Systems and methods for pre-rendering an audio representation of textual content for subsequent playback

1. A system configured to pre-render an audio representation of textual content for subsequent playback, the system comprising:

a requesting device comprising:

a memory configured to store a computer program; and

a processor configured to execute the computer program, wherein the computer program comprises:

a download unit configured to download first textual content of a content type from a remote source server across a computer network;

a signature generating unit configured to locally generate a first signature from the downloaded first textual content, wherein the first signature identifies the first textual content;

a signature comparing unit configured to locally compare the first signature with a second signature identifying a previously downloaded second textual content of the same content type to determine whether the second textual content differs from the first textual content;

a text to speech conversion unit configured to convert the first textual content to speech only when the signature comparing unit determines that the second textual content differs from the first textual content; and

wherein, when resources of the requesting device are limited, the requesting device is configured to transfer the speech to the remote source server and remove the speech from itself.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the requesting device is configured to pre-fetch textual content of the same content type at a periodic download rate.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the requesting device further comprises a storage device to store the signatures, the downloaded textual content, and a preference file to store content types of the textual content to be downloaded and the periodic download rates of each of the content types.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the requesting device further comprises a media player configured to play the speech.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the signature generating unit uses a message digest (MD) hashing algorithm to generate the signatures.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein each of the signatures are MD5 signatures.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the textual content is in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) format.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the textual content includes at least one of an Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) format or a Terminal Aerodrome Format (TAF).

9. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

a parser that is configured to parse the textual content into tokens; and

a converter to convert at least part of the tokens into human readable text.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the content type indicates that the first textual content is one of a weather report, a traffic report, a horoscope, a recipe, or a news report.

11. The system of claim 1 , wherein, during a subsequent download period when the speech is present on the server, the requesting device is configured to download the speech from the server instead of textual content of the content type to play the speech.

12. A method to pre-render an audio representation of textual content for subsequent playback, the method comprising:

downloading, by a first device, first textual content of a content type during a first period from a server remote from the first device;

converting, by the first device, the first textual content to first speech;

computing, by the first device, a first signature from the first textual content that identifies the first textual content;

downloading, by the first device, second textual content for the same content type from the server during a second period after the first period;

computing, by the first device, a second signature from the second textual content that identifies the second textual content;

converting, by the first device, the second textual content to second speech only when the first signature differs from the second signature; and

when resources of the first device are limited, transferring the first or second speech from the first device to the server and removing the transferred speech from the first device.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the computing of the signatures comprises performing a secure hash algorithm (SHA) on at least part of the corresponding textual content.

14. The method of claim 12 , further comprising:

downloading, by a second device remote from the server and the first device, the transferred speech from the r-emote server; and

playing the downloaded transferred speech locally on the second device.

15. The method of claim 12 , further comprising, during a subsequent download period when the transferred speech is present on the server, the first device downloading the transferred speech from the server instead of third textual content of the content type to play the transferred speech.