Listening to audio blog posts has replaced my reading on the way to work in the train. Unfortunately I can’t read and listen well at the same time yet.
Limited time forces me to be selective as to what I listen to. 20 Minutes one way is barely enough to listen to the daily source code.
With text feeds I can consume much more because reading is faster and one can easily scan/ skim text.
Some ideas to resolve this:
- Adjust the playback speed.
Apparently this is possible on the latest generation ipods. The specs only mention this for audiobooks. I wonder if it works for all audio content.
- Adjust the speed before playback.
Run the post through an audio tool to speed things up. That probably sucks if the post contains music.
- Ask audiobloggers to post a transcript. (Yeah, right!)
- Run an audio post through something like via voice to create a transcript.
The idea of a transcript being that you can scan it to see if it’s worth listening to. A voice recognition tool probably only creates an approximation of the actual text but that should be enough to get an idea of the content.
See also: Peter Rukavina: “I have no drive-time.”