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Odiogo

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 16, 2008

I certainly can’t take credit for this find. It has to go to the Market Secrets Blog, which had this post on obscure WordPress plugins. I knew about some of them already, but this one I’m about to mention just blew my mind.

It’s called Odiogo, a funny name, but I think it’s a wonderful plugin. If you haven’t already noticed, underneath my title is a little icon that says “listen now“. If you click on that, you don’t have to read my posts; you can actually just listen to them instead.

What you do is go to the site, register, download the plugin, activate it, add the special number they give you, and off you go. People can treat it like a podcast, which means they can listen to it then and there on your blog or, oddly enough, they can also download the file as an MP3; are you kidding me?

I know this will help some folks who think I’ve written a pretty long post. Actually, it’s helped me already, because on the test post I listened to, I noticed something a little off and it turns out I’d missed a word; happens sometimes, of course, but hearing it is something else. You can listen to the posts here, or you can go to the website and sign up for the RSS podcast feed.

Now, there is one issue I seem to be having that some other folks haven’t had. It’s supposed to go back and find all my old posts and set them up to be listened to, but it hasn’t happened. I’m not sure why, so I’ve sent their support group an email asking if I messed something up.

I hope y’all like this one; give it a try!


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25 Comments »

Marelisa:

Hi Mitch: What an interesting plugin, I had no idea it existed. The voice is a little robotic but I can see how some people prefer listening to posts instead of reading them.

Marelisa´s last blog post..Productivity and Foie Gras

Mitch Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 10:58 PM

Definitely, Marelisa. I don’t mind the robotic, and truthfully, it’s helped me find some things that I had missed, and it pretty much tells it like it is. One is more ready to forgive a robotic voice mispronouncing a word than a person reading it. Glad to have helped inform you about it.

December 16th, 2008 | 10:20 AM
josh:

it’s interesting that mobility is the angle the plugin takes. without giving it a shot, i bet it works very much like a page reader for a visually impaired person; you could throw some alt text on a photo in a post or a title attribute in an anchor tag and see if odiogo reads it aloud.

josh´s last blog post..In case you missed it…

Mitch Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 11:00 PM

Actually, I did test the alt-text, and it totally ignored it. Overall, though, I was thinking the same thing about the visually impaired when I added it. I like it; just wish it would go ahead and get all my older posts already.

December 16th, 2008 | 11:14 AM
The Almost Millionaire:

Mitch,
Thanks for the tip. Very interesting find. Next time I stop by I look forward to reviewing more of your content.
Best,
TAM

The Almost Millionaire´s last blog post..Natural Gas in Michigan

Mitch Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 11:02 PM

Thanks “Almost”; I hope you stop by often, because there’s lots to see here, that’s for sure.

December 16th, 2008 | 1:32 PM
Ajith Edassery:

I use odiogo as well but I do not use the plugin as such (which means that no ‘speakers’ below individual titles. However, I linked to my odiogo feedcast page from the subscription box.

Odiogo is a real cool service and it doesn’t take too long before the feedcast of a new post is available.

People like me who do not have an easily understandable accent can borrow the odiogo bot’s digital voice to podcast stuff :lol:

Ajith Edassery´s last blog post..Ten Unethical Blog Visitor Behaviors those are worse than George Bush Shoe-Throwing Episode!

Mitch Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 11:03 PM

That’s funny, Ajith, and yet I know what you mean about the accents. I usually think I’m pretty clear, but every once in awhile I notice that I change dialects, especially when I’m tired, and then people have a hard time understanding me if they’re not from the South. Overall, though, I love this plugin; for now, as I’m trying to be more cautious about some of these things.

December 16th, 2008 | 1:43 PM
Posts about WordPress Plugins as of December 16, 2008 | The Lessnau Lounge:

[...] upgrades of your WordPress blog plugin. It took me a while to decide if I wanted to breakup Odiogo – imjustsharing.com 12/16/2008 I certainly can’t take credit for this find. It has to go to the [...]

December 16th, 2008 | 2:24 PM
Salwa:

I never knew about this plugin before. Looks very interesting. Will take a look it and thanks for reviewing it here.

Salwa´s last blog post..Why Your Blog Design is so Important

Mitch Reply:
December 16th, 2008 at 11:07 PM

No problem, Salwa. If you add it I hope you enjoy it as much as I am thus far.

December 16th, 2008 | 7:53 PM
Erwin Tan:

I used to put it up on my blog but due to an overload of plugins, I’ve decided to leave it out instead..

But don’t get me wrong, it’s indeed a pretty decent plugin.

Erwin Tan´s last blog post..Unleashing The Niche Genius In You

Mitch Reply:
December 17th, 2008 at 3:01 AM

Thanks for the comment, Erwin. I understand about having too many plugins, or at least feeling like that. Right now, as long as they play nice with each other, I don’t mind.

December 17th, 2008 | 2:16 AM
Trade Show Guru:

Mitch,
Thanks for this post. This plugin is amazing. I can’t believe what technology can do…
It does make me wonder what happens when it comes to a misspelled word. I also noticed that it doesn’t know how to select when there are two pronunciations for a word depending on context. In your first paragraph or so, it said the word “read” as RED instead of REED. But then again, not bad…
Very cool indeed.
~ Steve, aka the don’t-mean-to-nitpick trade show guru

Trade Show Guru´s last blog post..The Ultimate Christmas Gift

Mitch Reply:
December 17th, 2008 at 2:04 PM

If you misspelled a word it’ll pronounce it weirdly and if you leave a word out you’ll notice that also. Yes, in some contexts it’s not sure which word to use, but I figure that’s a fair enough price to pay, especially when the thing is free.

Dennis Edell Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 10:52 AM

The other thing that semi-annoys me is that it s p e l l s o u t domain names. LOL

Other then that, it is pretty useful for the visually impaired as some say.

Dennis Edell´s last blog post..$100 First Prize! The *Best Blog Review Contest* Is In Full Effect!

Mitch Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 6:37 PM

Heck, it’s pretty useful for those of us who can see also. lol

December 17th, 2008 | 11:40 AM
MissingLink:

I have Odiogo installed on my WordPress Blog if you want to see it in action.
http://techsidestories.com/2008/12/14/podcast-in-a-blog/

MissingLink´s last blog post..RSS Feeds – The Beginning

December 18th, 2008 | 12:38 PM
seowordsmith:

Wow, that’s amazing. I was expecting some truly robotic reading of text but that sounded almost…human. Pauses after commas, everything. Stuff like this is only going to get better in coming years so it’s totally indistinguishable from a human voice.

Mitch Reply:
December 20th, 2008 at 11:39 PM

You’re right, SEO, that’s why I liked it so much. I remember the old days when there were no pauses with things like this, but Odiogo seems to work wonders.

December 20th, 2008 | 8:42 PM
Market Secrets Blogger:

Thanx for the trackback…don’t know how I missed it?

I’ve been using this for a while and it definitely helps when your eyes might be a bit too busy at the moment ;)

Market Secrets Blogger´s last blog post..Tips From The Blogoshere

Mitch Reply:
January 24th, 2009 at 2:35 PM

Glad you finally did catch on to it. My wife thanks me for adding Odiogo.

January 24th, 2009 | 1:58 PM
Jeff Todnem:

Hi Mitch,

Great tip about Odiogo! I’m a little late to the game, having just added the Odiogo WordPress plugin to my site a month or so ago. Due to performance and latency issues, I ended up moving the auto-generated MP3 files to my local host and linked to them from there. Other than that though, this service has been great.

The one problem I did experience was the same as yours… how do you get Odiogo to generate MP3s for older content? In my case, it seems like the service went back about a year and then stopped. I’d like to have audio for all the content on my site but I can’t find any way to get them to index the additional content even though it’s being published in the feed. Did you ever find a way to force Odiogo to update and create audio for your older posts?

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

Mitch Mitchell Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 4:25 PM

Hi Jeff,

I actually have changed services, which you might not have mentioned. Check this link out; it seems to have served my purposes greatly: http://www.imjustsharing.com/readspeaker/

Jeff Todnem Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 4:41 PM

Thanks, Mitch. I’ll check it out.

March 29th, 2011 | 3:32 PM