WRT Podcast via Talkr
Published by Jeremy Douglass June 20th, 2005 in mobile, blogs.
WRT is available as a podcast thanks to Talkr.com.
A podcast (ipod + broadcast) is an RSS feed of audio files, for the purpose of subscribing, downloading periodically to a player (such as an ipod), and listening to personalized radio while on the go - TiVo for your ears.
Talkr has loosely joined even more of the web’s small pieces by using text-to-speech software to automatically process text-only feeds into podcast mp3 feeds. This was previously possible for either the author or the listener using desktop text-to-speech software, but Talkr streamlines the process, and the computer voice is “good enough” for many uses.
This is yet another “at the edge of text” type of post, and perhaps reflects how our attitudes towards “cross-media” in general are changing as textual data becomes less like a particle and more like a wave - bent, refracted, filtered and scattered before reaching endless unknown destinations, like a metadata visualization, or an mp3 player, etc.
You can view the WRT Talkr Feed in two ways. If you do not use podcast or feed software, you can listen or download via the web interface by signing up for a free Talkr account and then finding our Talkr for our feed. If you do use feed software, you can subscribe directly to the WRT Feed for PodCasting: 
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[Feed information updated.]
Good evening,
Thanks for the post on Talkr! The link that you included requires that your readers sign up for a free membership to Talkr before they can subscribe to a podcast of your blog. While I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone from doing that, there’s an easier way. If your readers have already installed a podcasting client, they can simply point that client to Talkr’s RSS feed for your blog: http://www.talkr.com/app/cast_pods.app?feed_id=1362
This feed includes all of the audio files, and is automatically updated every hour.
Thanks,
Chris
Chris,
Thanks for the link - I’ve updated the post above to include it as the second among equal options.
Thanks for the service, and good luck.
After a couple days of reflection (”Text Art? Talkr? Art Talkr? Talkr Art?”), it occurs to me that Talkr provides some infrastructure that allows us here at WRT to easily play-test net art in interesting ways.
For example: we find a new net art project which allows you to upload two audio clips and then creates an audio mashup accompanied by a speech-to-text Flash display. Great - what audio to upload? There are so many interesting choices, but one of them might be a WRT article - perhaps even the WRT article about the project - recurselicious! Further, if the artwork accepted a podcast / Talkr feed as input, and incorporate the audio files dynamically, then we could use the discussion thread commenting on the artwork to dynamically change the contents - something like having a discussion about Warren Sack’s agonistics while watching the display.
Podcasting is more ‘rip’ and ‘burn’ than ‘mix’ right now - but lowering the text-to-audio barrier online creates many interesting possibilities for interactive mixing with art that accepts audio input.
Hi Jeremy,
Sounds interesting. Please let me know if I can help.
Thanks,
Chris