I'm not quite sure I understand. The talking newspaper is still produced in
exactly the same way, with teams of readers meeting and recording.
It's just that alongside memory sticks, Sonata, podcasts and the telephone,
this just provides another way to engage with hopefully new listeners.
And, in fact, I am hoping it will increase engagement even more as talking
newspapers can, of course, be messaged by the listener - that's not a
feature of my skill per se, it's baked right into the core functionality of
the Dot.
So, many years ago when I was volunteering with TNs which used tapes,
listeners used to like being able to record a message and post it back,
sticking a bumpon to the tape so that the post team could put it aside to
be listened to.
With USB sticks, it's not so easy with "playback only" boxes.
So when I launched the phone service, that was one of the first features -
the ability to comment on what you just heard. And now with the Alexa
service, the ability to say "Alexa, send a message to (the name of my
talking newspaper)" and receive one back would hopefully engage more
listeners again.
At least, that's the theory - the technology is there, it's just the will
that needs to catch up!
If you have any ideas, do feel free to join
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alexa-tns -0 I've sent you an
invite. Feel free to ignore - you've not been automatically added until you
accept!
Jonathan
On 6 March 2018 at 11:35, Iain Lackie <iainlackie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Jonathan
yes, that has updated now. I wonder if there are Talking News
organisations who might have fears about this skill as they think it might
cut them off from their readers. I think they like to know who is reading
their publications and sending out physical memory sticks or whatever is an
ideal way of giving them this knowledge.
Iain
Iain
On 6 Mar 2018, at 10:37 am, Jonathan H <digitaltoast@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Iain,
Chichester TN are on a test basis just to hear how navigation works -
unfortunately, the way their audio is currently setup, the filenames don't
follow a common format and there is no feed (at least, not that I have been
told of) so it can't be automated.
So for the demo, everything had to be "hand copied", as it were and I
wasn't notified of a new edition. If you give it half an hour and and try
again, I'll manually update again now and 1091 should be with you by 11am
(updates are pushed once an hour so the next one will be 11am).
Normally, once a TN has setup the service, I provide a variety of methods
to create and generate the common file formats required like the various
feeds (RSS/XML) and formats required but for the demo they didn't want to
do that yet.
The changes don't actually add any complexity at their end, in fact, they
greatly simplify things, but a change is a change.
All of that said, if you find another TN which is out of date, please let
me know ASAP - I've just had a glance across the others and they seem to be
up to date, at least as far as the expected dates of the files provided to
me.
Thanks for letting me know,
Jonathan
On 6 March 2018 at 10:16, Iain Lackie <iainlackie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello
I have being playing around with the chlexa Talking Newspaper skill. The
skill itself seems to do what it says it should. However, what is available
does not seem to be updated. Despite the fact that I have had in my
possession for over a week now the latest edition of my local talking
newspaper, the skill has not updated. This concerns me as I have made a
point of telling people who might be interested about the skill and I am
sure they would be rather disappointed to find that the news they are
hearing is old news. I am wondering if this is a problem specific to the
Chichester Area Talking News or is it general.
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