14 DAY TRIAL // If you are having trouble concentrating while reading, suffering from poor eyesight, or simply want to do more with your time, the guys at Shiny Development have this great application for you called Speakapedia. It creates podcasts from Wikipedia articles, imports them to your iTunes library and lets you play them. There is also a free 14-day trial available. If you like what you see (hear), you can buy the full version for $9.95 (introductory price).
Using the software couldn't be easier: you choose your article using the familiar wikipedia interface, Speakapedia converts your article to speech, and you listen to your article in iTunes or on your iPod or iPhone.
Shiny Development says its software brings Wikipedia to life. Indeed, not only does the program read to you selectable pieces of a Wikipedia article, but it also does so with voice inflection. And (you may have already hinted this) the main picture found in the Wikipedia article is instantly used as your track's album art. Speakapedia automatically imports your spoken articles to iTunes. You may want to select the portions you are most interested in, as it tends to render text into speech quite slowly at times. As soon as it's done importing, you can then sync the podcast to your iPod or iPhone if you wish, so you can have Wikipedia on the go as well.
Currently, Speakapedia is a Leopard-only app, but it does work with PPC machines. Needless to point out, Speakapedia uses the latest advances in speech technology and sports "Alex," Apple's leading edge English speaking voice, as your narrator.
Requirements call for a PowerPC or Intel CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU recommended), an active internet connection and iTunes.
As noted above, Shiny Development is currently offering Speakapedia at a promotional price ($9.95), which is effective until this August, so hurry up! But, since most of you like to try before you buy, you can download this here trial version which is good for 14 days (all features are in effect). When the introductory pricing expires at the end of August, regular pricing will be $14.95.