The Internet is full of all kinds of knowledge whether it is related to computer science, nuclear technology, medicine, fashion, literature, electronics, education, and many more. Everyday thousands of people around the world are adding to this already superfluous source of information. But most of this knowledge is available in the text format. This means that you have to glue your eyes to your computer screen if you want to benefit from it. But if you do not want to lose your eyesight prematurely, then you can make use of the free Sound Gecko extension in the Google Chrome browser and listen to the webpages instead of reading them. Sound Gecko is also available as an app for various mobile platforms like iPhone, Android etc.
You can go to the Chrome webstore to install this extension in your Chrome web browser. You do not have to login to your Google account in order to install this extension. After the extension is installed, a confirmation box is shown and you can see a new green sound icon in your Google Chrome toolbar.
If you click on this new Sound Gecko icon, it will open the options for the extension. In the options, you can specify an email address where the Sound Gecko servers would send you a transcript of the audio. Instead of giving them your email address, you can also use the Sound Gecko account if you have one. You can also choose to use a gray toolbar icon instead of the regular green one.
In order to listen to a webpage, all you have to do is open that webpage in your Chrome browser and when the page is fully loaded, click on the Sound Gecko toolbar icon. If you do not want to listen to the entire webpage but only a portion of it, then you can select a portion of its text, right-click on it and then select Listen to text snippet with SoundGecko from the context menu.
It may ask you for confirmation and then will send the request to its servers. After waiting for some time (usually a few seconds but sometimes many minutes), you would have the pleasure of listening to that webpage. I tried listening to a webpage (from TrishTech.com) and it kept me waiting for more than 10 minutes.
Sound Gecko is a very useful, time saving and an essential extension for all the Chrome users. It is very healthy for your eyes too, as it saves you from the eye strain caused by reading long articles online.
You can download and install Sound Gecko Chrome extension from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/.