However, screenshots reveal that the software is now being tested internally and aims to offer users “a more productive commute”.
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Microsoft is quietly testing an app that seems designed for people who feel overwhelmed by the media’s endless stream of news stories and who wish they had a helper app that reads them article summaries.
The app, first spotted by Neowin, will be called NewsCast and it will take in articles from around the web and will start reading news summaries to users in the form of a playlist.
NewsCast reportedly uses Bing’s text-to-speech program to read out things that last 30 second each.
Website Neowin stumbled across the app on a Microsoft Azure Web Sites domain.
Do you remember reading important news stories out to your ailing grandfather or illiterate neighbour in your childhood days to earn some pocket money?
A feedback button in the app opens an email that includes a three-question survey about what users like, dislike and want from it in the future. The app showed up on the Microsoft Azure cloud-based site, an apparent hiccup on the part of the Redmond-based company as 1-there’s been no official word on the app, and 2-the link to it has now been removed.
NewsCast will initially be available for iOS users only.
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The app wasn’t a PC download but one made for iOS.
