Multitasking using OS X’s speech service
Earlier today, I tweeted about having my computer read an article to me while I checked up on things like Twitter and Google Reader, and even did some work. Usually, I use the service to help me multitask while doing things away from my computer, such as while I’m making dinner. This feature has been around forever, but here’s a quick demo in case you haven’t yet discovered it, using an article about NASA trying to blow up the Moon or something:
I love how the synthesized voice takes synthesized breaths.
That’s exactly how I read your blog. Although I like hearing your voice as “Victoria” in the system preferences. Is that weird?
Comment by Mike — June 16, 2009 @ 11:40 pm
I have to chime in here. In College, I set up an awesome alarm clock that would wake me up. First, it would curl a weather website that I knew had an english description of the weather for my location. I parsed through the html to find the section with the weather report and used the “say” commandline utility to speak it aloud. Then I’d use apple script to start a loud playlist on iTunes so that if I missed the weather, at least I wouldn’t stay asleep.
Too bad I fried my hard disk when I tried to transfer the guts of my iMac into a cardboard box and make it a headless iMac. It would be fun to see if that script still worked.
Comment by Troy — June 17, 2009 @ 11:04 am