I’ve been wondering why computers aren’t more helpful. Sure, they connect us and perform a bunch of basic tasks, but I expect our programming ability and artificial intelligence skills should be able to help us understand, grasp and connect the dots much better than they do.
Then I came across ReadtheWords.com, an online subscription text-to-speech service has completed a year-long BETA test and emerged with 30,000 registered users. ReadtheWords.commakes it possible for the computer to read the words on the screen – any written material, any words that appear on a computer screen.
The site is aimed at one-third of the o learners,” the people who comprehend better by hearing rather than seeing.
ReadtheWords.comcan upload text documents of up to 80,000 characters, from Word documents, web pages, RSS feeds, PDFs and many other sources. Users have 15 different avatar and speaker choices which include options to vary the reading speed and instantly save, store or e-mail recordings. Optimized for easy use, home page visitors are greeted by a female avatar offering a free test use and a video tutorial.
According to founder Michael Ziman. “Text-to-speech is a utility that helps people grasp concepts, improve reading, pronunciation and language skills, follow audio directions, and remember or review critical information gleaned from notes or documents. A third of Americans understand best when they hear something. We have built the site by relying on input from subscribers who want a simple tool for integrating text-to-speech into their lives. We aim to make text-to-speech easy and fun for everyone.”
Using a 3-step model (select a document-select a reader-listen), ReadtheWords.com can turn 1 hour of reading material into verbalized speech in 1 minute. The 15 avatars vocalize texts in US English, UK English, Indian-inflected English, French and Spanish.
Subscribers can save recordings and switch between avatars and languages with a click. They can create MP3 files, save recordings, e-mail recordings, embed recordings on web pages or turn them into instant podcasts. A free downloadable toolbar to enable routine use of ReadtheWords.com is also available.
If you are playing around with this over the long Independence Day weekend, paste in the Declaration of Independenceand then punctuate it to alter the pacing of the reading or switch between avatars to get different readings.
ReadtheWords.comis a subscription service But anyone can try the service for free. Its a step toward the higher order value from computers I've been searching for.
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