TextAloud

The idea of a talking computer came into existence long before the PC was ever born. Yet science-fiction aside, the reality is that most people’s PCs don’t actually speak to them at all. We speak to them, whether through voice recognition or desperation, but it’s a one-way thing.

If you think about it, that’s a little strange. We all obviously like the idea, and would willingly donate a non-vital organ or two for a car that talks like the Knight Rider model, or for a PC that talks like the Star Trek computer.

But until recently, most “real life” computerised voices were simply horrible, and usually sounded like an electronic cross between HAL and Grandpa Simpson.

Text Aloud, by NextUp.com offers something very different. By combining some very cool features with some of the AT&T NaturalVoices, you can finally get your hands on an application that can convert any text into voice. Not only that but you can even understand it!

The software can read any text, email, web pages and even documents using the voice of your choice, and can even save these to MP3 or WMA files, ready for use on your portable player.

You can also open Word, PDF and HTML files, and a handy Internet Explorer plugin makes reading web pages a breeze.

And does it work? Too right it does! It takes a while to get the hang of working with it, but in no time at all you’ll find yourself using it for pretty much every text-related task on your PC.

Proofreading is more efficient, and with a little fiddling you get to listen to text while doing other things, even away from your PC.

Further details and a free 20-day trial version are available from the NextUp.com Web site.