[Ruby]

I was getting to know my iMac a little better last night and began fooling with the Speakable Items. I was having so much fun, I had no clue you could change the voice!..( it also feels really funny talking to your computer ) Does anyone else use this feature? I had a question about the "tell me a joke" item, I can't seem to figure out how that works. I also wanted to know how I can insert my name and e-mail address into the Speakable Items, I am not sure how to do that either. I am discovering things on my iMac everyday...

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Charity

[joe]

I had a blast with speakable items. It's a lot of fun to tell your iMac "Get my mail" or "Open my browser." But it can get confused with certain web sites. It would never recognize CNN or ABCnews. And saying "page up" "page down" etc isn't really as fast as clicking on the mouse. Also, it can get pretty damned annoying to someone nearby hearing you say all that to your iMac. Hi quality Victoria seems to have the best sound of all the voices.

I can't help with teaching it your name. But the "tell me a joke" thing is just knock knock jokes. The computer tries to recognize your words before it completes the joke. Most of the time, it works pretty well. But it has trouble on some of the voice recognition and times out. They you have to restart by saying "tell me a joke." This is the same thing with recognizing CNN as a web site above. The instructions say the computer will "learn" your style of speaking. But it never quite learns everything even when you try to be consistent. Speaking slowly makes it worse. However, when it works it's really amazing. The 1st time I got IE5 to surf the net hands free was just spooky! I loved it!

BTW, it's much more fun to turn off the Escape key Just be sure you remember how to turn it back on before you try..........joe

[DBursey]

I know nothing about the 'speakable items'. Where can I get some info? How is this feature used? Where located? So many questions ...

[Naz]

i just got this Graphite a few days ago...

how do you change the voice?

i'm new.

[MacNN Staff]

You can change voices via the Speech control panel.

Transferring to the Mac OS forum...

I use PlainTalk sometimes. My favorite trick is the following:

Find a fan site for the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" that has sound bites. Download a clip of HAL 9000 saying "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Convert it to System 7 sound file format using QuickTime or some other utility. Rename the file to "Open the Pod Bay Doors Hal." Put it in your Speakable Items folder.

Now you can say, "Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal," and your computer will answer, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

Okay, not very practical. But it's fun!

Once I gave my imac a verbal command to quit or close (whatever) speakable items (it started responding to dogs barking outside my window by opening my mail) Instead of just disappearing as usual the little guy stretched out and fell asleep on his desk - really cute. But I haven't been able to get it do that again...anyone know the secret? and are there anymore little things like that I don't know about? By the way I'd like to think I don't sound like a dog, is it at all possible to fine tune this thing to my voice?

[DBursey]

Again, guys, can anyone point out for me where I can get info on speaking commands for my imac? How is this done? I haven't the foggiest. I suppose I could do an exhaustive search, but since you're all here discussing the subject ... I'd also like the ability to have my mail opened by yapping dogs!

[reader50]

Open the Speech Control Panel. Explore the available options. There are options to have your Mac speak to you (usually the contents of dialog boxes). There may be an item for Speech Recognition. If so, turn it on and play around with the settings. It used to be called PlainTalk, now it is called Speakable Items.

If there is no option, then Speech Recognition was not installed on your system from the factory. Get out your System Install Disk. Fire up the Installer and choose Custom Install. Go down the custom options available, and find Speech Recognition. Check it, uncheck everything else. This way you are adding just the Speech Recognition. Install to your hard disk, and reboot.

If you like Speech Recognition, and want something a bit more advanced and flexible like the ability to say "File Menu" and have the File menu drop down, then read any choice from the File menu and have it recognize that choice, proceed to the MacSpeech website and check out the products. There is a free product called ListenDo that extends the built in speech recognition. Download it, and play around some more.

Have fun.

[DBursey]

Thanks a bunch Reader50. Sounds like I'll have a fun evening!

[Ruby]

I am so addicted to Speakable Items right now, hearing all the different voices you can use is so much fun! Fred is a good one, but I usually have mine set to high quality Victoria. This is definitley one of my favorite features on my iMac...

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Charity

[Indigo Boy]

If you have Microsoft Word 98 Special Edition for iMac/iBook, Word will also read your text, and it gives you some additional controls over the modulation (the pitch change that occurs in natural speech) and speed beyond what the Speech control panel does. When I use everyone's favorite (Victoria High Quality) and have "her" read, it's almost spooky because it's quite natural sounding.

[SpeedRacer]

For those really interested in taking full advantage of speech on the Mac try integrating some of the features of Plaintalk and Speakable items with AppleScript.

Using the Scriptable Voice Recognition in Mac OS 9, you can actually lead your computer through a series of steps, asking you questions and responding in different ways based on your responses. Totally amazing!

Get more information on Applescript and Speech Recognition at:
http://www.apple.com/applescript/macos9.html

Speed