Microsoft is currently testing NewsCast; an app that reads the news to users

Microsoft is currently testing a new app called NewsCast, which makes a playlist of news story summaries and reads them out to you. This new program has been created by the Bing team who aim to make travelling a much more relaxed and productive task. However, the app is not available for download and is said to be used for ‘internal testing’.

Even though the new app has not been formally announced, it was first spotted by Neowin. Newscast allows a user to listen to the news while they are on the move. Users can also save articles for reading it later and can also, view the entire article in full text which uses a built-in browser.

Brad Sams from Neowin played around with the new app and stated, “what it does is read aloud the news stories using a text to voice service from Microsoft’s speech team. There are two voices that alternate when reading each story and you can save articles for review later as well.” He further described the voices as ‘not quite natural’ nor are too robotic, but he believes that ‘there is definitely room for improvement when compared to Cortana.’

The report further added that the app can be downloaded by iOS users from here and is not present on the App Store.