Day 23 - RSS Text to Speech

Tonights application let's you subscribe to RSS feeds and hear them via text-to-speech spoken over your speakers. After loading the application it will reside in your systray as a large red "T". Double click to open the options.

This application is again best for HOT feeds - that is, feeds you want to see (hear) immediately, then never again. I haven't written a good COLD feed reader yet. For my description about hot and cold feeds, see my earlier post on RSS/Information Delivery and my day 5 app - RSS Alerter.

You have the option to set the times it is active (can be used as an alarm clock in this case), set the poll rate, and then give it feeds to subscribe to. Seperate each feed on a new line. It will mark all items as "read" the first time hitting the feed, and then speak any subsequent items.

As it speaks, and for a bit after, you can right click the systray icon and choose "Last Item Details" to have the webpage for the last item read opened up for you. This is a GREAT application for my home machine in the evening where I don't mind the sound.

The voice used for reading is adjustable in your control panel under speech. This varies by OS version - I'd love to hear some feedback on what voices you have. Windows Vista B2 only has one voice. My XP SP2 Machine has 3 voices. You can also adjust the speed of the voice in this control panel.

REMEMBER - don't expect immediate speaking when you start this app. Enter some feeds, then give those feeds time to have new items! It does NOT speak old items. Some of my favorite feeds (10-30 minute additions):
http://www.digg.com/rss/containertechnology.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/boingboing/iBag
http://news.com.com/2063-10801_3-0.xml
http://news.com.com/2547-1_3-0-20.xml

 Download the app here
 Download the source here

MODS! DaemonCollector already modded this app to include choosing the voice to use when speaking. Link provided here but I haven't even looked at his mod, thus don't whine to me! Check it out here!