Most options are available after registering to the service which is rather hassle free. Once you’ve done that you can access the main page where you can make a decision about the type of text to speech service that you want to use. Several general options are available that customize the output further.

It is possible to select one speaker out of 15 available ones. Male and female speakers are available as well as speakers with accents (US, UK and Indian) and Spanish and French speakers. The reading speed can be changed as well, you can slow it down by a maximum of 25% and speed it up by up to 70%.

My test recordings took less than a minute to generate but it surely depends on the size of the text. Once the recording is done it is accessible online in an embedded media player but it can also be downloaded as an mp3 file or embedded on another website. A Podcast column is available as well which was not clickable at the time of this writing. Recordings can be deleted as well.

The option to convert websites to speech is nice but you should avoid websites with lots of menus and stuff. I did a test with an article at Ghacks and everything was processed. The menu was included as well as the footer. If the website has a print option use that because this normally comes without menu and other stuff. If there is nothing like that you might want to consider copying and pasting the text instead.

The speech itself is well done. You still notice that the speaker is a computer and not a real human, especially between words. The words itself are pronounced very nicely as far as I can tell.

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Whenever you try to access a website you type its url into the address bar. The url is then send to the DNS server who looks up the IP for that website and sends it back to your browser to be able to make the connection to the website. To censor one would simply return no IP or a different IP that redirects to another website. (something like, no no, this is no website that you should visit, bla bla)

This means that the website that you want to access exists of course but the information on the dns server was changed to prevent access. There are two options that let you access the website. The first would be to simply enter the IP address of the website that you want to visit instead of the url. You can use scripts that are freely available on the internet to lookup the IP of an url.

This method is only working if there is only one url that is using that IP. You are out of luck if many websites are hosted on the same server. The second method which is reliable and working for all occasions helps us in this case.

If you change the DNS server that your computer is using to lookup the IP you will receive the correct result. Let us say that you life in China and that China banned access to Wikipedia. Instead of using a Chinese DNS server you use one from the United States which has the information that you need to access Wikipedia.

OpenDNS, a free service, would be one alternative as would be the following list which I have taken from freerk.com

• dns2.de.net – 194.246.96.49 (Frankfurt, Germany)
• ns1.de.eu.orsn.net – 217.146.139.5 (Hildesheim, Germany)
• resolver.netteam.de – 193.155.207.61 (Alfter-Impekoven, Germany)
• sunic.sunet.se – 192.36.125.2 (Stockholm, Sweden)
• master.ns.dns.be – 193.109.126.140 (Leuven, Belgium)
• ns1.lu.eu.orsn.net – 195.206.104.98 (Belvaux, Luxembourg)
• merapi.switch.ch – 130.59.211.10 (Zurich, Switzerland)
• prades.cesca.es – 192.94.163.152 (Barcelona, Spain)
• michael.vatican.va – 212.77.0.2 (Vatican City, Italy)
• dns.inria.fr – 193.51.208.13 (Nice, France)
• ns0.ja.net – 128.86.1.20 (London, UK)
• nic.aix.gr – 195.130.89.210 (Athens, Greece)
• ns.ati.tn – 193.95.66.10 (Tunis, Tunisia)
• ns1.relcom.ru – 193.125.152.3 (Moscow, Russia)
• trantor.umd.edu – 128.8.10.14 (College Park, MD, USA)
• ns1.berkeley.edu – 128.32.136.9 (Berkeley, CA, USA)
• merle.cira.ca – 64.26.149.98 (Ottawa, Canada)
• ns2.dns.br – 200.19.119.99 (Sao Paulo, Brasil)
• ns2.gisc.cl – 200.10.237.14 (Santiago, Chile)
• ns.uvg.edu.gt – 168.234.68.2 (Guatemala, Guatemala)
• ns1.retina.ar – 200.10.202.3 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• ns.unam.mx – 132.248.253.1 (Mexico City, Mexico)
• ns.wide.ad.jp – 203.178.136.63 (Osaka, Japan)
• ns.twnic.net – 192.83.166.11 (Taipei, Taiwan)
• ns3.dns.net.nz – 203.97.8.250 (Wellington, New Zealand)
• box2.aunic.net – 203.202.150.20 (Melbourne, Australia)

Changing the DNS Server is a matter of minutes. It depends on the operating system that you are using. In Windows XP you open the control panel and click on network connections. You right-click your connection and select Properties from the context menu.

Select the Internet Protocol (TCP / IP) and click on Properties in that menu. Click on use the following DNS server addresses and enter a preferred and alternate DNS server into the fields. Make sure you enter the IPs. Apply and close the menu and restart your computer. Once that is done you are using the new DNS server which should bypass the censorship.

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It describes methods to censor websites like blocking url’s via the DNS server that for instance the German government likes to use which can be easily countered by using the IP or an DNS server that does not block the website. So, for every action (censorship) you find the corresponding reaction (bypass). Excellent read for everyone whose country, company or institution has decided to block certain information.

Kinds of censorship described:

• Blocked URL’s via the DNS-server
• Forced proxy server / transparent proxy
• Keyword filter
• Blocked ports
• Software on the client (child protection e.t.c)
• Censorware on the server (inside of networks)
• Whitelist
• IP blocking on the routers

Ways to bypass Censorship:

• Using a different ISP
• Using a not censoring DNS-server
• Using a non censoring proxy server
• Using a Web-2-phone service
• Using a webproxy
• Get Webpages via eMail
• Using steganography
• Using a special proxy like peer-2-peer program
• Special Services

Everything is explained in detail and links are provided where necessary. I have decided to pick out some of the more common methods to censor and bypass information in the coming days – stay tuned.

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