Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Apple's new Text-to-speech interface for the iPod shuffle

Apple has introduced an all-new iPod® shuffle, which features a Text-To-Speech interface (called VoiceOver). With the press of a button, you can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the name of the song and artist. The new Shuffle can speak 14 languages including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

You can you read much more about the new Ipod on Apple's website and you can hear samples of VoiceOver on the Apple Website.

(Thanks to Adam B. at SpeechTechMag.com's blog for bringing this news to my attention).

While discussing this on Twitter this morning (Yes, I admit I've become a Twitterholic!) I sparked a conversation thread about what various folks think about TTS in general and the new VoiceOver feature on the iPod® shuffle.

I have my own opinions, but as a good user interface student, I thought I'd ask for your opinion first. Once I've gathered a good sample of responses, I'll post the results and add my own "two cents worth".

Use the link above to listen to the new VoiceOver interface then take my short survey on SurveyMonkey.com

Take a few minutes to listen to the new iPod® interface, take the survey and let me know what you think!

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