The Australian Elections and Howard’s End November 24, 2007

The news is in and has become history (CLICK FOR BBC NEWS LINK). The Australian Prime Minister John Howard (of Conservative Party) ends his 11 year old rule and concedes defeat to Kevin Rudd (of Labour Party). John Howard was a very shrewd politician who made the most of September 11 terrorist attacks in America and the consequent war on terrorism like many other international politicians.

 

 

Kevin Rudd on the other hand is a bit of a geek who has always been more into policy making than politics. Though as The New York Times reminds he added some frills to his ”dry” image when on a tour of New York in 2003, he made a pilgrimage to a strip club. Not only that- would you believe it?- Kevin Rudd can also speak fluent Mandarin (Chinese). In fact he impressed everyone by addressing the Chinese President Hu Jintao in September, in Chinese. I mean read this headline in red:

 

”The New Australian Prime Minister speaks Chinese”

Sounds impressive huh?

 

 

Something on the Corporate Media and stale reportage:

Here I digress, I leave you with a brain teaser. Not long ago, The New York Times bought International Herald Tribune which is published from Paris for international readership. More often than not, their international coverage is same, I mean word for word. But wait. Not always. The report on Australian elections was written by their journalist, Tim Johnston. Though the write up is same, I presume, the newspaper copy writers were clever enough to shuffle the paragraphs and make it seem like these were two differently written works. That’s cheap journalism, in my opinion. Decide for yourself. I am giving you Links to both stories which are essentially the same….

 

 

New York Times, ”Bush Ally Defeated in Australia”

 

 

International Herald Tribune, ”Australian oust Howard after 4 terms”

You can now Listen to my posts!!! November 24, 2007

This is a stunner indeed. I got this Odiogo plungin from www.Odiogo.com. It places a little logo on top left of every post. And if you click on it the software actually reads the whole post! Thus my blog posts also become Podcasts. This is just super awesome. But please note that at this moment you cannot use this on my WordPress blog but only Blogger. But since both of these are mirror blogs, if you happen to come across an entry at my WordPress and you would like to listen to it just go to http://freedom-cafe.blogspot.com and find the same entry there.

 

 

I have known text speech technologies for a long time. Most prominent one I knew about was from Microsoft Reader that allows you to download electronic books and also play them. The speech still sounded quite metallic and computerized but you could easily make it out and listen. More recently I noticed International Herald Tribune (www.iht.com) and some other publications have audio link to all their articles where a software reads the entire text in human manner. This trend is catching up.



But what sets Odiogo apart is its real clear and almost near natural speech. (please check and let me have your feedback as well) Although I certainly don’t support any unwarranted digitalization of our reading habits, I must accept how revolutionary these text speech technologies can be for people who cannot read for any number of reasons; ok illiteracy maybe one but there is blindness, other sight related problems that cause blurred vision or dyslexia.

As for my own blog, sometimes my posts can be real long as I like to pack as much information- or in some cases a complete yarn- as possible in a single post. In this case, some people who are not fond of reading long posts or cannot for some reason are welcome to use Odiogo service. I hope the readers of my blog will benefit from it. Once again, I welcome any feedback.

Cheers and Shalom,

Ember.