Text-to-Speech Features That Make You More Productive
“Focus on being productive instead of busy”. This quote by Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, is much easier said than done. We’ve all experienced times when we were overwhelmed and wished there was a more efficient way of doing all the things we need or want to do.
You may not have thought of it, text-to-speech can help.
Text-to-speech has given a voice to electronic devices. Our devices can verbally communicate with us now. While this technology isn’t necessarily new or the most exciting one to talk about, developers are still finding new ways to use it to benefit our lives.
There’s a good reason why text-to-speech is being used more too. There are various types of content a digital device can show us. This includes text, images, videos, sounds, and others. However, most of the content in the digital world is text. Without text-to-speech the only way to consume that content is to give 100 percent of your focus on the device’s display and read the text.
With text-to-speech, your device will read out the text to you. This gives you the freedom to absorb information while keeping your eyes, and your attention, elsewhere.
This benefit is the reason why text-to-speech is still alive. Many technologies die out fast as they become old and outdated. But as new devices and applications continue to be released, there becomes more opportunities for text-to-speech to be used to improve user-experience.
In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at some of the more exciting ways text-to-speech is being used to make you more productive.
Staying on Top of the News
Many of us keep up with the news by reading it on our devices. We look for the news stories that interest us, whether it’s current events, politics, sports, business, or any other type of news.
While reading the news requires our full, undivided attention, listening to the news allows us to do other activities while still being about to take in the news story.
We’re seeing text-to-speech being used more to read aloud text-based news stories. One such example is an app called Newsbeat.
Newsbeat is a personal radio station. The app works a lot like Pandora. You select the types of stories that interest you, and then the app will read aloud (with the help of NeoSpeech’s natural sounding voices) the articles to you. Newsbeat has been included in several lists of the the top or hottest apps.
Apps like this allow you to essentially read the news without having to do any actual reading. This feature can help you be less busy and more productive by allowing you to do other activities while listening to the news stories that interest you. In short, it’s a time saver.
A good use of an application like this is to listen to it while driving. Listening to your news stories while commuting kills two birds with one stone. Plus, another bonus for apps like Newsbeat is that they give you control over the stories you listen to. News programs on the radio don’t give you that level of control.
Text-to-speech technology has given just about anyone with a smart phone something that used to only be reserved for the elite, personal assistants.
The most well known example is Apple’s Siri. Released in 2011, Siri was met with critical acclaim has become one of Apple’s iconic features. In fact, in June 2015 Apple revealed that Siri was receiving 1 billion requests a week.
While smart phones have been around for a while and could do just about all the functions a personal assistant could do (such as setting appointments, reminders, and taking notes), Siri uses a natural language user interface that has allowed users to interact with their devices much more efficiently.
This natural language processing lets the device understand what we’re saying, also known as speech recognition, and it communicates back to us using text-to-speech. With this technology, users were no longer confined to digging through their smart phones for information, we can just talk to it and it talks back to us!
Using digital personal assistants like Siri can make you more productive for a couple reasons. First, it makes it easier and quicker for you to find information. Just ask your personal assistant the question you have and it’ll tell you the answer. Second, it can remind you of upcoming meetings or deadlines with a verbal announcement.
Those are just a few examples. The limitations of what you can do with a digital personal assistant are continually being pushed. Experiment and try to find ways to put your digital assistant to work to help you become more productive.
This may not benefit you in a professional way, but text-to-speech is being used to make you more productive when working out!
Much like how text-to-speech can be used as a personal assistant, it can be used as a personal trainer. Personal trainers can improve the effectiveness of your workouts by giving you instruction, motivation, and variety.
However, personal trainers are expensive. On the other hand, smart phone apps are usually not expensive. There are lots of personal trainer apps on the market today. Some of the best ones have integrated text-to-speech technology so users wouldn’t have to look at their device while working out.
An example of this would be Seconds Pro. This interval training timer uses text-to-speech to announce the next interval names and advanced alerts as you go through your circuit training. Having an app like this lets you focus on the exercise instead of thinking about how long to do something or what’s coming up next.
Being able to focus more on the exercise allows you to work out harder, which hopefully means better results. Do some shopping and find the app that’s best for you, and watch your hard work at the gym or on the track pay off faster!
What do you think?
One of text-to-speech’s main purposes is to give our devices a new way to give us information. Today, developers are using this technology to help us be more productive, save time, and improve the way we interact with technology.
Has text-to-speech helped you become more productive in any way? What do you think text-to-speech could be used to make us more productive? Let us know in the comments!
Learn More about NeoSpeech’s Text-to-Speech
To learn more about the different areas in which Text-to-Speech technology can be used, visit our Text-to-Speech Areas of Application page. And to learn more about the products we offer, visit our Text-to-Speech Products page.
If you’re interested in adding Text-to-Speech software to your application or would like to learn more about TTS, please fill out our Sales Inquiry form and one of our friendly team members will be happy to help.