Click here: Oddcast TTS Demo, text to speech conversion plus translations into any of thirteen languages.
You get to try it a few times before you are directed to their website should you wish to ‘integrate our speaking characters into your web pages and web applications’.
So how many of you freaky librarians asked Kate to say something ‘slightly off-color’, hmm?
Meet Sushi
http://www.shush.ws
I’m not a big fan photos in websites. People who say they make them look friendly don’t take into account that a bad photo is decidely unfriendly and mediocre photos quickly make a mediocre website. So unless you can afford a professional photographer or your library has a volunteer with a gift, I think its best to avoid photos on main pages.
I like the clean look of the oddcast characters, you can select gender as well as look (to the point of adding a purple tinge to everything to fit my website’s primary, heck, only color). You also have a variety of backgrounds to choose from though I couldn’t figure out if you could upload your own.
I used the autotext but you can upload an audio file instead and its actually cheaper to do so. Sushi is simply around for the election, I can’t afford her year round. Its just a neat toy I wanted to try out.