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Listen to Webpages While Driving

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stfu dept.

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!"

5 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Yay! by jesser · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    The shareholder is always right.
  2. this reads left to right by SHEENmaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
  3. don't lug around your laptop for that by g4dget · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Been done by glenebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  5. I can see it now... by Kasmiur · · Score: 5, Funny

    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*

    --
    -THIS SPACE FOR RENT!