Listen to Webpages While Driving

dimitril writes "Tired of sitting in your car for hours and practically doing nothing but listening to the radio or the same CD for the fifth time? You could use those hours by reading your websites with this little project. You will love those traffic jams!"

Comments

Yay!

[jesser]

Another way to distract myself while driving and get myself killed!

Re:Yay!

[cyberformer]

Actually, no joke. There've already been studies which show that this kind of crap is actually more dangerous than talking on a cell phone while driving (itself as dangerous as drunk driving), because a voice interface to a Web page is so awkward.

this reads left to right

[SHEENmaster]

So it will take a while to get through the menus. Who wants to hear:
faq
code
awards
journals
subscribe
older stuff
rob's page
preferences
submit story
advertising
supporters
past polls
topics
about
bugs
jobs
hof
Sections
apache
Dec 2
apple
Dec 31
(5 recent)
askslashdot
Dec 29
books
Dec 31
(2 recent)
bsd
Dec 22
developers
Dec 31
(2 recent)
features
Dec 23
interviews
Dec 23
radio
Jun 29
science
Jan 1
(7 recent)
yro
Dec 31
(3 recent)

While trying to get to the news? Why not overlay the text onto an LCD windshield? It's just as easy to kill yourself that way.

Re:this reads left to right

[jesser]

So it will take a while to get through the menus. Who wants to hear [all the stuff at the top of each Slashdot page] while trying to get the news?

This is a reminder that web accessibility isn't just for letting disabled people use your site. Many of the same techniques are useful for letting non-disabled people use your site through a device other than a computer with a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and graphical web browser.

The problem of identifying the beginning of the main content of a page is not new to this listen-while-driving application. In 1999, Jim Thatcher of IBM Special Needs Systems called it "the most serious impedement to access to commercial web content". At least one version of JAWS, a screen reader popular among blind users, provides the shortcut INS+ENTER for "move to the next block of text which has no links". That JAWS includes such an unreliable heuristic points to the importance of being able to skip blocks of navigation links.

The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines suggest grouping navigation links in a <map> element, and until assistive technologies widely understand <map> as a navigation-link-grouping mechanism, also putting a "skip to main content" link at the top of the page and hiding it from graphical browsers.

Mark Pilgrim recommends trying to put the main content of the page first in the HTML, and describes a "table trick" that allows a navigation sidebar on the left side of a page to come after the main content in the HTML. (If a page uses CSS for layout rather than tables, it should be even easier to put a left sidebar later in the HTML.) For the listen-while-driving application, I imagine that putting the main content first is a more effective technique than the "let users of text browsers skip navigation links" techniques.

By the way, switching to Slashdot's light mode (preview) eliminates some of the junk at the top of Slashdot pages. The faq...hof navigation links are still there, but the OSDN bar, section links, and recent topic links are gone.

don't lug around your laptop for that

[g4dget]

It's easier to convert the output of the speech synthesizer to mp3 and use an MP3 player for the car. That way, you don't have to dress up like the Borg to do a fast forward/reverse/skip. The code for dealing with it is also much simpler. Here's a simple 8 line Bash script that downloads a list of URLs and converts them to MP3 files (options are from memory, so double check before using it):

id=0
cat list-of-urls |
while read url; do
lynx -dump $url |
rsynth-say -l temp.pcm
bladeenc -mono -b 32 -rawfreq=8000 -rawbits=16 -rawchannels=2 temp.pcm /card/audio$id.mp3
((id++))
done

You can run this nightly from cron. If you want better speech output, use Festival. You may want to filter the output from "lynx" through a sed script to remove redundant content.

Been done

[glenebob]

Anybody remember 'radio'? On the radio people read the news to you. They even play music. Old idea.

I can see it now...

[Kasmiur]

Me: Computer follow the link someone posted on slashdot.

Computer: following link to http://goatse.cx

me : DOH no STOP STOP STOP!!!

Computer : Loading page..

Computer : ARG my EYES@!!!!!

Me : where is that smoke coming from..

*insert car accident*

Nethack

[Doomrat]

Get back to me when it lets you play Nethack whilst driving.

The hit the solid wall! You die... Do you want your body identified? [ynq] (n)

Or perhaps:

You open the dashboard.. Wait! That's a small mimic!

A day in the life of a newbie /.er

[Compact Dick]

POV from a helicopter. Close in on an SUV cruising the freeway along the seaside at 90 mph. Inside we see a man at the wheel, and his family. He is obviously quite excited over his new gadget, the Web Talker...

Man: Honey, you should see this website I discovered the other day. Full of News for Nerds, Stuff that matters, it is pure nirvana for geeks like me!

Wife: Yeah, whatever.

The man makes a face and loads the Slashdot homepage on the Web Talker.

Man: Look dear, they are making robots in China that can do Tai Chi. What else would they think of next?

Wife: Are you sure they weren't hinting at their inability to get them to move any faster? Like, so they could do something productive???

Man sighs, then tunes out wife and loads another article. Inside, he finds very little info on the matter. Fortunately, a kind-hearted AC has provided a link with more info. He begins to load it.

Man: See, not all the world is decep...

Suddenly, we hear a loud "Eh. The goatse..." emanate from the speaker, followed by screams of pure terror. We zoom out to safety as we see the SUV lose control and run straight off the cliff.

Out of date articles?

[phorm]

This would be a lot nicer once cellular/satellite web becomes more widespread. A lot of what I would like to listen to/hear about is news-type sites, including of course slashdot. A pre-downloaded site wouldn't be overly up-to-date, so for non-specific one would still be better off with the radio.

With a live connection to the internet for news downloads (news should be text only... not too much bandwidth needed), and a decent sounding voice agent, this would be a lot more interesting and useful.

If piped through the car speakers, it also wouldn't be much more distracting than having the radio on to the news, unless you're trying to claim a first-post on slashdot while driving.

Why commute?

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

Reading about this, some may rethink why they are spending a big part of their lives in a stopped metal cage while sending CO2 to the atmosphere while looking ot other metal cages.

Evaluate what changes could be made to your way of life and the social organization so that you could employ that time on better purposes like parenting your children, hacking, cooking, sleeping or posting to Slashdot. Unless you actually like traffic jams.