This paper presents an evaluation of a podcast service that aggregates data from Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds, using speech synthesis. The service uses a novel approach to speech synthesis generation, where XML markup is used to control both the speech synthesis and the sound design of a resulting podcast. A twophase evaluation was carried out: 1) participants listening to the podcasts on desktop computers, 2) participants listening to the podcasts while walking. Our findings show that

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... ipants preferred shorter podcasts with sound effects and background music, and were affected by the surrounding environmental noise. However, audio advertising which is part of the service did not have a significant negative effect. Another finding was that the advantage of using multiple voices for content segmentation may have been undermined by difficulties in listener adaptation. The work is part of a new approach to speech synthesis provision, where its style of rendition forms a part of the application design and it is evaluated within an application context.