My Talker 1.2: Kid-friendly type-and-talk app

My Talker 1.2 is easily the simplest type and talk application available for download.

When you first get started you are presented with a large text box and a talk button. That's pretty much it. No formating tools, no option menus, nothing. The one thing you can do is select from three animated characters who will, in a very fun manner, speak what you type. The three choices are: a genie, a green bird named Peedy, and a butler named James. Each character has its own animations and slightly different computer created voice. You can also hide the characters if they become a distraction.

In addition to the characters, you can also select the Professional version which gives you an animation-free voice that you can also save .wav file recordings of. It appears that only the Professional voice can be recorded as the licensing for the other voices is no doubt different.

The application is very kid-friendly and would be an excellent resource for teachers and tutors (especially those working with special needs children). The speech works phonetically when My Talker isn't able to recognize a word and follows punctuation clues to add emphasis. A text balloon appears above the character while speaking which indicatives what is being spoken. The animations are simple yet creative, and can be rather humorous at times. Best of all, it's free!

Tags: audio, freeware, speech, text to speech, TextToSpeech, type and talk, TypeAndTalk, voice