|
 |
Wednesday, May 01, 2002 |
"Sure, listening to documents read aloud sometimes helps you catch mistakes a traditional proofreading pass might miss. Blind computer users, children learning to read, and people learning English may benefit, too. Then, too, text-reading programs make it possible for you to "listen to articles on the Web while fixing your lunch," as one software company cheerfully puts it. Still, for mainstream consumers, these aren't what you would call desperately needed functions.
But the winds of change are blowing in the field known as text-to-speech. New Windows programs with names like iSpeak, TextAloudMP3 and Text-to-Audio do more than simply read your text out loud: they can also turn it into the high-quality compact sound recordings known as MP3 files.
Teenagers ignited the MP3 craze by converting their favorite pop-music CD's into MP3 files that play back on portable music players. What makes these new speech programs remarkable is that they open up the same kind of freedom to the over-20 set. They let you listen to your documents — e-mail, Web pages, reports, manuals, electronic books, or anything else you can type or download — as you commute, work out or work outside....
Using your PC to record your own material has a drawback, though: you won't be listening to the voice of a professional actor. (Listening to James Earl Jones read your e-mail to you would certainly be a rush, but might be out of your price range.) In fact, you won't even be listening to a human being. When you listen to the old Apple and Microsoft voices, "lifelike" isn't the adjective that springs to mind. In charitable moments, you might describe them as sounding like drunken Scandinavian robots. Fortunately, a white knight has emerged to rescue you from the prospect of listening to mechanical voices forever: AT&T, which has developed a set of new, vastly improved voices called Natural Voices. The inflection isn't always on track — they sometimes produce nonsensical line readings, as if an actor were auditioning with a script he didn't quite understand — but you would otherwise swear you were listening to a professional, blow-dried American newscaster. Only a few words betray a hint of what you'd call a PC accent....
...TextAloud MP3 (www.nextup.com, $25 with ordinary voices, or $51 with the AT&T voices), a rival program that can also use those voices, exhibits no such glitches. It's the undisputed winner in this three-way Sound Like a Human contest.
Better yet, TextAloud offers a couple of extremely useful features that feel painfully absent in its competitors. For example, only TextAloud can speak the words in the windows of everyday programs like word processors, Web browsers and e-mail programs (you press predefined keystrokes to start and stop the talking). Furthermore, whenever you highlight text in any program and then press Ctrl+C, the program offers to sock that text away on its own internal clipboard. The idea is that as you cruise through e-mail messages, Web pages and other documents, you can build up a playlist that you can later listen to, or convert to MP3's en masse. The program exhibits a few bugs and misspellings, and it still can't import (for conversion to MP3) anything beyond plain text files or text you've copied, but it's nonetheless the program to beat....
In any case, MP3-making text readers open a new world of times and places in which you can get work or 'reading' done, made all the more pleasant to listen to by AT&T's new voices. It's hard to see a downside to technological advances like these — except, perhaps, all those out-of-work Norwegian robots." [NY Times: Technology]
I'm really looking forward to advances in this area of technology. I had played around a little bit with TextAloud a couple of years ago and played a converted article for one of our Tech Summits. It's obviously time to play with it some more, though. I'd love to be able to listen to articles on the drive to and from work.
Are there text items that libraries should consider making available as MP3s? Newsletter items... book reviews? It could be interesting to take reader's advisory into this arena. Maybe a patron could download an MP3 that reads reviews of new mysteries or staff picks. I'll have to think on this one.
11:47:16 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"First of all, the current music-swapping scene is not about piracy. It's about personal preference. And this is nothing new: Personal preference is the basis for the industry....
During the Napster era, music sales were up 4 percent. Since the death of Napster, music sales are down 40 percent. The music industry seems to be ignoring this obvious relationship....
What I call the One-Nine Solution will take care of all these problems and put electronic distribution back on track: Return Napster to open trading. Write it off as promotion. Then drop the price of a new CD to $9, and keep it low. The economy is in a slump, and it's time to lower prices.
Next, get rid of old CDs, and move them through electronic channels at $1 an album. The old backlist records are dead anyway. Most of the CD industry has been propped up on people updating their vinyl collections, and those days are over. People would gladly pay $10 for ten old Bob Dylan albums delivered electronically, so they could burn their own Best of Dylan. There wouldn't be any real piracy, since people would be too busy getting good stuff cheap. As things now stand, record companies are hoarding old material that could be making money and serving the public need.
This would flood the country with music and re-habituate people into casual listening. And yes, they would do their own mixes. Everyone would be happy, and business would be booming. But with people who obviously do not understand the mechanisms of their own industry, what are the chances?" [PC Magazine, via LibraryPlanet.com]
The MPAA and RIAA ought to be ashamed of themselves when even Dvorak "gets it."
11:27:28 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"From the Vischeck press release: Vischeck has announced the release of an online Web service that enhances images for color blind viewers called Daltonize. It changes the colors in an image, revealing details that would normally be invisible to people with the most common forms of red / green color blindness. Daltonize attempts to preserve existing image contrast information and disturb the color balance, as perceived by color-normal viewers, as little as possible. It is available as a free service on the Vischeck website. More details in the FAQ." [meryl's notes]
I find it fascinating how much technology can help everyone access and enjoy the internet.
10:25:26 PM Permanent link here
|
|
What a great day! First, I get in to work to find out that I didn't even know that Marylaine Block was in the very building where I work! She was there to do a workshop, and I had totally spaced on it. Luckily, we got to have lunch together, although we didn't get to really talk about fun library stuff. I did show her Radio's news aggregator, though, and I think she understands my rants a little better now. I haven't seen her since 1998, so I was glad I didn't miss her this time.
Then, my cousin came to visit for the night. We had a great time catching up and dinner included some great Indian food. All of this means fewer posts tonight, but I am always thankful for days like today. :-)
9:50:29 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"Liken its significance, if you will, to the impact on Hollywood in the 1920s of the first sound cartoon — Walt Disney's Steamboat Willy, featuring Mickey Mouse.
Java promises to bring the best of the Net — the ability to display real-time news, for example — to your telephone handset. It's a big improvement over the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) technology, the current form of phone access to the Web.
With a tiny Java program on a mobile phone, stock quotes roll across the small screen, or the most recent photograph of Yasser Arafat pops into a top news story about turmoil in the Middle East.
Industry players and analysts see Java as one way for U.S. Consumers to finally discover the mobile Internet....
To date, the mobile Web has been anything but exciting — unless you happen to live in Japan, which has a two-year head start on the rest of the world.
In Japan, people on the go use color-screen Java phones to play games, place bets, send e-mail, or even tend to the "care and feeding" of virtual pets. More than 10 million Japanese own Java-based mobile phones that let them play real-time backgammon against distant opponents, or check train timetables.
Enter Java software innovators such as Mediabricks, a two-year-old start-up from Sweden.
It developed a tiny Java application that is a compact 30,000 bits of data in size. When you run a copy of MediaBricks' program on your phone, Web pages refresh themselves.
If you're a sports fan, you can track professional basketball or Major League Baseball scores as they happen. In Europe, phone-connected fans can keep track of English premiership rugby action and German Bundesliga soccer scores on Saturday afternoons, receiving updates replete with a message, picture and, in a few years' time, a video clip....
In North America, Nextel is aggressively pushing Java handsets, selling 1.3 million so far.
Motorola says all its new handsets will have Java.
'At the end of this year, we will even have an entry-level Java phone,' said Motorola's European mobile phone president Fernando Gomez, referring to lower-cost, mass-market phone models." [USA Today]
4:02:24 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"What I found, however, at the Digital Divides conference convened by the Pacific Regional Humanities Center at the University of California, Davis, was that the academic world has made quite a turnaround. In the 80s and early 90s there were a handful of university folk exploring topics like hypertext or the social impact of computers, but by now the topic of digital change has infiltrated every department from history and linguistics to art and psychology. The Digital Divides event was itself one of a series of three such conferences within the University of California system....
Alladi Venkatesh, of UC Irvine, looks at the results, rather than the roots, of the digital revolution: using ethnographic research techniques to study the impact of home networks and highly-wired communities on family life. For his research he has focused on a housing development called Ladera Ranch, in southern Orange County, where homes have 'IT nooks,' high-speech Internet access and the entire community of 2000 homes is interlinked with a common intranet. 'Unlike other appliances,' he notes, 'Americans haven’t yet figured out which room of the house the computer belongs in. This will be a very important time to study.'
His findings should interest Lee Rainie, head of the Pew Foundation’s ambitious Internet and American Life project, which for two years now has conducted in-depth polling to study how the Web is changing U.S. society. At Davis, Rainie presented some newer findings about the 70 million Americans currently not online. Of that number, fully 45 percent say they don’t believe they will ever go online, for reasons that include fear, cost issues—and 40 percent who simply say they don’t need it. Among the offline, 23 percent are disabled—a number underscoring the importance of Web site accessibility—and close to 20 percent are 'drop-outs' who once had Web access but no longer do. On the connected side, Rainie described the 63 percent of American teenagers who use instant messaging. Among them, 14 percent have used IM to ask for a date, 12 percent have broken off a relationship with IM, and 20 percent have shared their screen name and password with a 'best friend.' In the last instance, Rainie adds, often with unhappy consequences: 'Best friends don’t last forever in the teen world.' " [MSNBC]
You can view the whole conference program and even listen to some of the presentations. It sounds like it was a fascinating event! Emphasis throughout the article is mine.
9:42:41 AM Permanent link here
|
|
"For me, findability delivers this freedom. It doesn’t replace information architecture. And it’s really not a school or brand of information architecture. Findability is about recognizing that we live in a multi-dimensional world, and deciding to explore new facets that cut across traditional boundaries....
Even inside the small world of user experience design, findability doesn’t get enough attention. Interaction design is sexier. Usability is more obvious. And yet, findability will eventually be recognized as a central and defining challenge in the development of web sites, intranets, knowledge management systems and online communities....
Ample evidence exists to support this bold claim. Companies are failing to deliver findability. For example, a recent study by Vividence Research found poorly organized search results and poor information architecture design to be the two most common and serious usability problems." [Boxes and Arrows]
Peter Morville throws out a term I've not heard used by professionals, although it's certainly a familiar refrain from users. Findability is so huge that a project that several states are working on is based on the theme "Find-It." Here in Illinois, we have Find-It! Illinois (I never did understand the exclamation point in the middle), and we have a heckuva time making it easy to find stuff.
7:19:11 AM Permanent link here
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
|
|
|
