The Jerusalem Post Launches iPost Powered By Odiogo

BARCELONA, Spain - The Jerusalem Post and Odiogo launched a new podcast service which allows end users to listen to the various information streams of The Jerusalem Post's online edition directly on their iPods, MP3 players, PDAs, phones, or laptop computers.

All users need to do is click on the podcast button, which triggers the automatic download of sound files directly to the user's device. To simplify the selection of the required information, users can choose among a variety of available information feed categories: Front Page, Middle East News, Jewish World News, Editorials, or Opinion. The MP3 files are produced with artificial intelligence technology and text-to-speech algorithms that use the voice of a human speaker to generate audio files.

According to Tzvi Harow, director of interactive media at the Jerusalem Post, "The iPost service allows our readers worldwide to access updated information about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world when they are at the gym, in the car, on the subway or anywhere else. We are very satisfied with the user sign-ups experienced during the initial testing phases of the service."

The Jerusalem Post uses the standard distribution format, RSS. Odiogo monitors JPost feeds and automatically creates for each news item small audio files using text-to-speech technology.

Consumers subscribe to the audio-enriched news feed by clicking a button displayed on the content provider's site. Updated news items are loaded each time the user's iPod is synchronized. On mobile phones with a 3G or WiFi connection, mp3 files can be downloaded through a lightweight html page provided by the service.