NewsAloud Review
News-A-loud-Should-Be-Mu-ted
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You can buy it at RegNow for that price.
Deleting it was a pleasure.
See above.
NextUp Technology has just released its new software “NewsAloud”. They claim it “can retrieve full news stories from some of the major news sites on the web and then speak the stories aloud”. These “major news sites” seem to be limited to Reuters and Yahoo.
In 1983, Matthew Broderick starred in the movie “War Games”. In said movie, the computer spoke in a very disturbing monotone; “Shall-we-play-a-game?” What does this have to do with NewsAloud? NewsAloud has that same monotone. That voice was created over 20 years ago. Although you can vary the pitch, tone, speed, even sex of the voice you still get mechanically generated syllables that when strung together sound like well, mechanically generated syllables. Even voice mail is more advanced.
It is possible to create realistic audio recordings by a method that is similar to closed captioning, however this would require humans and/or advanced technology. That could be expensive considering that news updates are frequent, one of the so-called plusses of this software.
I will utilize one of these options if I want to hear news while on my computer:
Run the audio of any online service that offers a video feed.
Turn my TV on to CNN TV Headline News.
Turn on my radio.
I suggest you do the same.
It is irrelevant that this program boasts what it can do when it cannot even master the basics. Therefore, I won’t waste your time going through all the brouhaha.