Waterville startup's app seeks to save you time by reading to you

Do you ever have a lot of articles or blogs that you want to read but don't have the time?

A Waterville startup set out to solve that problem and is getting ready to launch an app later this month to do just that.

It all started when Nick Rimsa was having a seemingly normal conversation with his business partner Brendan Barr.

"Last summer, I was complaining to him that I had far too many things that I wanted to read and not enough time, and he said, 'Let's make this ourselves,'" said Rimsa.

That was the dawn of Eariously.

"Eariously is an iPhone app that lets you listen to the things that you want to read, whether that's news, blogs, articles," said Rimsa, co-creator of Eariously. "So the next time that you find that you're interested in reading something but might not have the time then and there, you press a button on your phone, and you listen to it when you please."

It's really that simple.

On any article, you can just press the share button, Eariously scans it for all relevant text, then turns it into audio in about a minute. It has four voice options.

Rimsa co-created the app with Barr and they have two more people on their team now: UX/UI designer Kia Jones and graphic designer Ruth Lin.

He says that he's really grateful for the support that he's gotten from organizations here in Waterville.

"We've had a tremendous amount of resources afforded to us by folks like Central Maine Growth Council, Mid-Maine Chamber, SCORE, out here at Bricks with RJ Anzelc," said Rimsa. "So Maine's been an ideal home for us and we're really, really excited to begin selling subscriptions later this month."

And he says there's nowhere he'd rather create and grow his product.

"We have the ability to come here to a place like Bricks, do our work during the day, and then escape to serenity at night," said Rimsa. "So what better place to create a product then here in the middle of Maine."

If you'd like to learn more about Eariously, visit Eariously.com.