speech

A Web site promoting graphic videos of pit bulls fighting in Japan and hunting wild boar is shielded by the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

In a strongly worded 8-1 opinion, the court tossed out the criminal conviction of Robert Stevens, a documentary filmmaker in rural Virginia who sold books, videos, and equipment related to raising pit bulls through the now-defunct Pitbulllife.com site.

A 1999 federal law that Stevens was prosecuted under is "substantially overbroad, and therefore invalid under the First Amendment," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote … Read more

Roger Ebert's search to recapture his lost voice uncovered a company with a unique technology.

When the famed film critic needed to find a way to communicate after losing his voice to cancer surgery, he turned to text-to-speech (TTS) software that speaks whatever he types. But the TTS software he initially tried sounded too robotic and computerized. He wanted a voice that sounded like him. That's when he discovered CereProc, a Scottish company that builds electronic voices. Using someone's audio recordings, CereProc's technology can stitch together an entire digital voice that sounds like the actual person.… Read more

Although he lost his voice to cancer surgery, Roger Ebert is sounding like his old self thanks to some innovative software.

The famous film critic, known for his spirited debates with the late Gene Siskel on their "At the Movies" show, has survived a difficult few years.

Diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002, Ebert underwent a series of operations that eventually robbed him of his voice and lower jaw, taking away his ability to speak, eat, and drink. To communicate with the outside world, he has relied on traditional text-to-speech (TTS) software that speaks whatever he types.

But … Read more

Nuance Communications announced Tuesday that it has bought MacSpeech, a company that provides voice dictation and recognition software for Mac users.

Seeing MacSpeech's experience with the Macintosh environment and its users, Nuance sought out the acquisition as a key opportunity to expand into the ever-growing Mac market. The company said it plans to bring its Dragon name, recognition, marketing, and R&D to the MacSpeech line of products to further grow their market share among Mac users. MacSpeech already licenses the Dragon speech technology engine for its MacSpeech Dictate software.

"We have heard from our customers--and from … Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court's sweeping ruling on Thursday that invalidated large chunks of campaign finance law arose in part from an unlikely source: the emergence of Facebook, YouTube, and blogs, and the decline of traditional media outlets.

A 5-4 majority concluded that technological changes have chipped away at the justification for a law that allows individuals to create a blog with opinions about a political candidate--but threatens the ACLU, the National Rifle Association, a labor union, or a corporation with felony charges if they do the same.

The now-invalidated law "would seem to ban a blog post … Read more

Alive Text to Speech is an easy-to-use program that lets users hear text on their computer spoken aloud, as well as convert text files into audio files. It's nothing fancy, but for users who want or need to hear text spoken aloud, Alive Text to Speech is a simple way to get that done.

The program's interface is quite basic, consisting mostly of a few buttons that represent the program's major features. Having the program speak text aloud is quite simple; users need only highlight the desired text and press Control-C. This can be done in any … Read more

A new service uses the power of 400 virtualized computers in the cloud to test the security of your WPA WiFi password. They only charge $34. But Donald is afraid of how this penetration testing might show up on his credit card bill. But forget WiFi. WiGig is coming promising 7Gbps transfer speeds. Take that Ethernet cable!

WiGig alliance creates next-generation wireless networking standard http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/10/wigig-alliance-creates-next-generation-wireless-networking-standard/ http://gigaom.com/2009/12/10/coming-soon-to-your-hd-home-theater-7gbps/

Microsoft finally open sources … Read more

Read Aloud is a program that will read text aloud. It has two main interfaces, one for entering Web addresses that the program will browse to and read the text on aloud, and another tab labeled Textpad where you can paste text into a window to be read out loud.

We tested both aspects of the program. The first Web page we tried Read Aloud on was a Blogger page. The page mostly comprised text, and the program did very well reading it. The default voice is "Microsoft Anna," a pleasing female voice. The voice is a little … Read more

Internet memes travel in waves. A fun site can lie dormant for years before suddenly being rediscovered.

The latest example I've found is Let Them Sing It For You, which has been around for years, but has been drawing new attention on blogs in the last couple of weeks. On Tuesday, I received my first personalized message through the service.

Created in 2003 by Eric Bunger, Let Them Sing It For You is a simple but fun Web application that lets you enter a text message, then translates the words into audio. The catch: it uses popular song snippets … Read more