Text to speech Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Crazy Talk 7 puts character animation power on your Mac

by Michael Rose (Apr 25th, 2013)

Putting words in other people's mouths: more of a hobby than a vocation for most people, I'd say. If your work or play involves facial animation, however, you know how much work goes into making fake speech look convincingly real. Although there are impressive pro animation tools for this ...

New iOS app Winston is your Siri personal assistant for news

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 12th, 2013)

Winston is a new and ambitious product from Colorado-based startup, Reactor Labs. It's a take on the Siri personal assistant idea that focuses on news instead of sending messages. At the heart of the app is Winston, a personable British butler that compiles a daily brief from your selected news ...

TUAW and MacTech interview: iSpeech

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 9th, 2012)

iSpeech makes text to speech tech available for free to iOS developers (with support for other platforms as well), and it's the tech used in DriveSafe.ly. TechCrunch has a nice writeup of iSpeech here. In this video, Neil Ticktin (Editor-in-Chief, MacTech Magazine) interviews Yaron Oren of ...

Changes to Nuance developer program will result in a flood of voice enabled apps

by Mel Martin (Sep 27th, 2011)

The company behind the Dragon speech recognition applications for computers and iOS devices has announced a new developer program that will allow software to access Dragon Voice technology at no charge. It could result in a tidal wave of apps that harness the power of the Nuance speech ...

Nuance buys SVOX ahead of iOS 5 release

by Mike Schramm (Jun 16th, 2011)

There's a whole trail of rumors hinting at an upcoming deal between speech recognition company Nuance and Apple. For quite a while now (ever since Apple picked up personal assistant software maker Siri), the scuttlebuzz has claimed that the folks in Cupertino would make a deal with Nuance for ...

Apple patent reveals a text-to-speech and speech-to-text system for the iPhone

by Kelly Hodgkins (May 13th, 2011)

Apple recently filed a patent application for a text-to-speech and a speech-to-text converter designed to work in noisy environments. The patent describes a system that uses a converter included on the logic board of the phone. This hardware-based conversion would have a distinct advantage over ...

Voice Brief for iPhone is a great text-to-speech app with lots of potential

by Mel Martin (Mar 27th, 2011)

Want an assistant to help you keep up with your world and the world at large? Voice Brief might be just the thing. This US$1.99 app will read your Facebook updates, Twitter feed, email (with limitations), weather, schedule, stock prices that you follow, and even the latest news from RSS feeds of ...

Prizmo is a pretty amazing iPhone app for OCR and more

by Mel Martin (Aug 21st, 2010)

There are a few apps that are great demos for the iPhone. Pulse News is a super RSS feed reader, iMovie always drops a few jaws, and Siri is a pretty amazing way to talk to your iPhone and get intelligent search results. You can add Prizmo to the list of great demo apps, and it's going to be a ...

On the road with the latest Navigon MobileNavigator

by Mel Martin (Jul 12th, 2010)

The iOS 4 update to MobileNavigator North America has been eagerly awaited by fans of the best selling turn-by-turn navigation system, and overall I'd call the update a win. To test the system, I took a drive from Southern Arizona to Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix. First off, having the ...

CoPilot Live now offers almost complete nav app for free

by Mel Martin (Jan 20th, 2010)

ALK Technologies, the creators of CoPilot Live, have released a free version of their navigation app with some catches. The free version, called CoPilot Directions [iTunes link] has turn-by-turn navigation, trip planning and 2D maps. You can download the whole map database over Wi-Fi (not via ...

Magellan has worthy contender in the GPS sweepstakes

by Mel Martin (Nov 25th, 2009)

Just in time for the holidays! I was excited when Magellan announced a new iPhone GPS software product, and was eager to get it downloaded to test. I spent two days driving around (well, not the whole 2 days) and generally had a positive experience. Magellan has been around the GPS business for a ...

TomTom delivers promised iPhone update

by Mel Martin (Nov 19th, 2009)

TUAW told you it was coming, and it has arrived. TomTom has updated its U.S. GPS navigation app [US$99.99, iTunes link] and added text-to-speech, advanced lane guidance, and a 'help me' feature for use in emergencies. TomTom has been a little late to the text-to-speech party, with most ...

Magellan enters the iPhone nav app sweepstakes

by Mel Martin (Nov 16th, 2009)

I guess it was inevitable. Magellan has just launched an iPhone app that looks great and will offer road warriors even more choice in a very competitive landscape. The Magellan Roadmate 2010 North America is being offered for a 'limited time' for U.S. 79.99. [iTunes link] The 1.36 GB app includes ...

It's about time: TomTom submits updated nav app to Apple

by Mel Martin (Nov 13th, 2009)

Very welcome news for owners of the TomTom iPhone nav app [iTunes link for U.S. version]; the company has announced a free update that includes many of the features that people were craving. Advanced lane guidance giving drivers extra clarity when navigating difficult junctions. For the first ...

G-Map East and West for iPhone updated with text to speech

by Mel Martin (Nov 5th, 2009)

When the latest G-Map app covering navigation in the U.S. and Canada was updated with text to speech, it didn't make owners of the older East and West [iTunes store links for each] versions too happy. Now that has been corrected, and both iterations of the U.S. $24.99 app have text to speech, iTunes ...