Jeffrey Goldfarb (reuters@telecom-digest.org) Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:09:30 -0500

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By Jeffrey Goldfarb The International Herald Tribune has launched a new twist on the podcasting craze sweeping media companies with a service that instantly generates an audio version of any article in the newspaper. The IHT, which is owned by New York Times Co., said it was the first English-language Web site to deliver the service, which it rolled out on Wednesday with Swedish technology company ReadSpeaker. German newspaper Waz has unveiled a similar service. A female voice with a British accent and only a slight robotic stammer reads the articles with nearly accurate intonation and word emphasis, though the beta version is not glitch-free as some words were difficult to understand in a recent test. The IHT is providing the audio service free at http://audionews.iht.com/home/ and without advertising temporarily as it makes changes and improvements, but is seeking advertisers to help generate revenue. "It allows us to sell advertising on a scalable basis," said Meredith Artley, editor and publisher of IHT.com. "No advertisers are on board yet, but we've got a couple of folks who are interested," she said. "We would probably put on five to 10 seconds of an audio ad, and we're considering doing it on every third or fifth article." Users can either listen to articles on the spot or download them onto an MP3 player or mobile phone, creating a personalized audio version of the Paris-based newspaper, which was founded in 1887 and is sold in 180 countries. The IHT Web site draws 2.7 million unique readers a month. About 6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, are downloading audio podcasts, according to figures released on Wednesday by research firm Nielsen/NetRatings. "The portability of podcasts makes them especially appealing to young, on-the-go audiences," Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Michael Lanz said. "We can expect to see podcasting become increasingly popular as portable content media players proliferate." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from the daily media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

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