Wordio is an app created by a team of six Florida State students. This innovative app converts any text on the web to audio. The app also has the ability to filter out any noise created by pop ups or ads.
The app is designed for listening to news sources on the daily commute or even last minute studying for an exam.
There is currently no other free app that has these capabilities.
According to Wordio founder Troy Sultan, he originally got the idea of creating the app because he was such a huge fan of audio books and he realized that he could consume more books by listening rather than reading.
“Since this is the digital age, and we consumers do the majority of the our content consumption on the web, I naturally asked myself ‘how could I bring this to the web?'” said Sultan. That was the beginnings of what would eventually become Wordio.
The team of Florida State students took first place at start up weekend Tallahassee for the app and won a total of $20,000. “This is when we decided we could really make a difference in people’s lives if we executed well,” said Sultan. Afterward the team recruited two more members.
“As an FSU student I plan to support the creators of Wordio by spreading the message of how easy, and applicable to everyday settings this app is. We as Florida State students should have no problem supporting our talented innovators,” said Andre Woods, a 23-year-old senior criminology student from Hollywood, Fla.
The app was also entered in the Intel innovators competition. In this competition 100 grand is at stake for the best idea. The Wordio team did not take home the prize but received recognition for its hard work from peers on social media sites.
Elijah Armstrong, 22, a senior engineering student from Lakeland, Fla. said “Wordio seems like a very innovative app that many people can benefit from, it’s something that I know I would use daily.”
According to Sultan, the Wordio staff doesn’t need many outside resources to get up and running, they use brainpower for their fuel. But, they are still looking for seed funding from prominent individuals in Tallahassee. This would allow the Wordio team memebers to move five times faster than they currently do.