That's absolutely awesome, I wanted a male voice for my Ipod touch, I'm going
to go buy the app now. I can't wait!
On 20/04/2010, at 4:29 in the Afternoon, Esther wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> "Speak It!" is an app that lets you use the Acapela group's Infovox voices on
> the iPhone or iPod Touch, and supposedly also for the iPad, on text that you
> type or paste into the app, and create audio files with these voices that you
> can either play back or mail. This is absolutely great, because you can
> control the speed and volume of the voices, and use voices that you may
> choose to purchase for other languages. The basic app ($1.99) from Future
> Apps, Inc. comes with Heather (U.S.), Graham (U.K.), Lucy (U.K.), and Ryan
> (U.S.). You can buy additional voices through in-app purchase for $0.99
> each. I've just finished downloading Alice (France) through the app (took
> about 10 minutes to download and install). There's a text entry area (I
> copied and pasted what I wanted into it instead of typing it in), and a
> picker wheel at the bottom of the page to select the voice.
>
> The screen when you start the app has two buttons at the top ("Settings" at
> the left and an unlabeled button for info at the right), and three buttons at
> the bottom ("Speak It", "Actions", and an unlabeled button for saved items
> created as a result of using the "Actions" button). Below the top row of
> buttons is an area for text entry following the label: "Enter text to say"
> where you can either type in or paste in copied text. This is accessed in the
> usual way by double tapping in the text area to bring up the virtual
> keyboard. Below the text entry area and occupying the bottom section third
> or so of the screen is picker wheel labeled "Select Voice".
>
> You'll likely want to double tap the "Settings" button at the top left of the
> screen to adjust the voice rate before you start speaking with the Speak It!
> voice. There are three settings options to adjust: Text font size (for low
> vision folks), Voice volume, and Voice rate. Each control has both a button
> and a slider. The button doesn't do anything except update to a number you
> can read off -- I think this is words per minute in the case of the rate.
> When you make your adjustments flick left to get back from your settings to
> the "Done button" on the right edge (not quite at the top of the screen;
> maybe a fifth of the way down from the top of the screen in the vertical
> screen extent if you touch it directly) and double tap.
>
> When you enter text, you have the option of either leaving the virtual
> keyboard up, and double tapping the "Speak It!" button, which has now moved
> up so it is just above the virtual keyboard and below the text entry area, at
> the left side of the center of the screen, or of first flicking right from
> the "Speak It!" button to the "Done" button at the right side of the center
> of the screen, and double tapping to dismiss the virtual keyboard.
>
> The first mode is convenient when you want to review material and continue
> to type in. When you've finished entering text, you'll want to use the
> "Done" button to dismiss the virtual keyboard so you can also gain access to
> the "Actions" button for saving items, either as text or to create audio
> files, and to access the saved items (via the unlabeled button to the right
> of the "Actions" button) under either the list of "Saved Phrases" or the
> "Saved Audio Files". Double tapping one of the "Saved Audio Files"
>
> To have Speak It! read the text, double tap the "Speak It!" button at the
> bottom left. Once you double tap that button, two buttons, the left for
> "Play/Pause" and the right for "Stop", will appear in the location of the
> "Speak It!" button. You have to move your finger slightly to the left to
> double tap the "Play/Pause" button. Double tapping the "Stop" button causes
> the "Play/Pause" button to disappear, and for the area occupied by the
> "Play/Pause" button and "Stop" button to be replaced with the "Speak It!"
> button.
>
> As mentioned before there are two unlabeled buttons: one at the top right and
> one at the bottom right corner for saved items. The button at the top right,
> that you will use to purchase new in-app voices, takes you to an Info screen
> where there is a Help button at the top left that gives you information about
> trouble-shooting issues with Speak It!, and where the first listed button is
> the "Speak It! Store" button, which you can use to purchase additional
> voices. (The also have buttons further down the list for their other
> applications, but you probably don't want to leave the app to find out about
> these or buy them when you're first setting up Speak It!.) The additional
> Acapela group voices currently available for this app are for (U.K. or U.S.)
> English, French (including a Canadian French voice), German, Spanish
> (including an American Spanish voice), and Italian.
>
> Miscellaneous other comments: Just after downloading the Alice French voice
> I found VoiceOver's behavior a bit sluggish. There are various suggestions on
> their FAQ (reached from "Help" button via the unlabeled button to the "Info"
> page) about possibly deleting the app, shutting down and restarting the
> iPhone/iPod Touch, and then downloading and installing updates for the app
> through iTunes on your computer if this happens (you will not be charged
> again). I didn't have to do any of this, but I did restart my iPod Touch.
> There may be practical limits on the size and number of voice recordings and
> saved phrase files you can keep. I haven't used the app often enough to
> tell. I did notice that when I saved longer files (130,000 words -- novella
> length) that sometime buttons would simply click and not get announced when I
> navigated the control pages quickly. I'd also guess that saving and emailing
> lengthy audio files may also take up memory resources of the iPhone and
> affect VoiceOver performance. The audio files are AIFF -- not compressed,
> and the default format for Macs. They'll play in Windows iTunes, and on your
> iPhone, but maybe not in other Windows apps without conversion to a
> compressed format. They can also get quite large, so do some judicious
> experimenting on small scales before you get carried away. Low vision users
> will like the ability to save these phrases in large font text. This app is
> also supposed to be universal binary and work on the iPad, too. If you have
> listened to the Infovox voices from the Assistiveware page and downloaded the
> trial (for the Mac) at:
> http://www.assistiveware.com/ivoxsamples.php
> you'll probably have a much better feeling for what these voices sound like,
> particularly speeded up, than trying out the same voices at the in-app
> purchase store. Some list users will also like the fact that male English
> voices are available. I typically don't try to run these voices as fast as
> the regular voices for the iPhone/iPod Touch. As Brett has mentioned
> previously, when you set rates over 90 per cent for the English language
> voices, and you don't use the default U.S. voice, you're likely to experience
> some dropped bits of speech. This is not the only app that uses the Infovox
> voices for text to speech. Anne recommended the "Read 2 Me" app ($4.99) by
> Retinal Media. I'll have to explore the latest update, because they have
> recently added adjustable voice speed (yay!) and Google Docs importing, along
> with larger file support, and appears to be less buggy. But the "Speak It!"
> app has support for other language voices.
>
> FutureApps, the developer of Speak It!, also has translation apps that use
> these voices. It's possible that some of the other languages from their
> iSpeak series that are demoed on their web site will also make it into Speak
> It! (e.g., Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, and Polish). Here's the FutureApps
> URL:
> http://www.future-apps.net/
>
> • Speak It! Text to Speech ($1.99) by FutureApps is available internationally
> at the iTunes Store:
> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speak-it-text-to-speech/id308629295?mt=8
> Comes with 4 U.S. and U.K. English Infovox voices. Additional voices
> (currently in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish) may be purchased
> for $0.99/each via in-app purchase. This app is universal binary, and also
> works for the iPad.
>
> • Read 2 Me ($4.99) by Retinal Media:
> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/read-2-me/id313752154?mt=8
> English only Infovox voices, and also universal binary to work with the iPad.
> New features of variable voice speed, Google Docs importing, and more.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Esther
>
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