TextAloud Editor's Review

'TextAloud' is a Text To Speech tool. You can save text to MP3 or wave which, if you have a portable audio device, you can take to any place you need to go. The producer claims that with the plugin toolbar for Internet Explorer (or Firefox) you can listen to web pages because, besides Word and PDF files, it supports HTML documents too.

There are four ways for adding text to be spoken by 'TextAloud': 1. TextAloud can automatically monitor the windows clipboard and anytime you copy text by highlighting it and hitting Control-C, TextAloud can import the text. 2 You can use Hotkeys; 3. You can type the desired text; 4. You can open a text file (txt, doc, docx, pdf, rtf, html).

You can use the 'File Splitter' utility to split large files into multiple smaller files, then, using 'Multi-Article' mode, you can read the resulting files into multiple articles. An interesting feature, besides using bookmarks or inserting pauses, is that you can use 'Voice Change' tags which allow you to change voice while reading an article. This is very useful if you want to create a dialog effect while text is spoken.

The user interface is skinnable and easy to configure. The buttons that appear just below the menu are shortcuts to the most common tasks and there are lots of options for customization.

Pluses: You can edit the pronunciation of a word even if it is a new entry or an old one.

Drawbacks / flaws:

In conclusion: You might find it useful if you are tired to read online news. Now you can listen to the news or your favorite book, at least the electronic version of it.

version reviewed: 2.310