in audio MP3 files – Give your readers the option to listen too
I’ve expressed an opinion on podcasts in the past , today I sold my soul to the big audio devil in the sky and added the odiogo WP plugin to my blog.
You’ll see a little icon at the top of my blog posts where you can listen to an mp3 file of the content.
Odiogo grabs your rss feed and converts the text into an audio file. The voice isn’t perfect of course, but nonetheless I think its a cool little extra. They also host the content meaning you will not get hit with a huge bandwidth bill from your host either.
From the official odiogo site
Turn readers into listeners, and transform your blog into a high quality, ad-supporting broadcast that can vastly expand your audience reach!
At present the service is completely free. I’d imagine that as they build up sufficient traction and user base, they’ll seek out monetisation options, probably via the use of inserted audio ads at the end or beginning of ones content. Perhaps they’ll offer a paid or a pro version enabling you to opt out, we shall see…
Thus far, I kinda like it, let me know what you think.
You can subscribe to the feed for this site here
http://podcasts.odiogo.com/yack-yack/podcasts-html.php
Here’s what a few other bloggers think of it, do you have a view?
Transform your blog into podcast using autocasting
TypePad Odiogo ListenButton Widget Installation Process
Instant Podcasts with Text-to-Speech Odiogo
How to Use OdiogoOdiogo Ties together blog posts and Podcasts
Odiogo adds listen button for enabling read aloud blog posts
Full RSS Feeds And Odiogo- Now You Can Listen To Posts At MusTech.net
I like it until the automated reader gets to reading URL addresses, etc., and it is a bit stilted. It lacks that human warmth of inflection that I just cannot forget is missing.
I have Speak on my Apple iMac and use it upon occassion to hear something back after I have fiddled with it and am double checking it for possible errors.
What would be lovely and something I plan on doing is recording my post and letting the reader choose ro become a listener also. I would love to hear your own voice instead of the robots. Good job robot.
I started doing a podcast version of my Sciencebase blog towards the end of last year, I even wrote a jingle and recorded it with lots of guitar FX and stuff, but I gave up after six episodes even though I went through all the effort of getting on to iTunes. It was just too painful listening back to my own voice, oh, and it takes far too much time.
Now, this, this is different. This opens up one’s blog to a whole new group of people, who, for whatever reason, want to listen to a blog rather than reading it.
I’m going to give it a go, and maybe see if I can get more than the average 200 listeners I had per episode with my original Geordie Boffin Podcast on iTunes.
db
Hi Theresa, thanks for stopping by
I hear what you are saying, its not a perfect solution, though Ive heard worse
he thing with doing your own recordings is as david has pointed out above, it takes so much time to get them right. You then have to make sure the files are suitably compressed, you then have to upload the thing too. It can add quite a bit of time to an already time stretched day.
I think I might well do a one off though, just as a posterity thing. Its good to put a voice to a post.
David – good luck with it, maybe this version will be easier to understand than raw Geordie
(j/k )
Did it say the name of the beer right?
Nice gadget, I sure they will improve on it in the future…. Now I misspell and my grammar is straight bad… the service may get broke on my blog…. lol
Heh I like the way it says ‘Stella Artois D’
Its good though isn’t it Vlad? Adds a lttle fun to ones blog to I think!
I have kind of wondered what the point of this is. I am an eternal optimist and still believe that most people can read faster than the play of the MP3.
~Becky
Prolly so Becks, but it’s an option still. One could be coding, or laying there with ones eyes shut or making an egg sandwich perhaps…;) Try doing any of those and read at the same time
Ok, yes you’re right too in the general sense, but hey, it’s another option.Adds a lil extra richness even.
Agree with you, Rob. Providing extra options to your readers is never wrong, at least what I think.
I’m gonna try it and if it reads documents better than Adobe Reader, I’ll pass this post link to my blog readers.
rob,
i guess odiogo is pretty similar to another podcast conversion channel called Odeo. have you checked it rob?
Hey Avi, cool hope it works out, let me know what you think subsequently
@ ‘seo training’ – I looked at odeo, looks like there’s a lot happening there. Couldn’t find a similar blog text to audio converter though…
Hi Rob,
Do you track the mp3 downloads? If so, have you had many people listening so far?
Hi David
I’ve added it to feedburner, yet thus far no subscribers.
I tried to find a login page on the odiogo website but can’t seem to locate anything..
Rob, sadly Odiogo doesn’t have stats page. Talkr provides the stats page telling how many people listened to it etc. But Talkr voice is more robotic. BTW, I’m grabbbing your podcast feed
Hey Benedict, thanks for stopping by
Cool, my 1st podcast subscriber
Im gonna look at talkr tommorrow over breakfast, thanks for that
Nooooooooooo, it’s crap. The last thing I want to hear is some generic American accent speaking the words of a British Blogger.
But even if you could do accents (I think Rob should chose the Kenneth Williams one), it would still be crap.
It’s doesn’t pick up inflictions, language is so complex, blogging language even more so as it’s conversational in tone.
It’s a gimmick, it brings no value to the table. I bet in ten years time it still wont work. It’s like the sat nav voice. Although I hear they are working on a Charles Hawtry version.
Oh I say!
*snigger*
I’d love to be able to do a Kenneth Williams “Oooh Matron”
It’ll get there one day.
You’ll have a voice spectral analyser that you’ll be able to train and it’ll work too
Still better than nish, don’t thosewith visual impairments use similar?
I wonder if odiogo would be interested in a cockney accented version
Hi,
This is a good post. This is the stuff I was actually looking for.
I have a question though – Frequent number of times I have got a warning as “spam” when I try bookmarking on sites like dig.com or muti.com.
I don’t have any spam pages or websites.
Any idea why do I meet with all these?
Thanks.
In the absence of a cockney accented version, just do a search and replace for leading H’s
@Tom – might be an IP thing…
@MB design, great idea – actually Im sure there is a page out there that cockneyises ones content, can’t recall where exactly but it was kinda funny1
Where do I get my Odiogo stats…I’ve been all over the site, all over my WP dashboard, but cannot figure it out? Am I just totallee stoopid?
db
PS I had to do the antispam sum twice
http://www.odiogo.com/faq_content_providers.php#q13
Hope that helps, its not that clear and i couldn’t find the login section to the content provider section…hmmn, methinks I’m either wearing the wrong glasses or that site could do with a usability makeover
p.s 4 + 6 is not 46
Yep, I’d seen that FAQ, but have not heard a peep out of them since I signed up at the beginning of the summer…
…as to logging in. I just cannot find the right button to push (not a problem I usually have, so it’s definitely their fault…)
db
Finally, I received an email from Odiogo providing me with my podcast stats. I’m quite pleased with the results. I installed the plugin back in July and podcast traffic has climbed in leaps and bounds from 204 listeners via the feed for July to 571 in August, and 1188 for September and that does not include 133 who were using the Listen Now button.
I don’t know whether that kind of hit rate is good or bad for a podcast. How does it compare with other Odiogo users’ experience?
db