Following our PDF reading capability for ReadSpeaker proReader that we introduced on May 15, we are now very excited to announce the release of our new highly demanded “Embedded Highlighting” add-on for our ReadSpeaker Enterprise Expanding product. By simply clicking on the Listen button, the website user can see the synchronized highlighting of the text being read either on word by word and/or sentence basis. The user just needs to click on the settings link under the player to choose which highlighting option best suits his/her needs.

When a visitors first land on a web page with the Expanding player, this is what they typically see:

Listen button before it has been clicked on

Then, when the user clicks on the Listen button, the player appears and expands as follows:

Activated Listen button with expanded player

By then clicking on the Settings link, four synchronized highlighting options are available to the user:

Settings choices for synchronized highlighting

Here for example is how the synchronized highlighting looks when the “Word and Sentence” option has been chosen:

Synchronized highlighting of the text by word and sentence

Once the user has selected the synchronized highlighting of his/her choice, a cookie will enable the same setting when the user starts the ReadSpeaker Expaning Player service again.

We see the following advantages for web site owners who wish to propose this add-on to their visitors:

• Enhanced and better comprehension of the text being read out
• Immediate and exact vision on which part of the web page is being read out
• Choice of synchronized highlighting which best fits the user’s needs

And like with all our ReadSpeaker products, the user does not need to download and install special software to use our Expanding Player. In the case where the visitor uses a browser without support for Javascript and can’t play Flash content, we always make sure that the audio can be played so that the text can be read back.

Try the Embedded highlighting add-on now on our web site for example on the ReadSpeaker Enterprise Expanding page by clicking on the Listen button at the top of the page. Remember to click on the Settings link under the player to choose the highlighting option you want to activate.

We have gotten many requests from our different geographical markets and the various industries and services that we sell to regarding this add-on and have worked hard to make this happen. We are very enthusiastic on this new embedded highlighting feature and hope you enjoy it!

In its latest Internet campaign lasting from May to September, Nestlé Extreme invites French Internet users to win one year of free cinema tickets by creating their own movie trailer. The trailers are produced using different characters, scenes, music, colours and last but not least voice-overs. For the latter, the agencies Creative Syndicate, Unit 9 and JWT Paris used our ReadSpeaker SpeechMachine product to enable website visitors to type in a text that is then converted to speech so as to create the voice-over for the trailer. This is a perfect example of ReadSpeaker SpeechMachine in action and how brands can innovatively use text-to-speech to add a fun audio outlet for their target public to play around with.

Here is how the campaign process looks when the website visitor is asked to input the text to create the voice-over for the trailer:

The movie director asking the candiadates to type in the text

And here is the actual text as it is being written in with the Listen button (Ecouter) at the right:

Image of text being inputted and Listen button

The official Nestlé Extreme trailer is on French television since May 25.

We always try and get maximum playability for our different products when it comes to the different devices from which you can listen to web pages and blog posts. We have now just updated the compatibility of how ReadSpeaker webReader can stream the audio on iPhones as well as on the iPod Touch. We have configured our streamers so that they can now perfectly play back the audio for the iPhones and iPod Touch devices. This will help all our ReadSpeaker webReader web site owners and bloggers make their content even more usable for their readers who use an iPhone for example to listen to what they have to say. We have also changed the “Download mp3” under the player to “Play mp3” for those users that don’t have Flash so that they can always save the mp3 to their computer by right clicking on the link and saving the link. We are continually looking at ways to improve how are products are used and hope that this addition will help our growing number of users out there!