Did you know that it is possible to take any book on the planet and
scan it in to the computer, and then have your computer read it
out-loud to you in a natural sounding voice?
It takes about an hour to scan in a book, and you can correct the
errors in the optical character recognition as you read along.
I am doing this with all of my school text-books for college, and
putting them onto my I-Pod. My I-Pod can store up to 4GB of books and
audio. That is more than a full course load for any term in storage
space. The I-Pod can also store all of my notes for class, and record
the professor as he gives lectures.
When I am at home, I read along at the same rate as the computer reads
the book to me. Using my text-to-speech software, each words gets
high-lighted as it is being read. Being stimulated with both audio and
visual information makes the reading go fast, and also helps me
memorize the material.
I am reading the bible on audio CD right now, but I didn't scan it in.
They sell the whole thing at Barnes & Noble, and I am going to listen
to all of it. The New Testament is 16 CDs. I wish they would start
broadcasting the audio version of the bible on television and radio.
They could even have some nice background music and beautiful
photography to go along with it.
Lets face the facts, reading is a chore, and most people I know are too
high to read books anyway. Now that we can make our own audio books it
takes all of the work out of reading, and makes school a breeze.
I would rather be reading books, than watching T.V. or Googling spam
anyway.
-Refrences-
http://www.nuance.com/omnipage/ - The OCR software I use, which is
intended to make audio books, and does everything else I could want to
do.
http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html - The
text-to-speech software I use, which can be downloaded as end user
software and integrated into Omnipage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/audio_books - A resource of information
on audio books, OCR, and text-to-speech. It includes links to free
audio book websites, and downloads.
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