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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, iPhone, web 2.0

PimpMyNews reads blogs aloud using text-to-speech software

WindowsMacby Danny Mendez Feb 1st 2008

Pimp My News PimpMyNews
In this day and age, who has time for reading? You don't -- obviously. There's this site out there called PimpMyNews and it reads blogs aloud for you using text-to-speech software. You can even listen to the stories on an iPhone or iPod Touch through the site, and the service will even let you transfer stories onto your regular ol' iPod.

Despite being perfect for those too busy (lazy?) to read blogs, the site could also work in favor of the blind and others unable to read regular text. And for the skeptics: the text-to-speech software does a surprisingly decent job at being very understandable and comfortable enough to listen to, but others may be annoyed by the non-human elements in the the voice.

Tags: audio, blogs, news, Pimp My News, PimpMyNews, rss, sound, speech, text

Filed under: Internet, Macintosh, Productivity

Max Headroom in your RSS reader

Macby Ted Wallingford Aug 27th 2007

Any child of the 80's will recall Max Headroom, the stuttering talking head that made fun of movie stars and politicians, as a pop-culture hallmark of the decade. Of course, Max Headroom is an entirely forgettable character, so most children of the 90's and later just say "huh?" when you mention his name.

But for all you Headroom fans, and for those of us who just like our computers to behave more like people and less like programmed silicon, Noodle Reader offers some old-fashioned talking-head fun. The program is an RSS reader for Mac OS X that audibly reads the news to you--using the Mac OS's speech synthesis. Unlike other readers, though, Noodle also gives you a certifiably creepy 3D talking head to do the reading, just like good ol' Max. And if you get tired of the built-in "actors" that Noodle supplies, you can download more.

Tags: mac, max headroom, MaxHeadroom, newsreader, noodle, rss, speech

Filed under: Kids, Text, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

My Talker 1.2: Kid-friendly type-and-talk app

Windowsby Ian Smith Feb 6th 2007

My Talker 1.2 is easily the simplest type and talk application available for download.

When you first get started you are presented with a large text box and a talk button. That's pretty much it. No formating tools, no option menus, nothing. The one thing you can do is select from three animated characters who will, in a very fun manner, speak what you type. The three choices are: a genie, a green bird named Peedy, and a butler named James. Each character has its own animations and slightly different computer created voice. You can also hide the characters if they become a distraction.

In addition to the characters, you can also select the Professional version which gives you an animation-free voice that you can also save .wav file recordings of. It appears that only the Professional voice can be recorded as the licensing for the other voices is no doubt different.

The application is very kid-friendly and would be an excellent resource for teachers and tutors (especially those working with special needs children). The speech works phonetically when My Talker isn't able to recognize a word and follows punctuation clues to add emphasis. A text balloon appears above the character while speaking which indicatives what is being spoken. The animations are simple yet creative, and can be rather humorous at times. Best of all, it's free!

Tags: audio, speech, text to speech, TextToSpeech, type and talk, TypeAndTalk, voice

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Filed under: Audio, Fun, Text, Utilities, Windows, Blogging, Productivity, Microsoft, Freeware

RSS RSS Text to Speech

Windowsby Jason Clarke Oct 16th 2006

RSS Text to SpeechAs part of the app-a-day experiment, the Software Jedi has released a program called RSS Text to Speech. At first I though this program would be incredibly annoying, and in fact it very well can be, but there are certainly some use cases that make sense. The idea here is that you put in a few RSS feeds for things that you want to stay on top of. RSS Text to Speech then polls the feeds you've entered, and as soon as something new is detected on the feed, it is read aloud using Microsoft's built-in text to speech engine. The voice options you have available are dependent on what version of Windows you're running.

Although I don't think I could handle having this thing running all the time, there are times when I want to monitor a breaking story, and I could see that this utility could certainly be useful in that circumstance.

Tags: rss, rss speech, rss text speech, RssSpeech, RssTextSpeech, speech, text speech, text to speech, TextSpeech, TextToSpeech

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