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…)
In yet another twist and turn of the ongoing flap over Amazon’s Kindle 2–you know the one, the whole TTS vs. Copyright Law Controversy–nine disability groups have written to US publishers urging them not to opt out of the TTS function on its e-books for the new Kindle.
The disability groups which including the National Federation of the Blind and the International Dyslexia Association said in a letter to Simon & Schuster:
“For a terribly long time those with print disabilities have been consigned to alternative formats with limited choices on expensive special purpose machines. Now that the opportunity for mainstream access to books on equal terms is possible, this community will not allow publishers and authors to deny them the right to read.”
Letters also went to Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group.
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.”
Eric B. —
May 8, 2009 @ 7:35 pm 
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.
By now, we’re all familiar with the 