eXtrapola and Loquendo Create a Talking Newsletter for Italian Newspaper

Il Sole 24 ORE, an Italian business newspaper, eXtrapola, specialists in monitoring and analyzing online information, and Loquendo, have launched an audio podcast of the 7:24 newsletter.

With AudioFlash24, Il Sole 24 ORE readers can hear a summary of the day's key news stories. The free service is made possible thanks to Loquendo's fluent, expressive text-to-speech along with some ingenious software from eXtrapola able to summarize text automatically together providing users with a spoken version of the day's major news stories.

Thanks to this initiative by the Digital Area of the 24 ORE Group and its director, Stefano Quintarelli, the Talking Newsletter provides an alternative way to enjoy news content and a new way for the paper to reach its readership. The 600,000 subscribers to the newsletter can now catch up on the latest news via a daily email containing the best news stories from the 24 ORE Group, an exclusive preview of the printed version, leading articles from the Web site, key editorials, in-depth magazine stories, and the latest financial news from Radiocor.

"We are grateful to Stefano Quintarelli and the Sole 24 Ore Group for giving us this opportunity to contribute to continuing innovations in the editorial line, extending access to digital content to a wider platform and readership who will be able to stay in touch with the latest news from many different devices, whenever and wherever suits them," says Paolo Pastorino, senior marketing and business development manager at Loquendo.

"For us, the collaboration with Il Sole 24 ORE has been an important professional challenge," says Stefano Marioni, eXtrapola president and co-founder. "It is a completely new system for circulating information online via talking news."

By transforming the key contents from our Web site in speech, by means of innovative technologies, we have begun a process of experimentation in managing content aimed at identifying new ways of interacting with our readership," Quintarelli says.