{"id":3385,"date":"2010-10-05T11:53:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T19:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perivision.net\/wordpress\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2010-10-31T20:56:07","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T04:56:07","slug":"text-to-voice-for-ebook-epub-on-the-ipad-iphone-with-vbookz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perivision.net\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/text-to-voice-for-ebook-epub-on-the-ipad-iphone-with-vbookz\/","title":{"rendered":"Text to voice for ebook ePub on the ipad \/ iphone with vBookz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever wanted to listen to AND read an ebook?\u00a0 On your iphone or ipad?\u00a0 Well this app is for you. vBookz <\/a>is a pretty cool little application that takes an ebook or ePub file and read it to you using text to voice technology from Acapela pleasant voices.\"vBookz_text_voice\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The voice translation is not perfect by a long shot, but its good enough to get the meaning of the text.\u00a0 So passages actually sound pretty good once you get used to the computer generated voice.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This is very useful in case what you are listening too is more about information consumption and less about enjoying the writing.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As nice as all this is, the exciting part is the possibility of being able to upload your own text!\u00a0 I chatted to the creator via email and asked about this possibility.\u00a0 They are working on it now.\u00a0 There are plenty of text to ePub converters out there.\u00a0 Once this come out in beta I’ll check for the latest options for text to ePub and post it.<\/p>\n

The App is in version 2.\u00a0 Here are a few cool new things about it…<\/p>\n

\u2022 vBookz\u00a0adds orientation and navigation tools\u00a0that enhances the reading experience.<\/div>\n
\u2022 An interactive cursor allows users to follow along, pause reading or even repeat lines or paragraphs to ensure reading comprehension.<\/div>\n
\u2022 Combining two senses together \u2013 sight and hearing \u2013\u00a0helps children\u00a0and those learning to read in a\u00a0second language.<\/div>\n

On the innovation side:
\n1. \u00a0 \u00a0Animating the cursor in\u00a0perfect sync with the Text-to-Speech engine
\n2. \u00a0 \u00a0Calculating the reading time\u00a0for the entire book rather than giving the user arbitrary page numbers that changes when you re-size the fonts
\n3. \u00a0 \u00a0Video controls\u00a0with time elapsed\/time remaining and rewind\/fast forward controls<\/p>\n

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