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Why do you think audio books are so popular now? I think it’s because people want to read, but they simply don’t have time to sit down and visually read a book. With audio books, you can “read” a book while you’re driving, or biking, or walking the dog.
But here’s the problem. There are lots of blogs and articles on the internet that are full of amazing content – but they are only available as text. Not audio. So you might miss out on a lot of good stuff, just because it takes too long to read and you don’t have time.
Now there’s a solution for that.
I recently discovered a service called Blog Reader. You can get it at blogreader.com.au.
Turns out, this service was created by a guy in Australia, Matt Segal, to solve his own problem. This is what he wrote on the website:
The way it works is pretty simple:
- You find a web page with content you want to listen to, and copy that page’s URL
- You submit the URL on the Blog Reader website
- The site reads the content on that webpage
- The site converts that content into an audio file
- The audio file gets added to a podcast feed that is only for you to see and use (use any podcast player)
- When you open that podcast feed, you see it there automatically.
If you’re not into podcasts – you also have the option to download the audio or listen to it right in your web browser.
Unfortunately this is not a completely free service, but it is very affordable. The cost is 2 AUD for each hour of audio (this currently converts to about $1.43 in US dollars). But you are able to try it out for free and see what you think – you get 5 free hours of audio when you create an account.
I tried it by sending it one of Seth Godin’s blog posts. I was actually surprised at the quality of the audio – the narration did not sound robotic, even though the voice was a computer reading it. The quality of computerized voices has really improved recently. You can also listen to a sample right on the website, without sending it any content to convert.
If you try it out, let us know what you think in the comments below!
