Text2Go 1.5 Released

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Text2Go 1.5 Released

December 2, 2007 at 8:37 pm | Posted in iPhone, iPod, MP3 Player, text to speech, Text2Go | 8 Comments

Today Tumbywood Software is pleased to announce a significant upgrade to Text2Go, the Windows text to speech program that lets you listen to text from the web on your iPod. This is a free upgrade for all existing Text2Go owners as per our Lifetime License. The major new features are:

Support for all MP3 Players, not just the iPod. Text2Go will now create MP3 files that can be used on any MP3-capable device, such as mobile phones, PDAs and of course dedicated MP3 players, such as the Zune, iRiver, Creative Zen, SanDisk, etc. Details of the article source will be embedded in the generated MP3 file, including the URL, domain, and a screenshot for use as album art.

Dictionaries to correct mispronunciations. Commonly mispronounced words, such as brand names, acronyms and industry-specific jargon can now be corrected. Text2Go ships with a Technology dictionary containing corrections for over 200 mispronunciations. Further dictionaries will be rolled out over time and users can compile their own dictionaries. Compare the text to speech results of this (highly contrived) passage of text with and without the Techonology dictionary enabled.

A recent Wikipedia entry lists a number of influential technologies including itunes, myspace, ebooks, Wimax, xbox, facebook and antispyware.

Sample without the dictionary Sample with the dictionary

Text Cleanup Rules. A text cleanup rule will automatically remove or replace specific text from a document prior to the text to speech operation. Complex pattern matching criteria are specified using regular expressions so that only the intended text is removed or replaced. Text cleanup rules are best illustrated with a couple of examples.

A recent study showed that between 60%-65% of people preferred the colour green over blue.

Without a text cleanup rule, percentage ranges will not be spoken as the author intended.

Sample without text cleanup rule Sample with text cleanup rule

Removing references from research papers is another common use of text cleanup rules. For example.

A recent survey of blog topics indicate that the most popular are ‘Blogging for profit’,^{15 28 72} followed by ‘Blogging about blogging’,^{20 38} ‘Blogging about other bloggers’,^{109 127} ‘Blogging how to’,⁶⁹ ‘Full time blogging’, and ‘Blog review’.^{1924 115}

Sample without text cleanup rule Sample with text cleanup rule

Like the pronunciation dictionaries, Text2Go ships with a number of Text Cleanup Rules and users can also create their own. As the creation of a text cleanup rule requires an understanding of regular expressions, we are providing a service to create text cleanup rules for users on request.

Finally, the following minor features have also been added

Create playlists from within Text2Go.
Display the current voice and playlist in the tooltip of the Text2Go command.
‘Speak from cursor’ in the View and Edit document window.
Minor bug fixes.

Download a free 30-day trial of Text2Go 1.5 today

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Wow this is great, can’t wait to try it out on my ipod, thanks

Comment by Adam— December 4, 2007 #

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Thanks for the update. I tried it this morning and like the new improvements.

Maybe you could help me with one problem though. It seems to have trouble reading apostrophes. Words like “don’t” are pronounced DON like the name Don. Won’t is “Won”.

Is there an easy way for me to fix this?

Thanks again!

Comment by Brad— December 5, 2007 #

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Hello Brad,

Which voice(s) are you using? Perhaps you could send me a small sample so I can have a listen.

Regards,

Mark.

Comment by mgladding— December 5, 2007 #

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Hi I’m using Paul. Where should I send samples?

Comment by Brad— December 5, 2007 #

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Hello Brad,

I am assuming you are referring to NeoSpeech Paul. We don’t actually sell this voice so you may be better contacting NeoSpeech directly or the place where you purchased the voice in the first place.

One thing you may want to check is to see if there is an incorrect entry in the dictionaries that come with NeoSpeech Paul. It looks like there may be a regular expression that is incorrectly matching and removing the apostrophes in won’t and don’t.

Comment by mgladding— December 5, 2007 #

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ahh.. so you think it’s the voice that is the problem? I’ll give it a try with some of the built in voices then look into getting some realspeak voices.

Comment by Brad— December 6, 2007 #

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Thanks Mark for new release its really xmas gift for everyone.

Merry Christmas and a Happy new year in advance.

Regards
dr manoj

Comment by dr manoj pawar— December 23, 2007 #

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as a novice to web.2.0 i am wondering where i made a mistake because i would never ever download a something of which i have no idea what it is supposed to cots later. i assume it is my mistake but i can’t find out what i need to know to make an intelligent decision. can you help?
birkenbihl
birkenbihl@googlemail.com
ps my blog playpen has not started yet. these 2 sites however exist birkenbihl.com and birkenbihl.de (with thre help of webmasters) i am presently trying to learn the ropes myself… thank you

Comment by vfbplaypen— November 21, 2009 #

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