I’ve long been a user of speech-to-text apps, and one of the good things about AI is the improvements it’s brought to that field. It works in the other direction too, of course.
Text-to-speech.
I added an iOS app to my phone recently called ‘Reader’ and it’s been a great way to catch up on long posts at Substack. You feed this thing a url, it grabs the text from that page and reads it to you in an eerily human voice. The inflections and emphasis are mostly spot on. Not 100% but close.
It’s meant I’ve been able to batch off the sort of essays I often mean to get to, but end up deleting from my read-later list because it gets too long.
I figure that one day platforms like Substack will just incorporate the tech into the UX, but for now it’s a fun little app that lets me catch up on my ‘reading’ whenever I have five to ten minutes and don’t feel like firing up a podcast or audiobook.
There’s a whole bunch of text-to-speech apps out there, and probably more on Google. But I like this one.
Is having stuff read to you really faster than reading it yourself, or just easier to ignore in the background? The main reason that I don't do podcasts or audio books is that I couldn't stand the sense of twiddling my thumbs while real time passed. And I consider myself a slow reader. Could very easily be that I'm missing an important trick here. Perhaps I should run some benchmarks.
I've found the trick to podcasts and audio books is to be doing something else while listening to them. So I listen to podcasts while driving (the only time I listen to music in my car is when I have passengers), doing the dishes, gardening, anything that that will occupy my hands but doesn't require me to do any intensive thinking.
The happy side effect of it is having people talking to me in my ears while I'm doing tedious household tasks is that I stay more focused on the tedious household task and actually get it done. Exercising is another good one. Going for a long walk with a podcast is a great way to feel like you have exercise buddies coming along with you on the journey.
Is having stuff read to you really faster than reading it yourself, or just easier to ignore in the background? The main reason that I don't do podcasts or audio books is that I couldn't stand the sense of twiddling my thumbs while real time passed. And I consider myself a slow reader. Could very easily be that I'm missing an important trick here. Perhaps I should run some benchmarks.
I've found the trick to podcasts and audio books is to be doing something else while listening to them. So I listen to podcasts while driving (the only time I listen to music in my car is when I have passengers), doing the dishes, gardening, anything that that will occupy my hands but doesn't require me to do any intensive thinking.
The happy side effect of it is having people talking to me in my ears while I'm doing tedious household tasks is that I stay more focused on the tedious household task and actually get it done. Exercising is another good one. Going for a long walk with a podcast is a great way to feel like you have exercise buddies coming along with you on the journey.
Did you mean to put this behind a paywall? I've subscribed to the burger via a 7 day free trial, but wasn't sure if subscribing was a requirement...
Gah. No. This is the problem with turning on subs for everyone who kept pledging. Nothing should ever be behind the paywall.