[extropy-chat] How close are we to an iPod that can read ebooks to us?

[Harvey Newstrom]

On Dec 19, 2004, at 5:41 PM, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> I've been thinking about the success of iPods, the increasing 
> availability of ebooks, often for free where the books are out of 
> copyright, and the relative difficulty of reading in bed or 
> comfortably and conveniently because laptops are still too cumbersome.
>   
> I got to wondering what the technical barriers would be now to 
> producing something like an iPod that could download ebooks and 
> either, or preferrably both, read the text of those books to people 
> who are either too lazy to change pages or perhaps because they want 
> to have their hands free to drive or something else.
>  
> This list has quite a few folk that are interested in computer 
> technology, so my question is, how close are we to getting a 
> general text to voice reading technology of a quality such that I as a 
> reader could choose to a preferred voice (maybe Carl Sagan or someone 
> doesn't matter who really) to read the text (an ebook) of my choosing 
> to me?
>  
> I haven't really kept track of developments in voice recognition for 
> several years, and it could be that converting text from ebooks, is an 
> easier exercise than converting joe and jane home pc users mutterings 
> into something that can feed into a wordprocessor.

I have been using my Macintosh to read text to me since the 1980's.  
The voices are much better now than back then.  AT&T has a series of 
natural voices, the kind used on interactive phone menus.  They sound 
real.  These can be purchases for Windows and will work with the 
built-in voices.  You can tell it to read any text on your computer.  I 
use these to make tapes to listen to on long commutes or to have my 
computer read to me.  You can output the voice to any standard sound 
file, such as MP3.  I assume you could then download the sound file to 
an iPod.  I think what you want already exists and has for many years.

I just wish regular print books were available in electronic formats.

--
Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
CISSP, ISSAP, ISSMP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC

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