We have launched a new feature for all our paid members - Split MP3 Processing. If you have submitted a very long document or text for speech conversion, then its likely you would have to wait from a few minutes to even a couple of hours for extremeley long recordings to hear your recording playback. If you opt for Split MP3 processing in these cases, then you can start hearing the speech playback within a few seconds while the rest of the recording gets created.

This is a revolutionary concept pioneered by us, which lets you start hearing the playback even while the recording is getting created. Our new Split MP3 Processing feature breaks the large recording down into small units and processes them independently. This enables you to listen the first few minutes of playback  within a few seconds of starting the recording process. Once the complete recording is created , it gets converted into a single mp3 as usual.

This option will be available as part of Convert Text recording. We invite all our  paid members to try out this feature and let us know your feedback. This service is currently in beta as we want to fine tune it further based on your feedback. Ultimately it will be offered as a feature for converting document and web pages too.

This feature is available for paid members currently.

There is a new image link called Play Avatar in the My Recordings page. Clicking on this link will open a popup window with an avatar which reads the recording with synchronized lip movements. We are still working on the avatar module for now. The current avatar is a female one. The male avatar should be up soon.

We have instructions for you here

Some users were facing the problem of an error page coming up when they tried to delete a recording. This was caused by an experimental module we have put up which created an xml file for each recording. This error has been fixed now.  

We want to hear from our members if they are using the IPod download link and if the downloaded RSS file is giving any problems  We are working on making the integration with Itunes more smooth and transparent.

Since a majority of people with blogs use Wordpress as their platform,we have introduced a Wordpress plugin which is available for download from our site. Once installed on your WP blog, you can insert recordings by just typing in a single line within your blog article. Check your My Recordings page for exact details.

For all those who haven't tried it yet, we have introduced the ability to add custom speech tags to enhance the generated speech.

The link to see the Tips sheet is in the Create Recordings screen as shown below

On clicking the link you get a list of speech tags with examples on how they affect the speech output.

We are busy working on putting up some new features which will add more value to the embedded player that people can plug into their blog as well as making it easier for members to record any text from their browsers without having to visit readthewords.com everytime.  This month we are taking readthewords.com to the next level with your continued support and patronage.