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Evernote adds text-to-speech to Clearly Chrome extension, for Premium members only
If you ever wanted to catch up on your online reading while on the treadmill or puttering about the kitchen, Evernote now offers you the ability to do so without actually, well, reading. The online brain dump has introduced text-to-speech functionality to its Clearly extension for Google Chrome, a plugin that clears out ads and other distractions for a clean reading experience. While the Clearly extension itself is free, the text-to-speech feature is only for Premium accounts, each of which costs $5 a month or $45 a year. Words are highlighted as they're read, and you can pause and skip as you like. The feature launches with support for over twelve languages and is powered by iSpeech, which has worked with BlackBerry apps and connected homes in the past. Just don't accidentally blast TMZ articles during your next conference call, ok?
iSpeech intros voice recognition platform for connected homes, enables vocal control of TVs and appliances
We've been seeing the growing trend of peculiar services like Cupertino's Siri, Samsung's S Voice and Google Now on mobile devices, but up until now, we have yet to spot something similar in the world of connected homes. Having previous experience in the text-to-speech department, iSpeech is hoping to be able to do just that with the world debut of its voice recognition platform for smart households. With iSpeech Home, the company's aiming to give OEMs and manufacturers a canvas where they can implement voice recognition software into TVs, home entertainment systems, lighting, refrigerators and even washers and dryers -- which would, according to iSpeech, open the doors to natural language commands such as "Watch ESPN" or "Turn off the lights in the living room." As exciting as it all sounds, the company's COO Yaron Oren did tell us there aren't any official partners on board at the moment, but that he does expect to have iSpeech Home-powered products within the next 6-12 months.
TUAW and MacTech interview: iSpeech
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 iSpeech at WWDC 2012. Yaron was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward.
