"This is high-quality information..."Listen to Blogs With Blogbard - Review
Blogbard is a newish kind of service that currently runs in Beta. They offer a way out for busy professionals who don’t have the time to read their favourite blogs and feel that unless they keep up with it, they will miss out.
Blogbard allows anybody to stay in touch by simply tuning into any blog via audio. Presently Blogbard is setup to function while logged into Google reader and Bloglines. Alternatively you can simply insert your favorite blog URL into their search box on the Blogbard site and it will return posts to listen to with:
- iTunes
- Bloglines
- Google Reader
This is what happens when you do a search on a blog. In our case I searched for this blog Easy WordPress. Once the page reloads, it opens up with the black player in the middle and a voice starts reading the actual last blog post as seen below in regards to the Probama Theme.
While I like the idea of having the freedom to listen to blogs to save time (for example while traveling on the bus, train or even in the car) I really didn’t like the voice at all.
It is far to metallic and to me reading is like telling a story, therefore when I hear a blog post read out without the emotions that went into it I quickly lose interest.
Another problem in my eyes is the fact that the “voice” just keeps reading after the posts ends. It even reads the excerpts of related posts which I find really annoying.
I suppose the whole setup could be a little more intuitive to be considered attractive by the masses.
I think the idea to develop a service like this is great, but needs some more improvement in regards to the tone of voice. Blog owners can also insert a player into their blog to allow readers directly to listen to their posts.
The code for this is available on the same site as seen on the second screen shot above to the right.
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Hey this is something innovative. After listening to PDF files, I was hoping to see something like this very soon. Simply because there is not time, I don’t know how I find one to comment on your blog though
@ LiC: LOL, I’m sure Gobala honors your comments as much as I do. Time is a huge issue for many people and I’m sure the guys from Blogbard will improve the small faults in the system in weeks to come.
I think such technology is still in it’s infancy. It’s a great tool but us people still want to hear some kind of emotion. I came across some blogs that install such script. I tried em but was not fascinated.
But who knows? Another 5-10 years to come? My RSS feed from this blog may email me a whole audio file of the post.
@ Kay: I’m with you batman.
I’ve actually emailed the owner and told him about this post and he mentioned that they will be working on making the system more friendly - we’ll see what happens.
Good review. Like all beta systems there are flaws but I think the basic direction is sound. What really could prove useful is a service like this which ‘packages’ blogs of the reader’s choice into CD-Rom or iPod size segments so that people could select blog posts they want to listen to an burn a CD (to listen in the car on commutes and other boring trips) or on their ‘Pod.
I doubt I will ever spend uch time siting at my hopme/work machine listening to blog posts, but I routinely keep a stack of CD’s for the car to carry along on any trip … passes the time in traffic for sure.
@ Dave: that is actually a great idea. I can see the iPod version working very well. Not too sure about CD’s since users would have to re-burn them which could become another time issue.