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Some of us are slow readers. Others of us feel crushed under the reams of text we have to sift through on a daily basis, stealing us away from other, very pressing priorities. Information overload was why Web 1.0 was the Age of the Blurb.

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Companies like MagneticTime, whose web-based technology transfers text-to-speech, may have found themselves a very important niche.

As a writer, the idea that nobody has time to read hurt a little. But maybe MagneticTime will give back the concept of pleasure reading, as email, memos, or any other document is transformed into audio and downloaded to an iPod, mobile phone, or PDA.

They are based in Ireland after all, where great writers abound.

Shane McAllister, business development manager at MagneticTime, assures us that the voice is natural sounding, not robotic, and that the technology was developed in about a year.

The concept that information overload can be reduced through audio meshes with Shel Holtz', of Holtz Communication + Technology, assertion that an employee podcast can help reduce email, intranet wandering, and reading irrelevancy.

"Something you'll never an employee tell his spouse is 'no breakfast for me, gotta go read the intranet at work,'" said Holtz.

So MagneticTime's service catches that same audio wave. If email is bogging you down, if you've got a book's worth of reports to read, if your boss has handed you a bundle of articles to get caught up on, you can transfer them to an mp3, plug in, and get back to the essentials.

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.