User help:


The button 'Generate MP3/Podcast from Wikipedia article' starts a search for an Wikipedia article with the entered name. It not looks for for the occurrence of the entered keyword in an article. You can check out before if an appropriate article exists (with 'search' the button):

  (this form links directly to en.wikipedia.org articles, no audio will be generated by the Pediaphon.)

Even if no suitable article is found, the answer will be generated of en.wikipedia.org output as MP3 file. I (A pls File (a Winamp Playlist), a asx File (Windows Media Player Meta file) and a Podcast too.). The main advantage of these small meta data files is, that the playback will start immidiatly if a suitable playing program (Windows Media Player, iTunes or Winamp, and/or Freeamp) is installed. This procedure is known as 'pseudo Streaming' or more accurately as 'progressive download'. Only if the MP3 file has to be tranfered to a MP3-Player the download of the (large) of the MP3 file is necessary.

IPod owners users can use the comfortable Podcast procedure for the same purpose. For this funtionality a XML Podcast File will be generated for each request. Just 'drag and drop' the XML link into Itunes.

To listen to the audio output immediately, just press the buttons 'hear Wikipedia article (Windows)' or 'hears Wikipedia article (Java)'. The Java version requires an installed SUN Java runtime (>=Java 1.3). Then either a web page with embedded Windows Media Player or with an Java applet will be generated. The appropriate playlist parameters will be integrated dynamically. In this case the audio should start immediately, (streaming) before the whole MP3 file is downloaded.

Mobile Pediaphon:

All (SMS able, today really all) mobile phones:

Guidance here!

Mobile InterNet (WAP), starting from WAP 1.0:

Guidance here!

Smartphones with web browsers:

Nokia S60 phones:

Just download the (very small) Playlist .'pls' File (a Winamp Playlist), then the S60-Internetradio program should start. You need to install the Shoutcast client for Nokia S60 of phones.

Podcast phones:

Just download the podcast (ending .xml).

Windows CE NET based phones: Just download the asx File (Windows Media Player Meta file), start it with a click.

Mobile 2003 Phone edition:

With Mobile 2003 Phone edition this does not work, because there is no asx support anymore. Here (as with all other phones) the generated MP3-Datei must be downloaded and stored on a memory card or local file system of the phone. Finally open the downloaded MP3 file with the build in MP3 player.

All other phones with MP3 player:

The generated MP3-Datei must be downloaded completely and stored on a memory card or local file system of the phone. Finally open the downloaded MP3 file with the build in MP3 player.

Legal:

Contents of the generated articles stand under the GNU license for free documentation.

Pediaphon is a free service of Andreas Bischoff, which produces MP3-Audiodateien from German and English language Wikipedia articles by speech synthesis. The service is operated at the university in Hagen at the control engineering group.

Credits:

Technically this service was realized by freephone, MBROLA and the MP3-Encoder LAME. Pediaphon represents a contribution to the Wikiprojekt spoken Wikipedia. The logo was created by Heike Kollakowski.
Powered by Wikipedia, Debian, Apache, Perl, Mbrola, txt2pho, lame, links and Andreas Bischoff ;-) (c)2006

For the Bots: Wikipedia vorlesen, TTS, Text2Speech, Text to Speech, Pediaphon, m-learning, Wikipedia speech output, Audio, MP3, Wikipedia Audiostream, Wikipedia Podcast, Wikipedia via cell phone, Wikipedia by phone