We are all familiar with the Kindle and the Kindle Fire having the 'Text-to-Speech' capability. It has been announced that Amazon.com Inc. has purchased the IVONA Software company. They have been doing business for years and have launched some great abilities for consumers world wide to enjoy.
Siri Isn't My Type
Today marks a new day for Amazon, as they have their hands on some amazing potential. Today many people love Siri and what she can do for us. But me personally have ongoing frustrations with some of things in our relationship. First, I've proposed many times, asked a slue of very farfetched questions and always, I am turned down. Second, she has absolutely no variation to her voice. Always the same dull and almost monotone conversation, which inevitably leads to her searching the web for anything matching my request. It is understandable that Apple's Siri and IBM's Watson are considered innovative for their voice search and text-to-talk capabilities, but my question to that is, Isn't any iteration of those features innovative?
“IVONA’s exceptional text-to-speech technology leads the industry in natural voice quality, accuracy and ease of use. IVONA is already instrumental in helping us deliver excellent accessibility features on Kindle Fire, including Text-to-Speech, Voice Guide and Explore by Touch.” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “The IVONA team shares our passion of innovation and customer ovation, and we look forward to building great products to deliver world-class voice solutions to customers around the world.”
Amazon is really on to something here. I enjoy holding and utilizing a piece of tech that is real. My hand held assistant needs to be able to not only sound like she knows what she's talking about but, also sound like it. By giving some appealing characteristics to the handy helper behind the bucket of knowledge needs to play the part as if they are more of a person rather than a monotone robot standing at attention waiting for your next order. I'm not saying that we need to give our phones a personality (which doesn't sound like a terrible idea). But a more personable voice to chat with wouldn't hurt anything. IVONA Software, has done wonders with some of these things. Applying 44 different voices and in 17 languages, they have opened up and done wonders with this project.
Article Written and Published by Rich - CEO of TheTechFixation.com & TechFixation's Podcast
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