XKCD Inspires YouTube Feature

Who knew that a silly comic strip could be so influential? XKCD’s strip focusing on the inanity of YouTube comments inspired someone to actually add the Audio Preview feature to YouTube. It’s provided us with much amusement, especially where one commenter mentions that the “preview of my own post sounded moronic!”

Speech synthesis software is nothing new, of course. While it’s not the most sophisticated software, it’s an invaluable resource to those with disabilities, language learners, and others. This tutorial on Festival, a Linux-based text-to-speech software framework, would be a great place to start. You’re just moments away from finding out how stupid email, IM, and IRC sound read aloud.

12 thoughts on “XKCD Inspires YouTube Feature

  1. i noticed that a few days ago, i was wondering who I should send it to. XKCD has no mass-feed, digg sucks, and reddit is becoming more mainstream. never though about had :)

  2. It can even pronounce “fandabbybabulous”! It constantly pleases me to see how much influence webcomics can occasionally have.

    Lets just hope that people actually use it. I wonder how it will cope trying to pronounce “u r a fkin retard bro”?

  3. Oh wow, first I saw that xkcd comic, then I saw this new button on youtube. But I thought that the comic came after the new button release.

    How funny things work in the internets.

  4. That’s because xkcd rocks. If you haven’t watched the youtube video of Randall Munroe at Google… do so now!

    He’s not really a terribly polished public speaker, and at times he made me wince… but for the most part it was both incredibly informative and /highly/ entertaining! xkcd FTW!

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