RadioDow reads up-to-date stock listings aloud via Mac OS X's built-in synthesized voices. This functionality enables one to perform other tasks visually while listening to auditory real-time updates. In addition to reading the numbers, the program makes an alert sound if the stock has gained or lost beyond a user-specified threshold.
It may irk users, or even render the program useless, that which figures RadioDow reads, as well as which stocks are included, cannot be customized. The user is stuck with the latest stock price and the change in dollars for thirty prespecified large American companies (among which, somewhat ironically, Apple is not included) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Even though the user has a choice of server for the financial data, choosing an international server makes no difference in which stocks are included.
In this context, the application contains several potentially useful features, such as election of voice, volume, speech rate, and intermission duration between repeats, but they form a shell around sample data that's probably too rigid to be helpful for most.
Sam's Protip: Stock investment bears more than a slight resemblance to institutionalized gambling, but at least in a growing economy the odds are you'll come out with a positive balance sheet.
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