Speech Output in Knol Articles
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Speech Output in Knol Articles
Google has recently added text-to-speech capabilities to some of the Google Knol articles, like for instance there is one titled “File Formats in Digital Photographyâ€. If you want, you can download the whole article as an MP3 as well as hit a Listen button in the top right of the article. The quality of the speech output is simply awesome. I think its one of the best text-to-speech I have ever heard.
Knol’s help page on this topic explains, “We are experimenting with Audio Playback as an option for some knols, starting with a handful of English language featured knols … If this experiment is successful, we may make Audio Playback available to more knols in additional languages, and additional features.â€
Both text-to-speech as in Knol, and the speech-to-text as in YouTube (which is running on an experimental mode too), offer the ability to add capabilities to an application which may actually make some people to use it just for that feature. Here are some hypothetical use cases for outputting audio in all the Google’s apps:
– Read out aloud a Google Docs document, spreadsheet, or presentation
– Read a Gmail email for a user
– Read a public domain book scanned as part of Google Book Search
– Automatically translate the audio track of YouTube videos
– Read web pages as part of Google Chrome
– Provide audio directions in Google Maps
– Provide the “Listen†widget for Blogspot blogs and many more
