What are those little 'Listen Now' buttons and where did they come from?

You may have noticed that all these little buttons have appeared at the top of every post on this blog. They're from Odiogo, a new (ish) service which offers to 'give voice to your content' which I thought I'd try out on you, since you're radio students and all.

Odiogo use clever technology to turn your blog posts into audio content/podcasts. Once you sign up, people can subscribe to an audio feed podcast created from your text blog posts. (There's a link at the bottom of the sidebar on the right). That means they can download and then 'listen' to your blog wherever they are.

Also, once you sign up, Odiogo adds a little widget to each post on your blog. Click on that and you can hear a weird American robot voice read out your thoughts (along with a plug for the company and, possibly, some ads).

Now, I'm trying hard to resist the temptation to include random obscenities or dodgy jokes in this post, just to see how they sound when 'voiced' by a computer generated spokesbot. Instead, let's be sensible and try to work out how best to use this.

The company suggests it's for people who want to listen to a blog on the go or perhaps multitask - i.e. listen to a blog while they read another or write an essay or something like that.

I'm not sure - this kind of technology is used in screen readers, which are used by blind and partially sighted people when they use the web. But if you can read something, does it help to hear it spoken? After all, you can usually read faster than some American robo-presenter can speak.

That said, after messing around with it, I've found it is useful for helping me spot typos in some of the blog posts. If you've done features/writing with me, you know I ramble on about reading prose aloud in your head to get the rhythm right. Now, Odiogo doesn't help with that. But hearing it stumble through a post helps you see where you've missed out a word as you were typing.

What do you think? Can you think of any uses for it? Should I keep it on the blog or get rid of it?