Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 28th July 2008
5 COMMENTS 
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
I was kicking off my daily late-night feed reading as usual, by firing up Netvibes and opening up a bunch of blogs in new tabs, when a computer voice started reading a post from ReadWriteWeb out loud. Besides scaring the hell out of me, it took a while before I realized that the audio snippet actually came from this post on Center Networks and not RWW.
The article teaches us that Swiss-based Dixero has just raised 1,5 million euros for their feed-to-audio conversion technology, bringing their total funding to 3 million euros. Allen Stern from CN embedded a conversion as an example, which started playing automatically. So my first advice for the company if they want to put their fresh funding to good use: loose the autoplay feature, and loose it fast. Having said that, let’s take a look at what Dixero does.
Based in Zürich, Switzerland, Dixero enables you to aggregate your favorite RSS feeds into channels and ‘vocalize’ them, so you can actually listen to blog posts while you’re busy doing other stuff, or download them as podcasts for when you’re on the road (it works on both computers as mobile devices). There’s also some pre-defined channels users can tune into, e.g. the Technology Channel.
Dixero lets you choos
e between different voices (one male, two female) and lets you categorize blogs into multiple channels. There’s of course also a social component, which lets you share audio clips with your friends easily.
The current voices sound a bit creepy to me, much like HAL 9000 from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (”Would you like to play a game of chess?“), and I know it’s a service that I won’t be using myself because I don’t see any added value that would improve my blog consuming experience in any way. But the voices are being worked on, according to the company, and who knows if I’m missing something here that you find incredibly useful for you. If that’s the case, be my guest in the comments and explain why you dig Dixero.
Written on 25th May 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Since everyone seems to be drowning in a flood of information, new start-ups emerge to throw us a lifebuoy. These entrepreneurs develop new ways for us to process information. The latest trend: converting text into speech.
The idea behind these kind of converters is that people can just walk away from the computer, but are still able to follow what’s happening on your favorite blog. So you can listen to the latest Next Web Blog posts while baking eggs or doing the dishes. A good time-saver, so several people have seized this opportunity to develop the next big thing. Here’s a short summary of the existing services. Please let me know if you have one to add.
When Boris and me crashed the parties of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last month, we bumped into the guys of Swiss start-up Dixero. Luca Mascaro and Dafne Gobbi have developed a service that transforms posts into audio by using different computer-generated voices. Shortly after I had published this post, Frederic Martin notified me that Dixero wasn’t the only text-to-speech service out there. He used French service Xfruits, which has a rich set of converting features including RSS to speech. Though it’s not just a European matter, as there’s also a San Francisco-based start-up transforming text into speech called Stitcher.
But a service from Israel takes the whole transforming thing to another level. Bnarrator uses actual human beings for the translating. It’s just a matter of installing a widget, which keeps Bnarrator up to date about new content. Then one of their narrators starts to read the post up loud. So instead of a metallic-sounding speech-robot, you’ll hear a friendly and natural voice telling you what your favorite blogger has written about. To turn it into a profitable business, Bnarrator first plays an advertisement. Yet they don’t keep it all the revenue, as 30 percent goes to the site owner and another 5 percent goes to charities for blind people. They don’t stop to amaze me.
Mashable has already installed the service and they now have 623 narrated posts. Like the service too? Anyone can sign up here. To sum it up: their service is as charming as the narrator in this video:
Written on 23rd April 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
We love scoops and we know you do as well. So here’s one: Swiss RSS service Dixero is going to launch tomorrow. Yet another RSS service, you ask. Yes! But this one is doing something new. It allows you to aggregate your favorite feeds and moreover, it transforms posts into audio by using different computer-generated voices. That means you can put the latest post of this blog on your iPod and listen to the audio version while traveling or working out. How time-saving and efficient is that?
Luca Mascaro (ceo Dixero.com) & Dafne Gobbi
One little doubt here though: will the technology behind Dixero manage to recognize names, especially the weird 2.0 ones like blurb? I mean, the idea of the service sounds good, yet if I only get non-understandable audio files I won’t use Dixero.
So according to chief strategy officer Lucas Mascaro and Dafne Gobbi we can test that out tomorrow. They’ve traveled all the way from Lugano, Switzerland to launch the service under the eyes of the Web 2.0 attendants. For now, watch this informative video featuring Luca:
Update: Frederic Martin left a comment saying this kind of service already exists. Check it out.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
