I love new applications of technology...especially when they are free. In my surfing over lunch, I discovered a new web service that enables users to access text to speech support for a variety of documents. The web service is readthewords.com.
Basically, the web service allows a person to take written text, a word document, a pdf document, a web page or an RSS feed and have it converted, using a text to speech engine, into an audio format. There are 14 different voices from which to choose including those that support English, Spanish and French. A person can control the rate and pitch of the voice being used. The voices available are of good quality which is unusual for a free product. Once the audio format is generated (which is relatively quick), a person can add it to his or her mp3 player, put it into Itunes, listen to it on the computer or even post the file to a web page or blog.
What a fabulous resource!
What a fabulous resource!
6 comments:
Brian- it will be interesting to try this out! I am particularly interested in access to scanned text books- looks like an interesting (and cost effective) option!
Joan Breslin
Thanks Joan! I am already putting the service through the wringer trying all of the formats...it is working very well!
Check out http://www.iSpeech.org. It sounds much better.
iSpeech Free Text to Speech Service
Here is the blurb from the website:
iSpeech can convert your favorite Websites, RSS, Blogs and Documents (Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF, Text, etc.) to speech with any PC or Mobile Device. Download your favorite blogs and news feeds as mp3 or podcast your favorite websites into your iPod.
Wow! That's a very COOL service! I want to try that soon!
The voices available are of good quality which is unusual for a free product. speech recognition program
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