DISCLAIMER - THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Ahem. I mean, this is a bit unusual. A geeky technical topic.
Ahem. I mean, this is a bit unusual. A geeky technical topic.
Earlier this morning I read the following tweet by British Beauty Blogger: "I wish Twitter was audio sometimes - would help me get through my tidying up a lot better!"
My mental cogs remembered the numerous projects that have been created at twitter conferences with typewriters automatically writing out tweets such as oomlaut created or that of having a puppet parrot shout out a noise every time the hash tag for said conference was tweeted.
Clearly, I thought, this must be very easy. I know that Text to Speech already exists so all one had to do is incorporate an automated command of one of the many Text to Speech codes there are out there into the twitter widget code. Obviously a problem presented itself, which was that the twitter widget doesn't specify the text and therefore makes it difficult to place the code so that's where my coding limits ended.
Luckily, I had another geek coming round for breakfast, a friend of my partner (he doesn't want to be credited), who first went into all the problems and issues that arise (links, weirdly written words etc) until he pointed out that I could simply look for an already existing RSS feed to Speech code.
And voila - There's a Google application that does that! You need a Google Desktop 1 or above to install it and even then it only works for PCs so I can't actually confirm if the RSS TO SPEECH GOOGLE GADGET works.
However, the second issue is finding the proper RSS feed to implement. There's no known way to create an RSS feed of all your feeds, but what you can do is create an RSS feed for a list. So if you really want to have ALL of the tweets that you follow read out while you tidy up, work or whatever, simply create a list and add everybody you want.
My mental cogs remembered the numerous projects that have been created at twitter conferences with typewriters automatically writing out tweets such as oomlaut created or that of having a puppet parrot shout out a noise every time the hash tag for said conference was tweeted.
Clearly, I thought, this must be very easy. I know that Text to Speech already exists so all one had to do is incorporate an automated command of one of the many Text to Speech codes there are out there into the twitter widget code. Obviously a problem presented itself, which was that the twitter widget doesn't specify the text and therefore makes it difficult to place the code so that's where my coding limits ended.
Luckily, I had another geek coming round for breakfast, a friend of my partner (he doesn't want to be credited), who first went into all the problems and issues that arise (links, weirdly written words etc) until he pointed out that I could simply look for an already existing RSS feed to Speech code.
And voila - There's a Google application that does that! You need a Google Desktop 1 or above to install it and even then it only works for PCs so I can't actually confirm if the RSS TO SPEECH GOOGLE GADGET works.
However, the second issue is finding the proper RSS feed to implement. There's no known way to create an RSS feed of all your feeds, but what you can do is create an RSS feed for a list. So if you really want to have ALL of the tweets that you follow read out while you tidy up, work or whatever, simply create a list and add everybody you want.
Then copy the URL of that twitter list and input it into this TWITTER LIST 2 RSS tool. For example, I put http://twitter.com/LiraLeirner/fashion-blog which became http://twiterlist2rss.appspot.com/LiraLeirner/lists/fashion-blog/statuses.rss . Don't put in just your own, (for example http://twitter.com/LiraLeirner) because that will just create a feed of your own tweets - and that's boring.
This is where it stops for me because this gadget is only supported for for Windows Vista/XP/2000 SP3+ and I'm on a mac. But I'm assuming you input the RSS feed link and that should do it!
Let me know if it works or any othe rsuggestions you have if you're a fellow geek stumbling upon this article.
This is where it stops for me because this gadget is only supported for for Windows Vista/XP/2000 SP3+ and I'm on a mac. But I'm assuming you input the RSS feed link and that should do it!
Let me know if it works or any othe rsuggestions you have if you're a fellow geek stumbling upon this article.
