International Herald Tribune Launches Personalized Podcast Service
The International Herald Tribune has begun offering a personalized news podcast service, under the AudioNews name.
An increasing number of newspapers are offering readers the option of creating personalized news pages on the newspaper’s website. The IHT takes this idea into audio news, allowing readers to mix and match the type of news stories that they wish to receive in a podcast.
The IHT is offering the service free of charge to those who sign up for membership. Users begin by selecting any news section or individual article for inclusion in their podcast. They can also create custom filters for favorite topics. When the user has completed their selections, AudioNews will create a custom podcast URL based on the selections. iTunes, Juice, or other podcast software can then be used to download AudioNews directly to a PC or portable media player.
AudioNews is powered by ReadSpeaker web speech-enabling services. Articles are read by the latest text-to-speech technologies using professional readers whose recordings are converted into language dictionaries. IHT acknowledge that some lesser-known words and names may be mispronounced, but they make the point that the service is in beta, and that they are continuing to make improvements to the voice quality.
