

Ask YC: Convert Text To Audio (Blog To Podcast) - RomanZolotarev

Please help to estimate:<p>There is a web service allows you to convert text (or feed) to audio and to deliver it to you in convenient format and time.<p>How much you are ready to pay
... for conversion custom text  into audio?
... for dubbed in of popular blog ?<p>Please estimate amount of blogs (or texts) you need to dub in.
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tomh
How much of the blog(s) are you dubbing? Is there a time cutoff? I could only
imagine using this on a regular basis for a daily commute, and occaisional for
long travel trips.

So, as an example, I have a 45 min commute either way, so I can listen to up
to 1.5 hours of blog posting. Let's assume 1 min per short post, or 5-10 mins
per long post. So I could listen to up to 9-10 long posts or up to 90 short
posts.

Also, there are other factors such as adverts, voice tone, etc. If you are
reading an advert in between each short post and it all sounds like Stephen
Hawking, then I don't think I'll listen to many of those posts at all. If I'm
listening to advert-free material, maybe I could see myself paying for a rate
like iTunes; 0.99$ for 15-20 minute chunks?

The other problem with this is that many blog posts are like news; their value
will deteriorate over time. So, up-to-date blog posts will be worth the 0.99$,
but day-old or week-old posts will be worth less.

Just my two cents, T.

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eugenejen
I am using odiogo now on my blog. It is free now and there is a wordpress
plugin. The conversion is not in real time. The latency is around 2 hours.
Their plugin will supply flash base player to playback the mp3. The quality of
them is much better than windows XP's text to speech.

My humble opinion is if you really want to charge the service, you probably
need to shorten the latency. If the web service guarantees any popular blog
post can be converted into podcasts in 2 minutes after text is finished.

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RomanZolotarev
I think bloggers have no time to do it themselves. To use this service will be
more efficient for reader (than wait for blogger's podcast).

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izak30
What about a service that reads my blog, i.e, real person, then converts it to
audio? Paying radio personalities to do this during songs?

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ricky_clarkson
I think it would be nicer if each blogger did that themselves. They'd probably
find their own typos better that way too :)

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RomanZolotarev
Izak30, eugenejen, ricky_clarkson, tomh, thank you for comments.

