You can get this from the Cydia Store in the BigBoss repository.  Once installed you enabled it from a new pane that will be added to the Settings application.   Once done all incoming banner messages will be read aloud by Siri.  You can configure it too. It can be set to only read just the headline or the content as well.  It will also read the notification and a custom phrase before or after the message. This might make my top 10 jailbreak list!

Don’t forget you have to have whatever app you want Siri to read to have banners enabled.

Yes we have a Video!  ( Young Ones anybody?)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP9TSP3zVeU

Well wait no more.  I just got an email saying they can now support uploading your own text!  This is pretty huge.  I do not have any dim fantasies of my own writing, however there are contracts that I need to read, or long emails that I got at the beginning or end of the day that I can upload and listen to on my commute.  Better yet, if you are an executive, you can get your secretary to pre-load documents that you can listen to as you drive or are being driven, in case you are the type who gets car sick.

There is a tutorial on the vBooks site to guide you through the process, but here are a few extracts..

There are several ways to create an ePub file out of your documents.
You can easily save ePub files by choosing “Export…” on Mac’s “Pages”. It is the easiest
way to create it. File name must include the language indication, for example:
“FileName_en” for English. Read more about language indication here.
Another way to covert text to ePub is by using the on line “2ePub” site. you can convert
files in three easy steps. http://www.2epub.com/
You may also install and use Lexcycle‘s “Stanza” or David Goyal’s “Calibre” as your
desktop ePub files converters.
“Stanza” and “Calibre” complies

Convert text to ePub format on your desktop
“Pages”
“2ePub”
“Stanza”
“Calibre”
“PDF to ePub”

The voice translation is not perfect by a long shot, but its good enough to get the meaning of the text.  So passages actually sound pretty good once you get used to the computer generated voice.  However, the real win here is that we can both read a book, since the text is displayed and then continue to listen to the book started off where you left off. You can choose the voice type, right now it male or female and you can choose the reading speed.  This is very useful in case what you are listening too is more about information consumption and less about enjoying the writing.

They have 30,000 books available and because the text is read in real time, the download time and storage of each book is much smaller the getting a set of sound files.

As nice as all this is, the exciting part is the possibility of being able to upload your own text!  I chatted to the creator via email and asked about this possibility.  They are working on it now.  There are plenty of text to ePub converters out there.  Once this come out in beta I’ll check for the latest options for text to ePub and post it.

The App is in version 2.  Here are a few cool new things about it…

On the innovation side:
1.    Animating the cursor in perfect sync with the Text-to-Speech engine
2.    Calculating the reading time for the entire book rather than giving the user arbitrary page numbers that changes when you re-size the fonts
3.    Video controls with time elapsed/time remaining and rewind/fast forward controls

You can choose between a male and female voice on the paid version. I’m using the free one (which is female be default) but the voice quality is good and so far, the translations have been impressive.  The only complaint I have is it also reads SMS messages that I send.  Not a full FAIL because its suppose to be when you are driving, but still..

There is more I want to try though.  Next time I’m on a long ride, I’m going to have my email forward to my phone. Then when new emails come is, I will at least hear the first few lines. Same for the next time I’m on a long drive in the car.

Here is more info on motorcycles and state laws in case your curious.

http://motorcycleinfo.calsci.com/PrintLaws.html