Listen To Your Emails While On The Move

The Lab, produced by Sky News and Yahoo!
By Naomi Kerbel, Sky News
Cambridge graduates Sam Jewell, 28, and Hywel Carver, 26, are trying to change the way we use the web. The pair are making the internet audible and to even make it navigable with a Wii controller.
It was one day while watching the England blind football team that the two design engineers came up with Matopy, a software that uses sound to increase interactivity.
"They have a bell in the football and they can play an entire game of football from the sound so if they can do that then surely we can use sound to produce more interactivity," says Mr Jewell.
Mr Jewell thinks people have missed a piece of the puzzle: "If you read a newspaper or a website you know you're on a heading because you can see it. It's bigger.
"Well, can you hear that you're on a heading when you listen to the same information? Currently, not really."
To address this Matopy’s software enables users to differentiate between different sections of an internet page by using different voices and sound effects.
It does this by downloading the website's html from its server and analysing its tags, be they fonts, colours or graphics and then applying voices, sounds and special effects to the tags.
The pair are developing the software for users in the mass market via a Wii remote control.
This can enable the user to navigate the internet through actions and Matopy hope it could lead to a time when people use the product whilst on the move, be it driving or walking the dog.
Peter Cowley, an angel investor specialising in computer science, thinks this is how Matopy will be attractive to a mass market.
"For people on the move, talking websites makes loads of sense. I know it's a market that's beginning to develop in the States."
For more on Matopy, watch the latest episode of The Lab, Sky News' science and technology partnership with Yahoo!