You may have noticed it by now that all my recent posts bear an audio icon, and if you click it, you'll hear a recording of my post. Yey!

The audio of my post is courtesy of odiogo which you can all have via a free membership and a widget.

Upside.

It's the coolest of the widgets that I installed in my blog. It's a dream come true to finally convert my posts into audio files without the need to record my, ehem, well-modulated, bedroom, ala-Inday Garutay's voice. Odiogo, in a way, freed me from further embarrassing myself.

The automated voice is also crisp and clear, especially in past tense words ending in e and d, like modulated or enunciated.

Clicking the odiogo icon allows readers to, instead of reading my lengthy, boring article, just listen to the near-human voice while browsing other blogs. And the converted voice files can easily be downloaded by anyone via my RSS audio feed.

Most importantly, it brings my blog to another level. In a way, I'm not just blogging; I'm -- sort of -- podcasting! Cool, isn't it?

Downside.

Because the voice is automated, it is sort of unfeeling: no dramatic pauses; no fluctuations in voice. It also reads the post in full -- including the errors! (Why, what do I expect? A self-correcting, automated text to voice application?! Duh.)

It doesn't pause to catch breath unless there's a period, or a comma, or a colon, or a dash. I thought it reads the tagalog words well although sometimes it's almost inaudible. It reads acronyms per letter, hence instead of saying peba, it says pee E bee A. It also reads links per letter like this: H tee tee pee colon back slash back slah gee owe owe gee el E dot see oh em instead of google dot com.

Odiogo covers only the last 25 of your posts. Post 26th onwards are not recorded, and unless you save the voice file can no longer be listened to.

Recommendation.

I would still recommend odiogo for blogs that are mainly written in English. As I said, it's cool, it's hip, easy to install, it's automated, and it's totally free. Why not give it a try.