Dolphin develops The News Reporter
A new server based news reporting service
1st Jun, 2004
Dolphin, in conjunction with VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, is developing both back office software and reading software to allow the capture and delivery of news packages, from a variety of sources, for visually impaired people. The software to be known as "The News Reporter" also allows users to personalise news packages, and listen to them on their PC or on portable MP3 players.
"The News Reporter" has been designed to enable libraries and blindness associations to gather news and personal interest articles from a variety of sources including newspapers, magazines and the Internet in order to create a customised service for their members. The news articles can be viewed or listened to on a computer or a simple MP3 player.
The intention is for users to subscribe to "The News Reporter" service, which would include predetermined channels such as latest news, business news, sport and entertainment etc. These channels may then be sub-divided further, so that within the sport channel for instance, a subscriber could select football, tennis or golf etc. The News Reporter provides the flexibility for the service provider to determine a list of channels relevant to their organisation and their subscribers. If an organisation has premium content, such as a magazine or newspaper that they have to pay royalties for, the system is flexible enough to allow the organisation to charge additional fees, if they choose, should a user subscribe to that channel. This information is then used to create a personal user profile. The system uses this profile to deliver the relevant current news, from a wide variety of sources, to the user’s PC. The news articles on the user’s PC can then be converted into speech using a synthesiser. The speech files can also be marked up as DAISY files. The DAISY files can then be downloaded onto a portable mp3 player, allowing the user to listen to the news items one by one in the same way as listening to individual pieces of music on a CD.
"The News Reporter" is being developed to allow the provision of news services, by local blind associations and libraries around the world who wish to provide accessible, up to the minute content through a server, bringing "Today’s news, Today". For the end user the play back devices will either be a PC or a portable device, including mp3 players and DAISY players.
Dolphin is currently finalising the development of the system, and is actively looking for partners to evaluate the software package. If you are an organisation interested in finding out more about "The News Reporter" solution or would like access to the software for trail purposes please contact Dolphin.
