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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I got to wondering what the technical barriers
would be now to producing something like an iPod that could download
</FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>ebooks and either, or preferrably both, read the
text of those </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>books to people who are either too
lazy to change pages or perhaps because they want to have their hands free to
drive </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>or something else.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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?</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Any thoughts?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Brett Paatsch</FONT></DIV>
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