Scribd or not to Scribd?

[Eddie Byrne]

I use Scribd quite a lot, in the past I have found it wonderful for converting text to speech and outputting an mp3 file. And the quality of the mp3 audio is excellent I have to say. File sizes are much smaller than if you were to record your own voice and convert to mp3, and the voice is as close to ‘human’ as you would hope to get. But my recent experiences with Scribd have been a little disappointing, disappointing because the audio conversions now take an age. I uploaded a document three days ago and the audio version is still not available. ‘When’ and ‘will’ are now the questions. When I first started using it, the conversion was immediate, incredible speed. But no longer.

SEE
http://www.scribd.com/people/view/17343-eddie-byrne

I have also used the output of Scribd in conjunction with Odeo to create podcasts and streaming media for my library service (not just for the national support group I am a member of), and being able to embed the Odeo player in different locations, and I have been very happy with the results. Now I am wondering if I will be able to continue with the Scribd/Odeo mix.

Has anyone made use of Scribd, and what has been your experience?

I am now exploring other text-to-speech options (Ultra Hal, DSpeech) - these are downloads with a little cost involved.

Is there any other web 2.0 application like Scribd that does something similar?

An Alternative?

The alternative of course is to record someone (yourself even!) reading the text and converting to mp3 using Audacity (free open sourse software)
This (http://www.cleft.ie/related-syndromes/velocardiofacial-syndrome/) is an example of where I created an audio mp3 file using my laptop software instead of using Scribd (most of the other audio content on this site was created using Scribd). If You listen to it You will here some background noise and how shaky and nervous my voice was. One thing to overcome is the self-consciousness you will inevitably feel. It is difficult to do it without making mistakes; I had to read the piece several times before I had a version I was ok with. Also, the file is much larger than if I had created it with Scribd. It was not practical to create audio files this way, it was too time consuming and the output was only ok in terms of quality I feel. For one-off files, maybe it’s ok, but probably not for multiple files.



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I have being doing a bit of discovery regarding Scribd.

I count 211,589 documents on Scribd, that is going back to Jan 29 2007.
The last document to have an audio version created was uploaded on the 8 August last, that is 46 days ago! Some 54,500 documents have been uploaded since that date, That is a huge increase in the rate of uploading. Obviously Scribd cannot cope.
And I notice that there has been an increase in the number of block uploads - the same person uploading thousands of documents at the same time, which seems to be a huge abuse of the service. And unfortunately, a big increase in the amount of ‘adult’ content uploaded, again en masse (and I don’t mind saying it, rubbish content it is). You need to be aware of the presence of this ‘adult’ content if you know of children using this service or if you are promoting it as part of any web 2.0 initiative in your library involving children.

Scribd needs to get on top of this problem or will see users abandon the service en masse also! Personally, it disappoints me a lot to see these trends in the use of Scribd.

Eddie
On Facebook: http://profile.to/eddiebyrne/

[Emily]

I love this idea, too bad the service is suffering at the moment. It isn't quite the same thing (since it doesn't automatically generate separate audio files) but perhaps you could use the Adobe Reader "View>Read out Loud" function with some sort of recording program?

I've been using it to get through my homework, but I only need to listen to it once, so the lack of file output doesn't bother me.