Google may be about to celebrate its 10th birthday but it is certainly not slowing down and the talented crew at Google are coming up with more gadgets and features to dazzle us with. The latest funky feature to step off the Google production line is a new feature for Google Knol.A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic. At the minute Google Knol is testing a cool new feature that automatically converts articles to audio files, which can be played or downloaded. At the minute the option is only available for a small selection of knols but Google plan to expand on this.
According to a knol help page, Google Knol "are experimenting with Audio Playback as an option for some knols, starting with a handful of English language featured knols." The page continues, "If this experiment is successful, we may make Audio Playback available to more knols in additional languages, and additional features."
The potential benefits of this new piece of technological wizardry are endless, and we at bigmouthmedia are really excited about the future of sound. The benefits of this type of technology are unending; just think of all those with impaired vision or those with a low literacy level - something we'd love to see Google think about when it comes to YouTube. Google's new Audio could signal the start of new easier online accessibility. Even more exciting are the long term benefits of this new technology. If Audio Playbacks can be successfully integrated into knol articles does this mean in the future we can have an Audio Playback function on all online pages?
The digital world is changing at an alarming and exciting speed; it is just getting bigger, better and more accessible and Google Knol is just another example of this.
