YakiToMe – a text to speech service with a podcast option

SFFaudio Online Audio

YakiToMe.comJust the other day I was reading a rather long blog post from TheFix-Online.com (a review of Subterranean Online’s Spring 2008 issue) when I suddenly got tired of looking at my monitor. I really wanted to finish reading the review, but I had a few pressing household tasks I needed to do, and I knew if I didn’t finish reading the review right then, I’d never get to it again. So, I wondered, is there a way to get this into my ears instead?

47 seconds later…

There was!

I found this…

YakiToMe is a web-based text to speech service that will turn any block of eText into a computer voiced MP3. Even better, it can podcast that article, book or story right to your MP3 player!

Check out the two samples I made for public consumption (both are just a couple excerpted paragraphs so as not to ruffle any copyright feathers). And FYI, you can make much longer files!

Sample 1: From TheFix-Online.com a review of Subterranean Online’s Spring 2008 issue

Here’s the original eText review.

Here’s the unique YakiToMe link for it:

|FAIR USE TheFix-Online.com’s review of Subterranean Online’s Spring 2008 magazine|

Direct download |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://www.yakitome.com/cgi-bin/rss.py?uID=7206633907&sID=16083&aID=16688

Sample 2: From The Sacramento Bee‘s website, an article about Robert Silverberg

Here’s the original eText article.

Here’s the unique YakiToMe link for it:

|FAIR USE Back from the future – For 55 years, sci-fi writer Robert Silverberg has guided readers on journeys of infinite …|

Direct download |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://www.yakitome.com/cgi-bin/rss.py?uID=7206633907&sID=16085&aID=16690

Subsequent fiddling with the service show that you can get better voices too. Cool huh?

Posted by Jesse Willis