I've been interested in the Gutenberg Project for some time now, and find it fascinating that so many really well known titles are available online and free from copyright. As an experiment I'm going to upload selected works to a this new weblog, in all available formats (html, rss) as well as a speech-synthesized version in mp3 format. These files are attached to each posted chapter as an RSS enclosure and can be automatically downloaded to your hard disk or mobile mp3 player.
Updates will be posted daily, so you can keep up with your reading both on the web or as an audio book.
I'm using the speech synthesizer that comes built-in to Mac OS X. While still far from perfect, it actually is quite usable and I'd love to receive any feedback about improving the quality, pitch and speed of the voice.
I'm hoping more developers will create some glue to connect rss enclosures to mobile mp3 devices, resulting in a publishing/distribution channel that brings new audio updates to the masses, automagically.
The weblog format, reversed chronological order, is rather interesting to see in this experiment, since reading a book is expected to work from top to bottom. I think this feed will be most useful for aggregators of text and audio files.
The first book, of which I'm posting the introduction today is by french author Alexis de Toqueville and is titled Democracy in America.
11:22:03 PM
