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| TextAloud MP3 | Speech Recognition |
| What do MP3s have to do with
lawyers? While the files might best be associated with teenage music fanatics or mature
copyright experts, others can find value in using MP3s for purposes beyond music sharing. MP3s are a way to compress voice files while retaining quality — and to make them portable. TextAloud MP3 converts nearly any text you can select and copy in Windows to fairly natural voices. Text automatically goes to the Windows clipboard, from which TextAloud reads it to you and converts it to a relatively small file, allowing you to listen to it on a portable MP3 player instead of your computer’s speakers. The wealth of textual information available from your office network or the Internet now can be read to you whenever and wherever you might be. Your e-mail, your favorite newspapers, recent case alerts and full cases, memoranda, depositions and e-books – hours of spoken words – can be carried in and played from the smallest pocket MP3 player. Your only cost is for the TextAloud MP3 program and an MP3 player, which can cost from $30 to $400. The most reliable models are available for around $200 or more. Of course, text-to-speech is hardly new. Compact plain text ASCII files could be read aloud 10 years ago by my 16 MHz 386 notebook computer with its gigantic 5MB RAM. Now, you no longer have to drag your laptop along because MP3 playback devices are available instead. Some portable MP3 players are smaller than a paper matchbook and weigh little more than an ounce but can store and play several hours of spoken text. Once loaded, TextAloud MP3 is ready to read text from your documents as soon as you select and copy it. The software also supports additional speech engines for other languages. While it also can create the more familiar Microsoft WAV audio files, MP3 files are many times smaller. A player that holds an hour of music can hold about four hours of spoken text. The latest TextAloud MP3 version converts files at 50 times the previous conversion speed, allowing you to create 10 minutes of spoken audio in as little as 12 seconds. TextAloud MP3, Version 1.3 has been expanded to support .txt files of unlimited size so you can convert even large e-books into one article. TextAloud MP3 is available for a free two-week trial download. |
NextUp.com (336) 998-1882 www.nextup.com Price: $19.95 Windows 95/98/NT/2000 Reviewed by Alan Arfken, an attorney based in Chattanooga, Tenn. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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