J
Joseph Proffer
Guest
It’s been over a year since I first downloaded the app Umano: Listen to News Articles, and since then, my ability to stay abreast of current science and technology news has never been better, leaner, and more positive.
Over a year ago, I was feeling burned out when it came to reading the news. When I’d venture onto various news sites, I’d have to weed through a litany of stories that were both negative and depressing before I could get to the meat-and-potatoes of where my news of choice was posted. Let’s face it, science and technology news are just not what will lead the headlines on most mainstream news websites, barring any sort of horrific disaster. You know the old saying: if it bleeds, it leads.
For a while, Talk Android and Google+ were the only sources of journalism I stayed on top of. What I enjoy about Google+ is my ability to curate Circles, so I can filter the information that I care to read about.
Enter Umano. Umano is a free app (with an optional Premium service for an annual fee taken care of through the Play Store) by SoThree, Inc. It employs narrators to read news articles and the narrators can select their own stories to read or read stories submitted to Umano by the users. If a story is popular enough (as in, if it is submitted to Umano enough), it will be delegated out to a narrator and the user is notified that their article submission has been read.
The ability to submit an article to Umano can be accomplished in a variety of ways. The way I typically do it is if I’m reading an article in Chrome (on my mobile device), I can select the settings button in the top right, click share and select Umano to launch the submission page. A user can also submit an article to Umano via its website.
You can also click on a narrator and read their bio, listen to other stories they have read and follow them on Umano. To pick an example of a narrator, Larry Rice, who’s been with Umano since its early days, is a television meteorologist from Billings, Montana.
And, of course, there is the ability to create personal channels such as technology, science and history related articles to just name a few. The articles range from a variety of news sources like Motherboard and NPR. I’ve even listened to a few from Talk Android.
Equally important to me is the ability to create a playlist of articles I desire to listen to with the option of downloading them for offline use.
The design of the app is intuitive and the user interface of the article you are listening to has larger buttons, making for easy control during driving. Though, in a recent update, SoThree removed the back-15-seconds button, which I greatly miss.
Additionally, there is Chromecast and Android Wear support. But what if you don’t find yourself near your smart-devices? Not to leave you hanging, Umano just released the ability to listen to your articles from your computer. Just head over to Umano.me.
Multitasking aside, this app is also perfect for those with visual impairments. If website text is too small for you and you don’t want to crank up the zoom to high percentages, then this app may be of benefit to you.
Bottom-line, even though text-to-speech output, like Google’s TTS program, is beginning to blur the lines between human-generated and computer-generated speech, it still cannot compete with the beautiful voices of the narrators Umano has at its disposal. There is no comparison between listening to an article I’ve saved to Pocket via Google’s TTS vs. an Umano article.
As I mentioned, this app is free, so if you want to check it out, follow the link to the Play Store given below.
Come comment on this article: Umano App Review: A Dream Realized For The Multitasker News Junkie
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