We've never been particularly impressed with text to speech applications. Sure, the underlying technology is pretty cool, and if you're visually impaired, these applications are probably extraordinarily useful. But seriously, It's almost 2008. You'd think that someone could come up with a text to speech application that doesn't sound like a drunken robot with a 1st grade education.

Still, some text to speech engines seem to be better than others. A few days ago we told you about SpokenText, a service that converts HTML, TXT, DOC, and other files to MP3s. The service gives you a choice of several voices, all of which sound at times like rough approximations of a person. We wish we could say the same about the computerized translator at Pediaphon, because we love the idea of this site.

Pediaphon lets you listen to Wikipedia pages. All you have to do is enter a search term, and Pediaphon will find the corresponding Wikipedia page and start reading you a bedtime story in a voice that sounds a bit like nails on a chalk board. Not literally, but it gives us sort of the same feeling. You can either listen to your article online or download it as an MP3.

Pediaphon comes in English, German, and French flavors.

[via makeuseof]