Random House now disabling text-to-speech function of Kindle e-books
By Laura June 
posted May 14th 2009 9:46PM
posted May 14th 2009 9:46PM
The much-touted and extremely controversial story of the text-to-speech function of Amazon's Kindle 2 could fill a very large e-book. The tale continues to get longer still, as at least one major publisher -- Random House -- has thrown the dreaded "kill switch" on about 40 of its titles, including authors such as Toni Morrison, and, ironically, Stephen King (who you will remember was part of the Kindle 2's launch). Random House disabled the function without much fanfare, or an official announcement, but you can be sure this isn't the final chapter.
Wait...you make a good point about using TTS for only partial content. TTS...or "multi-modal" interfaces mean you can jump back and forth to fit your busy digital lifestyle.
Instead of sticking readers with just one voice...Amazon should consider http://www.VoiceForge.com - an online TTS service with variety - over 50 cool voices. Imagine a story where each character has a unique voice , or assigning a different voice to each blog or news category.
I am officially boycotting all of your Random House products, regardless of media type. I cannot, and will not support a company that openly abuses disabled customers by actively disabling their accessibility tools. This is both vile and disgusting. Random House should be *deeply* ashamed of themselves.
Leave your feed back for random house at:
http://www.randomhouse.com/about/faq/index.php?ToDo=contact
I was wondering if I might want to buy one of the new, larger Kindles.
Then this happened.
So I thought to myself: "Do I want to buy a pig in a poke, here, whose features come and go at the whim of the publishers AFTER I buy the device?"
And I thought back: "MMMMMMMmmmmmm......NOPE."
I would love to hear what Bennett Cerf would have to say about this...
I've never seen a random house
but I'd rather see one than buy one.