It has been over a year now since we launched ReadSpeaker webReader for smaller web sites and blogs. Since then, we have had thousands of new customers signing up for the service in all 9 languages we offer (US English, UK English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese). In the meantime we have also added some new plugins and widgets so as to make ReadSpeaker webReader even easier to implement on some of  the most popular blog platforms and web site content management systems. We also have had some very good feedback from our community notably to help us fine-tune our service.

We have worked hard in the past months to overhaul the web shop and are now launching the latest version  so as to make it even easier for you to subscribe and implement ReadSpeaker webReader. The address is still the same at http://webreader.readspeaker.com and we have now designed 4 packages ranging from Free to Premium, all with their own capacity levels. Amongst the new stuff, you can now have several aliases if your web site or blog is under several sub domains. For all existing customers, who we thank for using our technology, nothing changes, you keep your existing login details and your ReadSpeaker webReader app remains the same.

We will gradually migrate old payment history and statistics for our existing customers.

We hope you enjoy our new web shop and look forward to your comments and suggestions.

We are today working on the launch of the brand new version of the ReadSpeaker webReader website. This means that the old website will be down during the migration of all user accounts and that the new website will be up and running in just a few hours. The webReader service might be temporarily unavailable during a part of the migration process. The address to the website will remain the same; http://webreader.readspeaker.com

We are very pleased to have partnered with the leading Dutch blog platform web-log.nl. The initial uptake of ReadSpeaker webReader by web-log.nl bloggers is great and we look forward to many more in the next coming months. The implementation is really easy thanks to the widget that we have developed specifically for web-log.nl blogs. For those who listen to Dutch out there, here is example of a web-log.nl blog which has implemented ReadSpeaker webReader.

We always try and get maximum playability for our different products when it comes to the different devices from which you can listen to web pages and blog posts. We have now just updated the compatibility of how ReadSpeaker webReader can stream the audio on iPhones as well as on the iPod Touch. We have configured our streamers so that they can now perfectly play back the audio for the iPhones and iPod Touch devices. This will help all our ReadSpeaker webReader web site owners and bloggers make their content even more usable for their readers who use an iPhone for example to listen to what they have to say. We have also changed the “Download mp3” under the player to “Play mp3” for those users that don’t have Flash so that they can always save the mp3 to their computer by right clicking on the link and saving the link. We are continually looking at ways to improve how are products are used and hope that this addition will help our growing number of users out there!

What amazes me in our ReadSpeaker webReader product is its language scope. Here we are every day getting new blogs and web sites signing up in different languages ranging from Italian to Dutch as well as American English, in all 9 languages and 18 voices so far. What is also interesting is the variety of subjects that are covered and that bloggers make available in audio as well.  This ranges from cooking in French to chess playing in Dutch to information on the Appennine region in Italian. One of the reasons for speech-enabling web sites and blogs is also to help foreign-born users listen to text that is not written in their mother-tongue language. Listening to a foreign language is a great way to learn more about the different sounds that make it up and a good learning tool to become more comfortable with it.

Hello to all you Dutch bloggers and web site owners out there! We have just added the Dutch male and female voices this morning so that you can speech-enable all your web content to the world! Dutch is our 9th language and since we propose female and male voices for each language we now have 18 voices for our ReadSpeaker webReader service. We hope you enjoy our latest language addition!

We are now proud to release our webReader plug-in for MovableType 4. By using this plug-in you can implement the ReadSpeaker webReader service on your blog or website built with MT. You will find the plug-in on the “Implement webReader”-menu option ones you have signed up and created an account on http://webreader.readspeaker.com

Yesterday Drupal.org announced a new module that implements ReadSpeaker webReader for the Drupal CMS. We have not yet fully test the module ourselves, but it is available on the Drupal website.

http://drupal.org/project/webreader

Hey the list keeps on getting longer and longer! After US English, British English, French, Swedish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, we have just launched this morning the German version of ReadSpeaker webReader. Germany is one of the most active markets in terms of number of web sites and blogs and we are very excited about giving German web site owners and bloggers both male and female voices to speech-enable their content.

We are launching today new language capabilities for our webReader service! Italian, Portuguese and Spanish web sites and blogs can now speech-enable their content. We have already received many requests from these countries content owners and from other ones as well who write in these languages to add webReader and we are very pleased to add these new languages to our existing ones : US English, UK English, French and Swedish. This brings us every day closer to making webReader a new universal way of communicating online text content via audio to as many users as possible. Watch this space since we will soon announce other additional languages as well!