Filed under: Kids, Text, Utilities, Windows, Freeware
My Talker 1.2: Kid-friendly type-and-talk app
by 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
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
