[ExI] kindle 2

[Damien Broderick]

At 05:38 PM 2/24/2009 -0600, I wrote:

>What's the text-to-voice like?

And look: an answer in the NYT:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?th&emc=th>

<You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can 
compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading "Harry Potter" 
or of authors, ahem, reading themselves. But the voices of Kindle 2 
are quite listenable. There's even a male version and a female 
version. (A book by, say, Norman Mailer on Kindle 2 might do a brisk 
business among people wondering how his prose would sound in measured 
feminine tones.)

And that sort of technology is improving all the time. I.B.M. has 
patented a computerized voice that is said to be almost 
indistinguishable from human ones. This voice is programmed to 
include "ums," "ers" and sighs, to cough for attention, even to 
"shhh" when interrupted. According to Andy Aaron, of I.B.M.'s Thomas 
J. Watson research group speech team: "These sounds can be incredibly 
subtle, even unnoticeable, but have a profound psychological effect. 
It can be extremely reassuring to have a more attentive-sounding voice.">