Product News: new upgraded docReader
We have just launched the updated version of ReadSpeaker docReader. ReadSpeaker® docReader™ is speech as a service which uses text to speech online to enable visitors to listen to the text of a document . ReadSpeaker® docReader™ makes various document formats viewable in all browsers, even on mobile phone browsers as well as other devices that do not have built in PDF-, Word- or Open Office document viewing capabilities. ReadSpeaker® docReader™ is available as listen-icons next to your online published documents.
- Easily browse within the document by either using the Previous or Next buttons or going directly to the selected page to be read.
- Select the existing layout mode of the document or convert it into text mode.
- Benefit from different settings to change the reading speed, the language of the toolbar menu, and to choose from different text mode settings notably the capacity to see synchronized highlighting of the text that is currently being read, on a word by word and/or sentence basis.
Product News: Our new Embedded Highlighting update
We have just launched a new release for our ReadSpeaker Expanding Player with Embedded Highlighting with some new exciting features:
- Extended iPad/iPhone/iPod touch support: When using the Embedded Highlighting add-on on Apple Mobile devices, your visitors can now use synchronized highlighting with our new HTML5 player. The player opens up directly on the page itself and doesn’t open up a new player page. This provides your users with an optimal display of the listen function on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
- Improved behavior when selecting text: When a user accesses your site from a computer web browser, selects text from a given web page, and then clicks on the nearby listen button which shows up, a new mini player will appear providing immediate access to the listen function.
- Hosted ReadSpeaker JavaScript: starting now, we will also be hosting the JavaScript that is a part of the implementation. This enables us to service you better in providing updates and continuous maintenance of the service. We have also introduced a continent load balancing infrastructure that is built to shorten response times and give even better availability of our services.
- Other features that come with the new Embedded Highlighting add-on are:
- Updated HTML code in the player which consists of 100% valid elements according to W3C’s recommendations.
- Improved highlighting engine which highlights words and/or sentences even better than in the previous version.
- Support for reading dynamic generated content, such as AJAX or Javascript, can easily be switched on.
- Auto detection and improved support for HTTPS web sites.
- Support for multiple players on the same page.
- More stable style sheets that do not conflict with websites’ existing CSS.
- New mechanisms that make it easier to customize default behaviour and appearance.
- A number of other improvements and bug fixes for added stability and robustness including full support for text selection in Internet Explorer 9
If you are already a customer for the ReadSpeaker Enterprise Expanding Player with Embedded Highlighting you will soon hear from our Support team. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@readspeaker.com.
Text to Speech Online Worldwide
We get requests for speech-enabling web sites and mobile apps from all different kinds of places. To cope with these demands we offer a large (and growing) panel of languages and voices available for the text to speech online requirements of our customers.
- To date we propose 35 languages and 88 voices!
- There is a big majority of female voices with 54 of them versus 34 male voices.
- The most represented language in terms of voices is the English one with a total of 13 voices (6 US English voices, 5 UK English voices, 1 Scottish English voice and 1 Australian English voice)) followed by Spanish with 7 voices (4 Spanish Castilian, 3 Spanish American), Dutch with 7 voices, French and German with 5 voices each.
- Did you know that we propose 2 variants of Norwegian: Bokmål (used by 85 to 90% of the Norwegian population) and Nynorsk.
- Apart from Spanish, we also have available Catalan, Valencian, Galician and Basque. Did you know that in the Catalan, Balearic Islands, Valencian, Basque, Navarra and Galician areas of Spain, only a part of the population is Spanish speaking only.
- If you have web sites and/or mobiles apps in Arabic, we can provide you with a choice of 4 voices (2 female and 2 male). We also have 3 Turkish voices. Did you know that the earliest known Arabic texts go back to the 8th century BC.
- For web sites in Eastern Europe (as defined per the United Nations), we cover Czech, Romanian, Polish and Russian.
- Did you know that we also propose Faroese and Finland Swedish. The latter is a combination of Swedish dialects spoken by Swedish-speaking Finnish in Finland.
- We also have Welsh known as Cymraeg in its native writing.
- Did you know that as many as 15% words differ between Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, 2 languages that we also have in our portfolio.
SaaS or Speech as a Service
Software as a Service (SaaS) also known as software on demand is the type of distribution we have chosen since the beginning of ReadSpeaker to deliver our services. It’s really at the core of how we look at making our online text to speech services readily available to our customers in the easiest and most efficient way possible for them. In our case, the software component we deliver is how we convert different online text content found on web sites, mobile sites and apps into speech hence the Speech as a Service.
We have accumulated years of feedback from our customers on delivering speech as a service and here are the most valuable gains we see for them:
- Our customers don’t need to worry about client side installations.
- Our customers also don’t need to worry about local server installation.
- Maximum availability for their end-users who can access the online text to speech version of their web content from any device with an Internet connection.
- System maintenances are included in our services so there again our customers don’t need to worry about backups, updates, security issues.
- We can scale our operations to cope with increasing usage and demand peaks.
- Time to delivery is very quick so our customers can propose a talking version of their Internet content in a matter of hours.
- A subscription model with a fixed price level which facilitates budget planning.
- Agility and flexibility in proposing new features without the need to change the implementation.
