Listen to RSS News on Your iPod

An anonymous reader writes "Adam Tow and Alex King have announced the availability of Read it to Me 1.0, which creates a playlist of MP3 files in iTunes from your unread RSS news headlines in NetNewsWire that you can sync to your iPod. The software utilizes Apple's Text-to-Speech capability and requires Mac OS X 10.2.6 or higher and the full version of NetNewsWire." But if you use Victoria's voice to read http://apple.slashdot.org/apple.rss to you, I'll look at you funny.

Comments

I'm currently writing an OSX app ...

[torpor]

... to sync MP3 files from a URL, to either a) iPod, directly, or b) to a plugged-in Clie MS card.

This way I can point my app to http://www.ampfea.org/new_music.html (when that is also working) and get new music auto-magically hotsync'ed for me every week to my MP3 players of choice. Maybe I'll set things up nightly, if I can find some good new_music resources around.

Another app I want to write soon as I find the Clie SDK for WLAN is a WLAN-Hotsync for Clie that does the same thing - automatically gathers new MP3's for me to listen to.

At night, let the Clie use the WLAN for all its downloading needs, and wake up in the morning with a fresh music feed for the walk to work. :)

What's needed is for Independent Media to get together and formulate a standard URL/XMLDoc message format for announcing new tracks, and then they should promote software which makes it dead easy to use these message formats to update portable media players...

They'd better do it quick, or Apple will put it all in iTunes, and there won't be any need. But a new_music announcement scheme really needs to be Open, Standard, and Available to All.

iVictoria

[bassmastergeneral]

I love Victoria. She takes me back to the days when everything used to talk. In Hong Kong, in 84 (or so) the had an Isuzu Impulse that would talk to you when you got in, I don't think it ever materialized over here. Does anyone know what cars still talk (besides kit). Seems like the AI industry would be pushin their technologies all over car makers today. Have you car read to you (in the voice you choose) slashdot RSS feeds as you drive to work. I think apple should look into developing its own car, or perhaps a Volkswagen Jetta, Apple edition, running OS X 11.1, LynX. It seems to me that if you drive a volkswagen, you probably have a mac; or if you have a mac you want a volks wagen... much like I think of Coca-cola to Chevy, or Pepsi to Ford...

Is this the cheap man's Audible?

[jeeves99]

If someone *really* needs the news read to them via their iPod, then purchased subscriptions to such things as the NYTimes would be better. This application, as nifty as it might be, is not a suitable replacement for subscription news services. I've turned the speakable items options off b/c the sound of Agnes/Victoria/Zarvox/etc infuriate me.

Now, when the iPod goes WiFi and *if* this app can download and process RSS streams on the fly, then maybe.

For those curious, both the NYTimes and the Wallstreet Journal are $70 each for an annual subscription at Audible.

Also, the new iPods have a new feature called Notes that contain text. You can create a script to transfer RSS-feed text into the iPod so you can read the news on the iPod screen.

Re:Voice Synthesis not even required

[bill_mcgonigle]

I just wish Apple would work on higher quality voices.

Here, here. I first downloaded MacinTalk Pro Victoria, English, High Quality onto a Quadra in my College Yearbook's Office, so that was probably 1993. No improvement since then. Once a decade isn't too much to ask.

Actually, they've been busy with patents in this area, so we should expect something in Panther or maybe the next one.