I dunno about the techniques mentioned in the article, but there are well-known algorithms for speeding up/slowing down music without affecting pitch, but it requires some pretty heavy processing power and the quality tends to degrade if you go beyond a certain amount. My guess is that for spoken word the same algorithms would work. Whether the empeg would be powerful enough to chug through such a task is doubtful though. The software I used couldn't even do it in real time on a Pentium II class machine.