Odiogo Launches Groundbreaking Audio Software That Plays the News on the iPod

Released on = October 19, 2005, 3:54 pm

Press Release Author = Odiogo

Industry = Internet & Online

Press Release Summary = Odiogo™, the software application, converts printed news feeds into spoken word, enabling users to create and listen to customized podcasts of their favorite newspapers, magazines, and blogs on the go.

Press Release Body = San Francisco, CA -- October 20, 2005 -- Creating innovative software for audio players, Odiogo announces the launch of a groundbreaking application that enables users to listen to the latest news content from hundreds of news sources and blogs via MP3 players, PDAs, phones, or laptop computers.

The eponymous application Odiogo™ – short for “Audio News To Go” – extracts blog posts or articles from news sites (such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal) and converts them to light audio files in seconds. The files can then easily be uploaded to any MP3 players or other MP3-enabled devices, giving users anytime, anywhere access to their favorite printed news content.

“The radio has long provided people on the go with the latest news, but never before have listeners been able to create their own “radio shows” by mixing and matching contents from their favorite newspapers, magazines and blogs,” said Patrice Khawam, founder and CEO of Odiogo. “With Odiogo, people can easily and conveniently build their own podcasts to include, for example, the business pages from The Wall Street Journal, international news from the BBC, or music reviews from Rolling Stone, and listen to the content on an MP3 player while they’re at the gym, in the car, or on the subway.”

How It Works: Odiogo™ Customizes Podcasts of News Content
Many articles and blog posts available on the Web today can be read through third-party websites such as Google and Yahoo! thanks to the standard distribution format, RSS. Odiogo converts the content on any website containing RSS feeds into small audio files using cutting-edge text-to-speech technology. Unlike many of its predecessors, this new breed of artificial intelligence technology observes punctuation and more natural speech patterns to provide a better quality listening
experience.

“It's like having a podcast of all your favorite blogs,” said Techie Diva, one of the top five personal technology blogs online today. “The quality of the voice generated files is superb.”

Odiogo™ comes with 200 preinstalled news feeds including The New York Times, CNN, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC, and Rolling Stone. Users can also easily add feeds beyond Odiogo’s list; any website that provides an RSS feed can be podcasted via Odiogo™. Every page of text converts, on average, into a 2 MB audio file, allowing approximately 256 articles to be stored on a 512 MB MP3 player.

Odiogo™ requires a PC running Windows XP or 2000 with at least 128 MB memory and 5 GB hard drive space. Having installed the software, users simply select their desired news feeds (e.g. San Francisco Chronicle Business section; BBC Health section etc) using the “Feeds” button, click “Refresh” to start downloading the latest articles from the selected feeds and convert them into MP3 files, and, lastly, drag and drop the MP3 files produced by Odiogo into Apple iTunes or any
other MP3 program.

“People typically use digital audio devices to listen to music,” said Khawam.“Odiogo brings a new dimension to MP3 player use.”

Odiogo can be purchased securely online at www.odiogo.com, by mail, or over the phone using a credit card for a one-time fee of $29.99. Purchase includes email support as well as a 15-day money-back guarantee.

About Odiogo

Founded in 2005 in San Francisco, California, Odiogo (www.odiogo.com) creates cutting edge software for digital audio players. Products include the eponymous Odiogo™, a groundbreaking new application that enables users to listen to the latest news content from hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and blogs via any MP3-enabled device.

Web Site = http://www.odiogo.com

Contact Details = media@odiogo.com
1-415-412-7270