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

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 07:28:53AM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> I have been using my Macintosh to read text to me since the 1980's.  

Oh yeah, the Amiga SPEAK: device.

> 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 

Lots of commercial products, hardware boxes included:
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=speech+synthesizer&btnG=Search

> 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 

I wish a had a longer commute... my dead tree backlog is not getting any
shorter.

> 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. 

http://safari.ora.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=bookwarez&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

For everything else there are scanners (new ones allow few s scan/page,
with an edge not destroying book binding) and OCR. If you scan, please donate
the content to the appropriate Gutenberg pirate channels.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=%22information+wants+to+be%22&btnG=Search

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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