Today, The New York Times reported that Amazon’s Kindle 2 much vaunted text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities, provided by Nuance Communications, came up short when trying to pronounce President Barack Obama’s name. The device uttered something closer to Baah-raah-k O-baah-maah (closer to the sounds in “black” and “Alabama,” the Times said. The paper adds that the problem has since been corrected. Obama’s name has added to the Kindle’s TTS dictionary and will be included in the next wireless update.

The Kindle TTS misfire came to prominence as many news organizations began openly speculating on whether subsequent versions of the Kindle could create a viable non-paper-based means of distribution. Wired, for instance was running the headline “How the Next Kindle Could Save the Newspaper Business” in stories about partnerships the The New York Times and Washington Post were looking to hatch, while mediabistro.com pondered, “Can The Kindle Save Newspapers?” Whether any of that’s true, the failure of Kindle’s TTS to pronounce things like the President’s name correctly may put at least a temporary crimp in any role speech might in any Kindle paper-saving venture.

When it comes to that though, don’t blame Nuance. (more…)

By now, we’re all familiar with the ongoing controversy surrounding the Kindle 2 and its TTS capability.

The latest development is that Disability Activists protested the removal of the TTS service from Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild in New York City.

For the full story, check out this link.

I, for one, don’t think the issue will be resolved any time soon.  As my Speech Brother Eric B. said earlier today:

“This one is going into extra innings and I’ve got season tickets.”

After all the brouhaha about Kindle 2 and the copyright issues raised by its TTS function, it looks like Amazon has caved.

Check out this story for the latest developments.

You may have read our previous post about Amazon’s Kindle 2–which features TTS, and lots of it: Any document on the Kindle 2 can be read to users via the device’s TSS.

And, as convenient as that may be, the Authors Guild is saying that Kindle 2’s TTS violates copyright law.

According to Paul Aiken, executive director of the Author’s Guild: “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud… That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Check out the full story here at Fast Company.