SearchEngineWatch reports of a new service, Speakwire, which allows you to listen (audio) to selected RSS feeds instead of reading them, through a synthesized speech technology.

And they even invented a new -casting word, this time it's Autocasting and it means generating audio automatically from an RSS feed.

For one, it's not a bad idea, if the sound quality (intonation, enthusiasm, warm, ...) were better, but I just don't see this hitting anywhere near mainstream. Computer generated audio simply cannot be compared to emotion-filled human voice, at least not yet.

So the question now is what podcasts achieve greater reach: those with emotion and entusiasm or those with just the content but no real emotion?

Usually the first ... so I really don't see many internet users going this way.

"Pick your newsfeeds collate them and playback as a speaking newswire service while you work. Chose from News, Politics, Business, Science and Technology, Sport, Stock prices, private subscription services.

"Podcasting" is making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows software to automatically download the files for listening at the user's convenience.

"Autocasting" is an automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds. Autocasting software uses XML parsers, TTS (text-to-speech) engines, and audio conversion utilities to convert text blogs into audio files that can be placed on a blog for download, synchronized to a portable audio device, or played on a desktop computer.

Speakwire uses PanaVox Speech Technology and works on 56K modems if required."