One of the things I like about podcasting is the convenience of getting information on the go. I don’t need to focus my attention on a screen to read information with podcasting. I don’t necessarily need to remain keenly attuned to every word in a podcast, although, if the information is compelling enough, I’ll sit in my car and wait for the end of a segment, just like I do when there’s something good on NPR. Many of my favorite text sources are still not podcasting. While I love the thrill of discovering something new; there are certain things I won’t do without.

For instance, I love the New York Times Book Review. When I make time to read reviews, I find many new books I earmark to read in my sparetime someday (or listen to as audiobooks). I’d love to listen to the NYT Book Review as a podcast. As far as I know, this isn’t available in audio format from NYT or from their partnership with Audible. My solution is to use TextAloud to convert the Book Review Web pages to WMA audio files (it also does MP3).

Bleh, computer generated voices, you say? Try the accompanying ATT Natural Voices supported by TextAloud and you’ll change your tune. Once in awhile you need to tune the software for complicated or foreign pronunciations. In general it produces great audio capable of reading my favorite text material with different voices with varying accents. It’s not a podcast, but it plays nicely on my Creative Zen and iPod players. Maybe The Grey Lady will actually hire voice talent in the future, in the meantime, TextAloud is doing it for me.