I'm sure most of you know about podcasts. Sites like .NET Rocks being one of the most popular for .NET developers. Sooner or later though, you just run out of podcasts. Especially if you, like me, try to waste no time - which includes walking your dog with an MP3 player plugged in

There are also cases when the level of podcasts is way below what you would expect. Once you get a certain level of expertise in any subject, most of the podcasts start to sound lame and that is natural of course - a sign of you progress.

Worst case scenario however is, when there are no audio materials on the subject of interest. Been there, seen that, solved it.

Enter SpeechR.

A small tool that I wrote mostly for myself. SpeechR is a tool that allows me to take any text and convert it into an audio format (wave or mp3) so I can later put it on my MP3 player and listen to while... whatever I do that doesn't require focus.

With all the ebooks out there, with all those lenghty manuals or blog posts and a comming vacation on a beach... What more can a hardcore can you want.

Tool uses System.Speech namespace that was introduced with .NET 3.0 to generate sounds. System.Speech in turn uses Microsoft Speech API found in Windows. With version 5 it got pretty good. Just compare Microsoft Anna in Vista to Microsoft Sam in XP.

Of course, Microsoft's voice isn't perfect - far from it. There are however commercial voices out there that are very good and cost ~30$.

Well. The tool is free, you can install it and enjoy. Please let me know what you think about it and what features you would like to see in v.Next().

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