We are currently upgrading the website and also cleaning our servers to free up disk space.  As a result, we will be deleting most of the recordings created so far.

For those of you who want to preserve some recordings in your My Recordings page, you have the option of marking them to be preserved. This option is available by going into the Save Recordings link from My Recordings page.
 

Ideally we would suggest that you download all your mp3 files so that you have a copy of the files even if they get deleted from the server

We will be putting the site offline at about 10 AM Saturday, Nov.1 Central Daylight Time (CDT) -0500 UTC and the site will be back  online at around 10 AM Tuesday, Nov.4th Central Daylight Time (CDT) -0500 UTC .



 

Apart from the 4 standard static avatars to read out your recordings,  there is now a facility to customize your avatar's appearance . You can create customized avatars and  use them instead of the static avatars.

The Avatar creation page is accessible from the My Recordings page. Before creating any new avatar, you need to specify a name for it. Once a custom avatar is created, you can go to the Select Avatars page and set the male and female avatars.

 

We have update the IE version of our ReadTheWords toolbar. Please uninstall any older version if you have already been using it as the old toolbar will not work with the update website.

Using this , you can convert text in a web page to speech without having to go to ReadTheWords.com.

The toolbar has been tested with IE 5.5, 6.0 and 7.0

The steps for installing are as follows:

• Download the toolbar zip file from the download link given below
• Create a folder called Toolbar in your disk
• Unzip the files in the folder
• Close all open windows of IE
• Double click on Installer.exe
• Open IE. If the RTW toolbar does not show then right click on the space above the address bar to get the list of installed toolbars. Check the item called RTW Toolbar. There should be a tick mark next to it.
• Close IE and open it again. The toolbar should be installed now.

To remove or uninstall the toolbar:

• Go to the toolbar folder
• Close all open IE windows
  
• Dbl click on Uninstaller.exe

Please contact us for any problems or issues faced while using the toolbar.

The IE toolbar can be downloaded from here 

We have introduced 2 male and 2 female avatars which members can select to read out their recordings.

 

You can select your avatar settings once you log into your My Recordings screen.  When you click on Play Avatar icon below each recording, depending on the voice used  the male or female avatar will popup and read the recording.

Please note that recordings older than May20th,2008 will not work with avatars as that functionality was built in later.

 

The new updated Firefox toolbar for ReadTheWords.com is here. For all those who have installed the older version, you have to uninstall the old version and install this version as the old version no longer works with the updated site. 

Download the Firefox toolbar v.2.0 here 

 

Download the xpi file from the link above. Open Firefox and go to File menu. Click on Open. Select this xpi file and run it.

 

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 released a toolbar which can be plugged in to your Firefox browser.

 

Using this toolbar, you can access your ReadtheWords member account and create recordings on the fly from any web page in your browser. Simply select text in the current web page and click on Record Text. A generated mp3 file will ready for download within seconds. We have kept a limit of 500 characters for text now.

 Please note that you do not have to login or register to be able to record the text .

 The toolbar is going to undergo some changes and enhancements in the near future. We look forward to getting feedback from you about the toolbar. 

 Steps to download and install the ReadTheWords Firefox extension.

• Download the rtwtoolbar.xpi file from here and save it to your hard disk.
• Open Firefox and select the File ->Open menu option
• Select the xpi file and click on Install
• After restarting the browser, the toolbar should show up as shown above in the picture
• This version of the toolbar will work from Firefox v.1.5.* to Firefox v.2.5.* . We will test for compatibility with Firefox 3.0,which has been released 24 hrs back, and  upload an updated toolbar in the next few days.