Talking Book: The Spoken Word Goes High Tech

by Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.
Digital Edition January 2004

Ever since its birth in 1969, the Internet has long been the province of the written word. Even when the Internet starting showing up in people's homes in the mid-1990s, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the graphical browser, the Word Wide Web was still heavily based on good old-fashioned text. But that could change in the next few years, as an increasing number of new technologies are converging to make the Web into a talking medium.

In the past, spoken word products have been limited to books on tape and CDs, for playing in the car, on long trips or while commuting, or by the visually impaired. However, the same technologies that have put a PC in practically every home, and brought a broadband connection to just about anybody who wants it, have increased the number of opportunities to listen to, purchase, and download spoken word material as well.

Audible.com is one of several Websites that sells downloadable material on a PC, CD, or portable MP3 player, such as the Apple iPod. Their Website boasts of having a selection of over 18,000 audio books, and audio versions of magazines, newspapers and radio programs, including The New York Times Audio Digest, the audio of Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.

Beyond downloading and purchasing spoken word material, it's also possible to install programs on your computer's hard drive that will read a Web page--which opens up all sorts of possibilities even for folks who are not sight-impaired. Want to download a magazine article to a PDA and play it back through headphones or your car's stereo? Or download the New York Times to your home computer and play it back while exercising in any room? How about waking up to a voice reading your Yahoo news pages through a speaker built into your radio alarm? All of these and more are possible with today's technology, as we will see in a moment.

Internet Radio
While music on the Web has garnered the most press, there are plenty of opportunities to hear the spoken word there as well. Internet radio--including talk radio--was off to a promising start, until new licensing agreements slowed its growth. But there are still numerous Internet radio stations out there, as well as lots of conventional AM and FM radio stations that offer streaming audio versions of their daily broadcasts. A quick search of Google should provide hours of listening, as most Internet radio sites "transmit" to conventional Windows Media or Real Audio programs.

Several popular talk radio programs are available as downloads as well. In addition to their audio versions of books and periodicals, Audiobook.com has NPR programming such Fresh Air, Car Talk, and Marketplace. For an annual or monthly fee, Rush Limbaugh has a month's worth of his shows available for download on his Website. And numerous talk radio stars have streaming Internet audio versions of their show.

And as more talk radio gets on the Web, more traditionally text-oriented pages start to talk, as well. Increasingly, Web pages are becoming interactive. This year, Yahoo's pro football coverage included commentary from ex-NFL great Chris Carter. But instead of having the retired Minnesota Vikings great simply type his words, Yahoo put most of Carter's material online via audio and video commentary.

Making Web Pages Talk
The development of some of the technology involved in making the Web talk originally came about to aid the visually impaired. But like the sexy Segway scooter developed out of Dean Kamen's high-tech wheel chair project, they have applications far beyond aiding the handicapped.

e-Bility.com is a Webpage designed to empower the disabled using a variety of high-tech methods. They have a Web page (www.e-bility.com/speak.php) loaded with a variety of downloadable talking browser plug-ins. The programs that e-Bility links to include both free downloads and shareware, most available (usually after a free trial period) for $50 or less.

One of the most intriguing programs to which e-Bility links is a page-reading applet for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which installs as a taskbar at the top of the browser. The applet is available at www.text-reader.com. It uses a combination of Microsoft's Speech API (Application Program Interface), and speech engine, both of which are downloadable from the text-reader.com site.

The Portable Word
Of course, spoken word material can be portable as well. Their traditional media--cassettes and CDs--are still available. And there is an increasing amount of material available from sources such as Amazon.com that can either be downloaded straight to a portable MP3 player such as Apple's iPod, or downloaded to a hard drive and then ported to a player.

It is also possible to wake up with the spoken word. The traditional AM/FM clock radio on the nightstand may eventually be replaced by networkable products such as the iClock. It is an Internet-connected alarm-clock radio that can be voice controlled to provide news, weather, sports, traffic and PDA information. It was designed by two consumer electronics firms, Personica and Simple Devices, and made its debut in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Howard Stern and other early morning DJs may be worrying about their jobs in the near future.

Staying in Touch
It used to be that only medium to large businesses would even consider a PBX phone system. But even a small family now probably has multiple phone lines (the Parents' phone; a line of the kids; a home fax or data line, and cell phones for everyone). And although a physical PBX system is still out of the question for the average homeowner, the Internet has provided great, cost effective solutions for individuals and families to manage their verbal communications.

Virtual PBX (www.virtualpbx.com) is a San Jose-based company that offers a completely hosted service that does not require any additional hardware to use it. It gives small businesses (and large families!) the presence and functionality of a PBX system.

Not the least of these features is voicemail via email. No longer is it necessary to sit in a hotel, taking turns calling everyone's voicemail numbers for messages. Log on to your email and there are all your voicemail messages, attached to emails in the form of .wav files. From there you can easily store, organize or forward your voicemail messages. Or log into the Internet PBX system and tell it to forward your voicemail to your mother's phone starting the day before Thanksgiving, and to forward you son's voicemail to his school email when the new semester starts.

A Rich World Awaits
So why hasn't all this spoken word material gotten more attention? Perhaps, because at first glance, it is not all that sexy a story. It does not involve kids illegally trading the latest Britney Spears MP3s. But there is more to the Web then sexed-up TV news stories. There's a rich world of spoken word material available on the 'Net, and a variety of ways to make the Web talk.

Edward B. Driscoll, Jr. is a consultant in the consumer electronics industry.

[Sidebar]
Roll Your Own: How To Make Your Own Books On CD or MP3

Of course, it is also possible to make your own spoken word MP3s. A program like Cakewalk's Home Studio XL (www.cakewalk.com), along with a few CDs (or downloads) of background music; a decent soundcard and a microphone are all you need to get surprisingly professional results. The software allows you to edit out flubs such as coughs and stammers. Add electronic reverb to your voice to make a recording made in your den sound very close to a product made in a commercial studio. (Needless to say, we are assuming this is strictly for your own benefit. Consult a lawyer before releasing your CDs or MP3s commercially, to make sure you are not violating any copyrights from the source material used.)

This past January, at NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants), the music industry's main tradeshow, Yamaha introduced a program that they've dubbed "Vocaloid." Designed to work with PC-based recording programs it simulates speech, both as the spoken word, and as a synthetic, but very good, vocalist. The Vocaloid program will reproduce words in an astonishingly realistic fashion, at least based on the demonstration MP3s that Yamaha has on their Vocaloid Web site (www.vocaloid.com).

Vocaloid, and the technology behind it, has all sorts of applications beyond the music industry. Add a second voice--perhaps the opposite of your gender--to a recording of fairy tales for your kids. Use it as a special effect. Or use it as the voice of a new character in your recordings. And expect to see many more types of the application in the future.