News

Read mobile email while driving. Or a book...Otodio speaks it to you

Can you click on a link mentioned in a radio broadcast? You can now, with Otodio

It's a text-to-speech system - but it's quite a bit more than that; it's also a blog-reader, book reader, and even a magazine reader - but it runs on any mobile device. It should come to a newspaper of your choice within months.

Company founder Simon Gall [above, right] demonstrated a version of Otodio using the real voices of FT journalists here at Innovate Europe '06 and it seems clear that whether he can announce a contract or not, he's expecting the FT to be one of the publications which will deliver talking newspapers to phone users in the next few months.

Gall envisages a Bluetooth remote control built into a car steering wheel, allowing the driver to navigate through their favourite publications on the road, listening to news items in improbably clear speech.

The problem with most text to speech engines is that they are most unconvincing. They pause at the wrong place, and the syllables are emphasised incorrectly, and the voice inflexion is a joke. Otodio's speech generation engine is completely different.

"We have lodged a portfolio of patents for the overall Otodio system, and key internal solutions," said Gall here in Zaragoza. "It's really new, and it's really good. But what makes it different, is that we can embed the text of a voice recording in the recording, using our own markup language."

Take a speech, and transcribe it; or take a script, and read it out. Otodio will link the two, in the same way as an ordinary page scanner can link text and image of a magazine page to produce a machine-readable Adobe Acrobat PDF file. So you can watch the text on screen, or listen to the sound track, or both.

Why is that clever? Because it means that hyperlinks in an audio sound-track are clickable. If you hear something you want to follow up, stop the playback, and click on the link; and if there's an Internet connection, you'll go through to the URL.

So far, although Gall is trying to be modest about it, the enthusiasm of reviewers has been compelling. His invitation to appear at Innovate follows an appearance as a top UK Tech Co at the Trade & Industry's Technology World show earlier this week, the Talent Venture Event (where Otodio was a top five UK tech company), the FT Mobile communications Conference, the Red Herring Venture Europe, and the International Magazines and Professional Media Conference - all just this month.

Publishers, of course, love the system. But it's us, the readers, who will be asked to pay - fortunately, however, not too much. "Our research shows that most newspaper readers with subscriptions are happy to fork out about one pound fifty a month extra, in order to get a spoken version on their phone or PDA."

Targets are "smartphones first, then Blackberries, and then other mobile devices," Gall said.