BuzzVoice Reads the News To You

Technology provides the means for multi-tasking, there is no doubt about it. How about having your news and blogs read to you while your eyes are busy with another task? Check out BuzzVoice (link here), a free and paid Web service that collects the news and blogs that you are interested in and converts them in real time via text to speech so that you can listen to them in the car, at the doctor’s office, while waiting for your Motion to be heard in Court, etc.

BuzzVoice works on your iPhone, iPod touch, regular iPods/MP3 players, and computer, so your listening options are quite varied. But its not just listening – you can share your talking stories with friends via email and on the usual social networking haunts. Create a personalized playlist from 57 categories and over 1,600 top blogs and news sources. If you can’t find your faves, let BuzzVoice know and they will try to add them.

The free service is ad supported, with up to 20 playlist sources, ten minute daily Buzzcast episodes, BuzzRadio which streams stations of continuous content, and daily Buzz Alerts. The Pro version, $4.99 per month,  includes all of that plus 100 sources for your playlist, full 30 minute daily Buzzcasts, selectable times and voices for your Buzzcast, and no ads.

If you are a news junkie with no time, BuzzVoice might be attractive to you. And, with the ability to listen via computer and Web, iPhone or iPod Touch or MP3 player, options for consuming the news just got a lot broader.

Advertisement

FREE On-Line Business Resources!

Did I say FREE? I most certainly did! PCWorld has a list of 19 free Web resources for real, honest-to-goodness business applications that you would otherwise have to, well, PAY for. To give a sense of the goodness of the goodies, there are suggestions for maknig FREE long distance calls, send and receive FREE faxes, videoconference for FREE, make FREE conference calls, use FREE directory assistance, automatically transcribe voice notes for FREE, turned scanned docs into text for FREE, get FREE copies of e-classics, send FREE text messages, store large files in the cloud for FREE, and download FREE mp-3s. The services highlighted in the article include: Talkster; Qipit,  eFax Free and FaxZero;  TokBox; Rondee; Google 411; reQall; OCR Terminal; Project Gutenberg; txtDrop and Krypton; Drop.io; and, for the free mp3s, try Amazon, Rhapsody, Elbows, RCRD LBL, Stereogum and Internet Archive.

Check them out! And please feel free to post your own favorite FREE resources in the comments! I love me some FREE.