Oh, those wild librarians. In writing up Oddcast‘s awesome text-to-speech demo, LISNews said of The Voice: “So how many of you freaky librarians asked Kate to say something ‘slightly off-color’, hmm?” Even this nonlibrarian asked, and Kate obliged with a confident, sailor-natural performance.
Given the potential benefits to the print-impaired and others, including K-12 students needing encouragement in the middle of computer-aided instruction, the multilingual app is a product to consider if the price is right. You don’t just hear the speech–with the right configuration you can see Kate or another character pronounce the words.
By the way, if you click on the lady in the upper-left of the Oddcast home page, she’ll say: “Stop touching me.” Not sure if this voice is natural or synthesized. If you persist, she’ll go on to say: “Keep your mouse to yourself!” I’m certain that other TTS programs can cuss and worse, by the way, but straight-arrow me had never before thought of the possibilities. Hear a scolding (G-rated but with a .wav alert). Thank you, LISNews! Now we know why Google and even Kate can’t replace librarians.
Related: The TeleBlog’s synthesized speech, supplied via Talkr.
