Every month, I try some new tool or method to try to improve my productivity. Last month, it was Jott.com, where I experimented (and failed) with speaking my blog entries into my mobile phone while I commuted home. Actually, the experiment wasn’t a total failure since it got me into the habit of using Jott.com’s service whenever I am out and about and I have a business idea that I want to remember. I just hit the Jott speed-dial, speak my idea into my mobile, and a transcribed email is waiting for me in my email inbox when I return to my computer. Sweet.

So last month I was trying out a service to help reduce the amount of time I spend typing my blog entries, and this month I am trying out a tool to help reduce the amount of time I spend reading blogs (without reducing how many blogs I read). And that tool is Tumbywood Software’s Text2Go software.

Text2Go is a tool that allows you to capture text from the web, convert it to speech and then listen to it, either easily and directly through your computer’s speakers, or on your iPod. The current production version that you can try and buy is designed to work with iTunes and your iPod, but since I didn’t have an iPod, Text2Go didn’t really interest me. And although my teenage nieces make fun of me for not having an iPod (behind my back, of course) , I have argued that I like having a straight MP3 player with a built in FM radio, and I’m not changing my ways darnit!  (call me crazy, but I still like to listen to the radio).

But On Halloween, Tumbywood Software quietly announced a beta release of their Text2Go software which supports MP3 players in addition to iPods. This caught my attention (I was giddy!), and I promptly moved this tool right to the top of my list for things to try. I wasn’t even going to wait for the final release; I was going straight away to the beta version (which is unusual for me).

Installation was a breeze and before I knew it I was ready to start using Text2Go. So I opened up my browser to Andrey Butov’ blog, Antair Achievement (hmmm, that’s odd, he hasn’t written for a while, he must be getting ready to release something new again). I highlighted the text, and clicked on the Text2Go menu bar option to create an audio file from the text. That was pretty much it. Relatively quickly there was an MP3 waiting for me in my “to car” folder. For comparison’s sake, I quickly downloaded and switched to the female voice and saved the same MP3 also in my “to car” file. I moved the MP3 files over to my MP3 player (along with some other music I had wanted to move (keep in mind that the process is even simpler for those “cool” kids with iPods) and went on to do some work on the next release of iKollect.

The next morning, I tried out listening to the blog entries in the car. Ugh, I found the default male voice to be quite annoying. But the female voice is really quite easy to listen to! At the end of the blog post, I was elated and I could already conclude that Text2Go was going to be a home-run.

Later that day when I was ready to read some blogs again, I instead chose to create MP3s out of all of the blog entries in my RSS reader. Well, not all of them. If they were visibly small entries, I just read them. And if they had visuals (i.e. embedded JPGs or what-not), I chose to read those also. I did all of this directly through my Google Reader, which is quite handy. I was sure to include Gooogle Reader’s header for the post as well, because I wanted to be able to tell which blog entry I was listening to in the car when it started playing.

For my ride home, I listened to each and every one of the blog entries in the female voice and it was great! At times, the blog entries caused me to think of other things I wanted to do or research further, at which point I just grabbed my phone, hit the Jott speed-dial and spoke a message to be emailed to myself. Brilliant!

All in all, Text2Go is just plain awesome. And I don’t use that word often. Oh yeah, and I don’t have any relationship to anyone at Tumbywood Software that would make me say that. It’s really just a great tool, and I expect it to save me quite a bit of time, period.

I am excited for the final release of this new version that creates MP3s. Tumbywood Software has an easy sale with me, no joke. And on top of that, Tumbywood is only charging $25 for this product, which is unbelievably cheap.

As if that’s not enough, Text2Go also makes it easy to play web page directly through my PCs speakers without creating any MP3 files. So over the next couple of days I am going to toy with playing the pages directly through the browser while I do other work. I’ll write about how that goes in my next post. But honestly, even if that’s a dismal failure, shifting my daily blog reading time to my commuting time will already add hours of possible productivity to every week. No joke!

It’s also worth mentioning that Tumbywood Software is a MicroISV run by an Australian bloke named Mark Gladding. If you too are a fellow MicroISV-er, you might enjoy reading Mark’s blog, in which he talks about his experiences running his MicroISV. Or even better still, use Mark’s Text2Go tool and *listen* to his experiences on running his MicroISV!

Tags: iKollect.com, productivity, Text2Go