For me, NewsAloud is potentially more useful than TextAloud. I like the idea of being able to get the types of news that interests me in an audio format while I’m doing something else. And since it keeps track of the articles, with the text available and the web-links available, I can read or save those articles which I heard and found interesting. And if I have the audio files auto-generated for use with a PMP, I can simply skip to the next article if the current one doesn’t interest me.

As for the voices, I first started using text-to-speech over a quarter of a century ago. I haven’t noticed any real improvement in voice quality. Many people confuse voice quality with TTS-engine quality, although developers like NextUp are partly responsible, because they generally call the combination of TTS-engine plus voice, a voice. The TTS-engine is the primary determinant of voice quality, and none that I’ve heard are very good. The best TTS-engines and voices aren’t available in desktop products, but you can find them and try samples on the web. Never pay attention to the canned samples–some of them sound fantastic, but when you supply your own text, they screw up pronunciations as much as the other engines, it’s simply that each engine screws up something different. For a given engine, there is variation in quality between the voices that are available for it, depending upon both the audio sampling rate and bit-rate, and the pronunciation of each phoneme. What’s particularly irritating is that, although many aspects of pronunciation and inflection aren’t covered by the extremely simplistic pronunciation guides that dictionaries provide, many of the most glaring pronunciation errors are. So, the question is, why aren’t any of the TTS-engines using licensed pronunciation guides from a major dictionary? If high-speed spell-checking can be done, then clearly it would be easy to use the pronunciation guides. As for pronouncing abbreviations, special symbols, and numbers, I don’t know if that’s the responsibility of the TTS-engines, or the higher-level code. The TTS-engines on my computer do a poor job with abbreviations.

NextUp needs to have some consistency between their various products. I have 21 voices on my computer (all installed with Windows or by these TTS products). Some of the TTS products will use all 21, some only 19. Some have all enabled by default, some have only a few enabled by default. Also, different versions (older/newer) of the Microsoft Speech API get installed. I don’t perceive much difference between the free and paid engines/voices; to me, they all sound pretty bad. However, they don’t bother me like they obviously do many of the commenters here. I pay attention to the content, not the voice. I find TTS voices no harder to understand than the mumbled voices with the blaring background audio of your typical TV program. With NewsAloud, I just use Microsoft Mary with a speed of 230.

… I’m aphasic (language portion of brain damaged). I have purchased versions of two NextUp softwares, plus 4 voices.

(I actually did ask them if they would develop a voice with a male southern … aka Texas drawl … maybe someday).

… When someone is in my home and I’m having an “in person” conversation, my computer speaks for me. The voices I purchased are natural sounding enough. For those criticizing the Microsoft voices, yes they do sound crappy. Try listening to your own some day. Might be worse.

#28 this is not an obsolete software; you need to get educated. Hope its not with a car accident or a brain injury where you actually NEED it.

… Obsolete for you. You lived and died and reborn already?

#35 you are soooo right!

#36 NextUp Technologies is working in a specialized market that will be increasing soon, including artificial intelligence technology.

… Maybe some of those “freedom shouters” should be thinking of the Iraq vets coming back with traumatic brain injury, many who will have language comprehension problems. Then learn to communicate.

#37 Have a car accident and a brain injury.

#44 NewsAloud is not the voices. Buy a voice.

#46 Nope they don’t meet accessibility needs. Apparently you may have low standards, or bad hearing? (No insult intended, just wondering.)

For this program the idea that you can create mp3s is nice to me, as is having a list of rss feeds, while knowing that naturally sounding voices is an additional expense is also helpful. I ride on the local tranportation system, and so having music, a podcast, or news as a mp3 is ideal for me, while the voice sounds as if it would get on my nevers. The list of rss feeds is ok, yet most sites I visit have an rss icon if they offer rss feeds, and I already have a rss newsreader, so the list is realy questionable for me.

I will pass on this one, and look forward to the other offerings.