[wordup] Dr. Kula and Gutenberg Radio

[Adam Shand]

Now if I can get this in MP3 and listen to it in my car this might 
actually get me to finally invest in an MP3 player.  I've been looking 
for a more interesting/productive way to spend my commute time.

As a side note, you may (or may not) have noticed that traffic has been 
dropping off on this list.  That's cause I've been playing around with 
turning my wiki into a blog.  I've been tracking blogs for a while out 
of interest and I think it's time to actually dip my toes in the water 
... especially as my signal to noise ratio in email has become 
disaterous and is showing no signs of improving.

You can check it out here:

   http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/AdamShand

It's still highly experimental and breaks regularly as I play with the 
code to make it do things "the way i want".

At some point wordup may morph into a blog (for better or worse).  If 
you'd stop reading if there was no longer an email version available let 
me know and I'll try and figure out a way to setup a wiki/blog to email 
gateway.

Adam.

From: http://www.etc-edu.com/

Welcome to Gutenberg Radio
Posted by on Saturday, March 15 @ 05:51:31 CST (127 reads)

April 19, 2003

etc... Gutenberg Radio joins "Inflection Perfection Campaign" and 
StudioCaster gets a new name.

We are proud to announce the launch of "Gutenberg Radio" at 
http://www.etc-edu.com. On these broadcast channels, you can hear the 
Gutenberg Library, hosted at http://www.promo.net/pg/, and anything else 
the Gutenberg family cares to share with its public.

Once again, we have upgraded the software we use to create audio books. 
This time, we have eliminated the annoying tendency of computer 
generated voices to "bottom out" at the end of a phrase. Human voices 
don't ever drop an octave on a dime, at least not in normal 
conversation. We have also introduced audible breath marks.

The first book we tried the new software on is "Dracula". Well, it was 
rendered as "Dr. Kula". That was just too good to go unremarked. From 
this day forward, StudioCaster will be known as "Dr. Kula".

The showcase for these improvements is on the broadcast at 
http://www.etc-edu.com, in stereo on channel 1 as "Dracula", and in mono 
on channel 2 as "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. These readings, along 
with a new Time Machine that incorporates the latest advances, are 
available on the download page of http://www.etc-edu.com as .zip files.

We are making them available at http://www.promo.net/pg/ as soon as is 
humanly possible. Every audio book we make is for the Gutenberg 
collection. In our opinion, it is the most important cultural artifact 
of the Internet. And audio books bring these benefits to immigrants, 
disabled, children without an adult reader to sit with them, and many 
others who would simply be out of luck otherwise.

There is also a horse sense issue. People learn their reading skills in 
books. So should computers. A technology that evolves in a human context 
is more likely to fit with us. Frankly, I'm tired of refitting myself to 
suit the purpose of a machine. I think the machine has advanced to the 
point where it can compromise on my terms.

The speed at which the works can be created is simply stunning. For 
instance, all three of this week's offerings were created, front to 
back, in less than four hours. One person on a machine from the Office 
Depot around the corner.

And a few public domain patches are going to reduce the latency of our 
audio to about 1 ms, something Microsoft users can only dream about.

Currently, our audio mark-up software can act as a front end for 
SpeechWorks Eloquence and ViaVoice TTSs. We are attempting to integrate 
support for A.T. & T. "Natural Voice" technology, achieving near 
universal coverage.

Come and give us a listen, download a few books and tell your friends.

mike eschman, etc ...
http://www.etc-edu.com
"Not just an afterthought ...