I recently downloaded Umano. It’s an app that gives you access to spoken news on your mobile device. I get most of my news via twitter these days, and while I’m quite happy with that system it’s sometimes nicer to get a little more depth.
I’ve started listening to a few articles (each around 5 minutes) before I go to bed. There’s a pretty good range in the ‘Geeky’ section and it’s kept up-to-date. I’ve listened to interviews with Facebook engineers and some good Google analysis - it’s generally been very good.
You have a playlist, one of them. You press and hold on a story in the library to add it to your playlist. Then, on browsing to your playlist, you can wait for all the articles to download over WiFi for later listening, or just listen to them then and there.
There are a few problems that can make it a little awkward to use however. Stories count as played too quickly which means you can loose some if you stop 5 seconds into the start to the playlist. Also when you select a story to read the summary it shouldn’t start playing straight away - true you should be able to play with it going into the playlist but it should be a choice. There could also be more ways to sort and view the playlist.
I think it’s a great service - I’ve certainly enjoyed using it - and I think it’s got some potential with lazy readers like me. I’d recommend it.