Instant Podcasts with Text-to-Speech Odiogo

I encourage libraries to podcast, as many users choose to get their information that way.  What I hear more than any other objection is that this will be time consuming--that creating podcast after podcast will suck precious staff hours that no one has.

Well, what about Odiogo?  This is a service that I recently heard about that takes any text, say your blog's RSS feed, and creates each post into a "near-human" audio file.  The MP3s are stored on Odiogo's website, so you don't have to worry about receiving and posting files.  The speech is pretty darn realistic and you get statistics on the number of listeners too.  Better yet, it's free.  That's right: F-R-E-E.  Sweet!  Take a look at their demo if you want to learn more.  This is something I'll be exploring as a possibility for our library's new website.