Episode #106 - An App That READS Most ANYTHING For You?!

My new, favorite technology is a free app that can read just about anything.

Image created by Dalle-3 AI platform. Prompt: “graphic poster which visually and colorfully represents the power of audio technologies such as the radio, podcasts, audio books, and other apps that can help read to people.”

A.I. Notification: No part of this episode was written or edited by artificial intelligence. The image above WAS was created using the Dalle-3 AI platform.

The Background

Let me start by saying that I’m a voracious reader. I can read entire SciFi novels in 2-4 days (BTW, you need to check out this masterful trilogy that was the basis for the TV show “The Expanse”). Ditto for reading non-fiction, news, politics, sports, and tech.

So, yeh: I read a lot.

But…

I sometimes like to listen to my news and updates as well. That allows me to do other things at the same time: drive my car, exercise, cook a meal for my family, or do idle chores like laundry or vacuuming. And in those moments, I’m super grateful to live at a time when technology like podcasts, audiobooks, & radio all exist.

Radio - and the spoken word, in general - is still a very powerful form of communication. It’s something I’ll never under-value or not appreciate.

Perhaps this is why a variety of websites and platforms have embraced audio as a tool for their users. Two notable examples…

The Wall Street Journal has been offering tech to read articles to its users for years:

Screengrab, of the audio/listen option on a Wall Street Journal article.

Platforms like Medium (where I continue to post occasionally) have also offered audio options to users for years:

Screengrab of the audio/listen option on Medium

But the tools I just mentioned here are ONLY available if you are a subscriber to those sites. Which, obviously, is a bummer. But…

What if there were a free tool, kept on our phones, that we could use to read ANYTHING from most ANY website or platform? What if we could also use this tool to read our own or other people’s documents? And what if we could also pick the kind of voice that we prefer to hear when this tool reads to us?

Pretty neat, I’d say.

Oh, and what if this fabulous, new tool was 100% free?

Well, friends, I found exactly this tool. I’ve been using it nearly every day for about two months now, fir one reason or another. Not only is it incredible at what it does, but it’s also what today’s Episode is all about.