The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

You can use the iPod for more than just listening to music. It can be used for audio books and news reading as well. Another use is as a learning or training tool.

Any file that can be converted to text can be converted to an AIFF file and dropped onto iTunes. Most websites or manuals are in PDF format. One of the features of a PDF file is that it can be saved as text. This resulting text file can be edited and then converted to an AIFF file.

An Applescript, called Drag-n-Drop to AIFF, (http://www.manythings.org/mac/ ) uses the Mac default computer voice when converting the text to AIFF.

I used to read manuals into the computer using and audio recorder (e.g. iSpeak it or Audio Recorder) to convert the spoken voice directly to AIFF files. Now, if I have a manual or document that I can convert to text, either directly or as a PDF, I simply convert it to an AIFF file and load it onto my iPod. You can also burn it to a CD as well.

Tips:

1. When the Applescript completes, the caret will disappear underneath the icon.
2. Reduce file size by about half by using the Convert to iPodunder the Advanced Menu in iTunes.
3. Adjust speed or change default voice in System Preferences, Speech Pref Pane.
4. Edit content and use punctuation for clarity.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 12:41 pm and is filed under How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.