Book People Archive

RE: speaking e-book?

If anyone hears of an actual device that does text to speech I would also
like to hear about it. In the meantime, here is a report that Microsoft's
new release of the Pocket PC 2002 operating system will support text to
speech, and the Fonix, the maker of iSpeak, is preparing a text-to-speech
add-in for this new generation Pocket PC:

http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D1884%2526a%253D15732,00.asp

The pertinent line of the above report is:  "Fonix Corp. will announce
text-to-speech software for the Pocket PC. "

www.fonix.com

After fiddling with various options for portable audio ebooks I have for the
time being settled on one of the newer Long Playing minidisk recorders (I
use the Sony MZ-R700, which on an 80 minute disk in long play mode can
record 5 hours and 20 minutes per disk. The navigation is excellent if you
add some track breaks to your text file before recording, and it can be
plugged into your car stereo with a cassette adapter, or used with
headphones while walking.

 I use the Fonix iSpeak program, set it to record a text file and plug my
minidisk recorder into a cable from my sound card. I add the appropriate
break codes to make tracks for navigation (easiest if the text has the word
"Chapter," then you search in Word for "Chapter" and add track breaks to
each one). You can check in the morning for the last sentence read, and
delete the first part of your text file to that point; record the next
segment the next night. Most books can fit on two disks. (Nick Hodson is the
expert on this stuff, but I get by with it.)

To date I have not found any better voice than iSpeak in a consumer product.
Both AT&T and Lernout and Hauspie have slightly better voices but they are
only available in Software Developer Kits for telephony applications.


Leslie Evans
Los Angeles

-----Original Message-----
From: Dandy Stribling [mailto:dandy@[redacted]
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2001 6:12 PM
To: spok+bookpeople@[redacted]
Subject: [BP] speaking e-book?


I'd like to find an E-book that reads to you; one with a headset plug,
but haven't looked into it --shopping's a pain! Have they put out a
decent one as yet, or is the text-to-speech software too big for such
a little thing?  Kelly & Dandy Stribling