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Haven’t got time, or can’t be bothered to read this blog, then why not have it read to you.

Talkr provides a service that allows you to listen to your favorite text-only news sources rather than read them. If you can point it to an RSS feed (a machine-readable version of your favorite blog or news source) it will convert that feed from text to speech.

Talkr can also provide you with a podcast of your favorite news sources. This means that you can plug your MP3 player into your home computer once a day and Talkr will provide you with hours of audio content with no additional work on your part. Talkr will keep tabs on your feeds and send audio to your computer as those audio files become available.

An interesting article, despite the eagerness of the interviewer to invoke some sort of guilt for the abuses of the web. Sir Tim fends these attempts off nicely and underlines what the web really should be used for, ie communicating over a distributed network. Interesting too that he originally intended the web to be a read/write medium that closely resembles blogging. I wonder why blogging technology has taken so long to catch on? Is it an example of the technology being far in advance of social need, and that now the “information generation” has now grown up we can create and assimilate more immediacy in our awareness of the situations around us, so that we are able to respond to and pass comment on those situations?

A nice piece of research illustrating some useful statistics about use and perceptions of the Internet. For example, 87% of teenagers use the internet but only 68% use it at school. {I wonder why this discrepancy should exist? Are those features of the Internet which teenagers want to use/are comfortable with not being used in areas appropriate to the pupils’ own perceptions of what the Internet can be used for?
Interestingly, the report highlights that those without Internet access at home are much less likely to go online even when online access is available. While it’s what I would expect, I wonder if it might be an indicator of the non-participant’s expectations of what online resources are capable of delivering? Conversely it might show that more immersion and familiarisation with online resources and learning of the tools to access them is ever more likely to develop more e-confident learners, so if we accept that greater access to appropriate resources is a Good Thing then the delivery of the means and skills to have that access must also fall into that category. Those who do not have access (through not having a connection, or not having the skills or expectations of success) could be seen to be disadvantaged in the same way that they would be in not learning to read.