Web2go is an audio news aggregator for various Web browsers and mobile devices running Android. It uses a technology called Artificial Reading Intelligence (ARI).
Contents
Artificial Reading Intelligence is an automatic extraction of meaningful text from a webpage. Meaningful text is read while skipping over superfluous information such as long lists of menu items, photo captions on advertisements and other data points that are not part of the story or blog entry. Filtered text is then voiced by NeoSpeech Text to Speech engine.
A user can add any English written blog or news website and turn it into a listening channel. Volacent Inc. first released Web2go in January 2013.
Target audience
Originally designed as a service for the visually impaired, Web2go became a productivity tool used by commuters and received radio host attention.
The African Press Organization is using Volacent technology to read aloud news for visually impaired and analphabets in Africa.We can also improve our pronunciation[3].
History
In January 2013 Web2go was created as specific solution for visually impaired. After Web2go was covered by TechCrunch and AOL it gained more than 100,000 users in less than 72 hours. From its launch, the application added 750 news websites for its audio magazine. Web2go was nominated to best RSS Feed Reader.
Reception
Apart from TechCrunch and AOL publications, Web2go has received mostly positive reviews from the media. The App received more than a thousand positive reviews by its users. Most reviews referred to the simplicity of listening to the web. However, in some reviews, users still found the voice robotic.