Umano: Finally An App Worth Listening To

Facebook has recently decided to inundate us with forced and annoying advertisements for Apps. I’m intrigued by maybe two of out every ten because most look pretty useless. When I do decide to take a chance it never ends well. They are usually overly complicated or are trying to be (and never succeed) a better version of an app I already use.

But every now and then a gem emerges, a shining beacon of technological hope. I present to you a diamond named Umano. This is an app that literally everyone could benefit from, so let me make a case for it. I’ve fallen kind of in love.

It’s basically what would happen if StumbleUpon and Audible had a baby. Umano compiles a list of articles based on your likes and, wait for it….READS them to you. I’m a typical New Yorker and walk almost everywhere or take public transportation and always have my headphones. For the last few days I’ve been using Umano and have flooded my brain with tons of random facts and awesome information.

Umano allows you to even build a playlist of all the articles you want to listen to each day. You can also just select a certain channel to listen to like USA Today or even The A.V. Club. Umano has the capacity to download (a premium feature) your playlist so you aren’t killing precious data incase you aren’t connected to wi-fi. Using the free version you get up to about an hour’s worth of listening time, but as my daily walk is well over an hour both ways I’m thinking about trying the monthly premium option. And at $3.99 I can’t really argue on price. If you find you really dig it try the yearly option at $23.99, which basically cuts a month-to-month plan in half. Another bonus is it works with both Apple and Android systems.

So why use this? It’s not just for commuters; it’s really for anyone who just doesn’t have time to sit down and read what’s hot on the Huffington Post. Don’t have time to read the paper or watch the news? Just have these extremely competent and well-trained voiceover specialists dictate a bounty of headlines.

And with the ability to tailor the scope to your liking there are endless possibilities. Let’s say your boss is really into cars, pull every article you think is interesting on automobiles, have a listen and impress the hell out of him tomorrow at the water cooler. Perhaps you are dreading going home for the holidays because your Dad can only converse in football banter. Umano’s got you covered. Just create a playlist for the trip back of all the bowl game stats and fill that noggin with pigskin knowledge. Dad will add you back to the will pronto.

I do like that they have built in an option to look at the original articles, which is helpful if there are graphs or complicated statistics in them. There is a bit of lag when pulling up the written docs so be patient. You can also share the article or audio link with your pals. And other than that little lag Umano runs pretty smoothly.

I highly recommend this app and if you’d like to give it a try I will even share my referral code: KJ4N5M

Check out their site: https://umano.me/

Happy listening.

image from Mashable