Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-06-27/Spoken article feed

Wikipedia has branched out into the field of podcasting with the addition of a feed for new recordings of articles being spoken out loud, while work also continues in other projects to provide similar content.

The Spoken Wikipedia WikiProject has a new RSS feed, which allows anybody whose music player supports Ogg Vorbis to podcast Wikipedia articles read aloud. The project's RSS feed was created by Steinsky and first announced on 17 June.

Ironically, the term "podcasting" is an allusion to Apple's popular iPod player, but the iPod cannot be used to play these particular recordings because it does not support the Ogg Vorbis format.

The Spoken Wikipedia project has only been in existence since April (see archived story) and has recorded 80 articles so far. Of these, 32 are featured articles, as making recordings of featured articles has been a particular emphasis of the project. Willmcw and Luigi30 have been among the most prolific participants in producing recordings.

Efforts to expand into the realm of sound are also underway at Wikinews, which has organized an Audio Wikinews series of radio-style newscasts. Wikimedia Trustee Angela Beesley commented, "I'm pleased to see people are working on moving the projects beyond a simple text-based approach." Streaming audio is also being produced, although some issues remain to be settled in deciding what software and servers to use for live broadcasts.