If you don’t have enough time to read content of web pages or you want to convert web pages to audio podcasts, here is a new web service which lets you do just that. An Australian startup SoundGecko brings text to life in a new way, it is a text-to-audio transcription service which converts webpages to audio podcasts. All you have to do is enter the URL of the webpage in Soundgecko’s home page, enter your email address where you would want to get the audio podcast as an MP3 file and hit the “Get MP3” button.

SoundGecko will convert the content of the webpage into an audio MP3 and send the MP3 file to your email address. Moreover, it is accessible via an iPhone app and integrates with Google Drive and Dropbox. Service is currently available in English only.

The interface is nice and simple. Main page consists of two text input boxes, one for the URL of the article you want to convert and another to put your email address in it. Once you have found the article of your choice put the link and your mail address in those boxes and hit Get MP3 button. SoundGecko will make an mp3 file of that article and send it to your email account.

The service also provides a chrome extension to add articles to SoundGecko easily and quickly while browsing the web. Another way, you can mail the links to go@soundgecko.com leaving the subject blank. Mp3s will be automatically sent to your email address later. Also,registered users can enjoy the benefit of listening RSS feeds and PDFs .

You can grab your mp3 file in different ways.

In your inbox you will find the mp3 file with some information about runtime, size etc. Download and play the mp3. Also you will see a link to the original article, so if you face any problems while listening, you can go back to original article and read it. You can sync your Dropbox or Google Drive account with SoundGecko. For that you need to sign up and configure your cloud account properly from Soungecko account settings. Also, Soundgecko will make a custom podcast for you once you sign up for the service. Add RSS feeds there and enjoy an online radio of your favored blog.

For now, because it’s still in beta you can enjoy all the features free of cost; they have an option for pro user at $4.95 a month. May be they will limit some features for free users later. Android and Windows app will be launched in near future. The text-to-audio transcribing is good, not very robotic, yet it’s something digital sounding but works fine for me. What I feel after using this tool is that the idea is good; it works great, but instead of mailing or sending mp3 file to cloud, if they could streamed it instantly and only the text of my choice, not the whole web page , it would be great.