Review: ReadTheWords

ReadTheWords is a free web-based text-to-speech service, which can “convert” text, html or pdf files into mp3s. Doctors can use the service to convert reading material — new journals, health-care related news articles, and e-books — into files that they can sync with their mp3 player so they can listen to them during a long commute or work-out session.

How good a service is it? Well, here’s my experience with it.

I started out with short text files, like the CME articles at Medscape, and the results were very impressive. Unlike old text-to-speech software, the voices were comprehensible most of the time. I tried out several voices and the best sounding ones — for me — were the female voices slowed down to -20% speed.

So it can handle short articles, but what I really wanted to find out was if it could “read” medical article pdfs. I chose a recent article about ACE Inhibitors in Diastolic Heart Failure.

Tribouilloy et al. Prognostic Impact of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitor Therapy in Diastolic Heart Failure. Am J Cardiology. 2008;101: 639-644.

I uploaded both the pdf of the full article and the printer-friendly html. As expected, it choked on the pdf file. The resulting mp3 was unbearable to listen to, an unintelligible collection of syllables and read hyperlinks. The software read everything — even the header and footer for each page! It stumbled on proper nouns, annoyingly spelling these words out, and did not understand hyphenation. It did better with the printer-friendly html version of the article, but there were a few minor hiccups (the software read even the citation marks, for example).

So, in summary:

The Good

• Sounds way better than the text-to-speech programs I tried before. The voices still have a synthetic quality but you will be able to comprehend most of what they are saying.
• Provides option to stream the audio (you can embed a player in your post), download the mp3 file, or — although this feature seems to be broken at this time — distribute via RSS

The Bad

• Uploading a pdf file, especially one from a medical journal, is a bad idea. The resulting mp3 will be incomprehensible. Stick to uploading plain text or printer-friendly html.
• There is something wrong with the indexing of the mp3s. When I play it on my iPod and try to rewind, it plays the wrong segment of the file.
• Software still makes a lot of mistakes, especially when dealing with proper nouns, apostrophes and hyphenation.
• You’re only allowed to store 10 recordings.
  

Overall
The service is still in beta so I can’t really complain about the bugs. I predict they will fixing them soon enough. All in all, ReadTheWords is a very good service and I highly recommend that you try it out.