Text to Speech Software
Someone sent me a link to Natural Voices the other day. Ken White warned me about this “free” piece of software:
These guys are crap. They promote their product as being free with natural voices, but they basically lie. Their product is the same old free trial stuff with the same old bad microsoft voices, you have to buy it to get good voices, just like with our stuff. But, they piss off lots of people with the somewhat false advertising, hooking people in thinking they are getting something free, just to get the upsell to get the voices. We probably get 10 people a week coming to us complaining about them, or asking us for help with products they bought from them that don’t work and they can’t get support.
I’ve known Ken a lot longer than I’ve known of Naturalreaders.com. Indeed, his TextAloud is probably one of the more popular Text To Speech tools on the planet.
GoToAssist lets you provide support to your friends or customers even when they aren't at home. By using the unattended support feature, you can fix their software issues, install their updates, or nearly anything else you would normally do on-site.
7 Comments
Home : TechDispenser
May 30th, 2007
at 10:49pm
I don’t know if I’d call myself a software expert, by any stretch of the imagination – but I do know good software (and a good deal) when I see it…Related Content:DivX Creative Bundle: Free Softwareread more
The Chris Pirillo Show
April 13th, 2007
at 2:14am
Personal Blog Blog Comment Spammers How Not to Recover Data from a Vista Backup Recommendations for Formatting Video Podcasts ?Get a Mac? Ad Videos Text to Speech Software Pirillo?s Picks for 04/11/2007 Looking for a new Computer Keyboard Gas Prices vs. Summer Vacation Dual Monitor Duel: DVI Divinity Twitter Hacks Parental Control Software Suggestions? Greek Cruise Crash?
Philosophy of Charles Fort - Chassidy blog
April 28th, 2007
at 10:08am
(tags: virginiatech, tribute, honor) help, how to, tutorial Related Content: Live Linux on USB Text to Speech Software Next Stop? Pirillo’s Picks for 03/27/2007 Pirillo’s Picks for 02/15/2007 Pirillo’s Picks for 03/22/2007 Pirillo’s Picks for 02/20/2007 Pirillo’s Picks for 03/07/2007 Pirillo’s Picks for 03/23/2007
RyanB
April 11th, 2007
at 12:41pm
Chris, I work with this stuff on a daily basis, literally. (Check my About page …) Speech Aloud is a decent piece of software, but honestly, it isn’t the world’s best, kind of what the site makes it out to be. I had played around with it, and there were some issues with it. I cannot remember what it was exactly since it was 7 or 8 months ago, but there were a few issues that I only loaded it onto a few machines, and not all.
Jeff McNeill
April 11th, 2007
at 2:44pm
Agreed, the TextAloud rockz, esp. with the Firefox plugin!
ken white
April 17th, 2007
at 9:42am
HI Ryan. Be careful, someone in china or somewhere put out a product called Speak Aloud. They were an affiliate of ours, kind of ripped off a bit of our functionality and didn’t do it very well. I’m guessing you are using TextAloud but wanted to be sure.
I’d love to hear from you if you have some problems with it. The product isn’t pefect for sure, but we work hard at it, and always try to treat customers as friends so I’d love the chance to impress you.
Ken
RyanB
May 5th, 2007
at 3:33am
Hi Ken,
Sorry for the delay in the reply, been very busy. We do have or had TextAloud not Speak Aloud. I cannot comment on what the issue was on it was, since it as been a while. I would say that we picked it up most likely for the usage of the AT&T Nat Voices. I am guessing even though we think the AT&T Voices are basically sexy, the software itself didn’t make us go wow.
Ryan