I answered the phone!

Status
Not open for further replies.

BarryG

Extremely helpful member
Joined
Nov 19, 2008
Messages
3,000
Diagnosis
02/2008
Country
CA
State
Alberta
City
Hinton
Hello everbody, I was so fussed up about the goat today that I forgot to tell you about my successful telephone conversation on Friday. I was home alone sitting in front of my computer playing around with E-triloquist when wouldn't you know it, the phone rang. Now usually I just let my former me (the answering machine) take calls but I figured what the heck? Let's try it and see what happens. I have my speaker phone beside my computer speaker so I answered and Microsoft Mike said Hello. The caller asked for Barry and then hung up when I didn't/couldn't answer right away. Ok, so that went well! The phone rang again, same person to give me another chance and this time I was ready. She said something and I said something, bla, bla bla and it was an actual telephone conversation! Me, talking on the phone with someone that I don't even know! Now I just need to buy a better voice!

Thank you Jennifer51 for letting me know about E-triloquist, for someone like me who used to talk on the phone for a living I really appreciate having a little bit of my old self back. I hope this didn't sound too much like a late night infomercial, it is late at night and I really should go to sleeeeeeee.....zzzzzzz
 
I know what an achievement that is ! I think I've posted about my first attempt to go live on the phone, where I managed to connect with an incoming call, and then panicked and sat there yelling at the Dynavox. (Someone unclear on the concept, obviously)

Just knowing that you can resume your interaction with the rest of the world is the greatest feeling. Control, doncha love it.
 
What great great news, it makes me so happy to hear small encouragements like this .. Keep getting better with this technology, and that will be a great moral booster.. It is so great to see steps like this..
 
That is so great! It is always nice to get a little of our independence back, congratulations!
 
Barry, this is so cool! I went to the E-triloquist site and checked it out. Jennifer51 deserves a shout out for recommending this!
I'm happy to hear about your success. Yay! :)
 
Barry, thanks for the update and the thanks, and thanks to thelma for the thanks.. but I dont deserve the credit...it is this forum, I found the information in the search facility as posted by someone a long time ago. I agree about the voice, I took ages trying to find a good british lady at reasonable cost. You have much more choice for american voices. Please all, take a look at natural reader software, some of which is free, it is also brilliant at reading emails or documents you may want to share with others, just highlight the text you want to share with someone and it will read it out for you. I have etriloquist and naturalreader always open on my computer.
 
Way to go Barry....that is FANTASTIC!
Rick
 
We were talking a while back about voice banking and recording one's own voice before it goes. If you can, you really should before it is too late. But the manufacturers of the machines that speak your recorded voice don't make it easy, it seems that you have to choose the voice machine before you can start to record your voice.

For me it is too late, I have no intelligible voice left to record. So ok fine, I use an electronic voice. But what voice? It seems that there is no standard format in the electronic voices either. Ryan, the only acceptable male voice in my Palmtop3 is really not me especially when everyone else with the same machine uses him too. I can purchase voices that will work with some programs but not others. For example Cepstral David is a good voice that will work with Swifttalker and E-triloquist but not with my Palmtop3. Same goes for the AT&T voices. It would be nice to have the same voice on my different talking devices, one that is a little more me than Ryan.

I'm really not complaining, I just think that it would be a lot better if there was a standard but I guess it's like Microsoft and Apple, VHS and Betamax, BlueRay and ?
 
Barry, I know what you are saying, I understand that people with Apple machines also have problems. I spent MONTHS looking for voices, wanting a UK voice. I found one which was about $300 then they wanted more money to put it on my second computer. I felt I was being ripped off. So the search continued. Then by chance I found voices on sites for the blind, found one I liked and it was about $60 for the voice, and I could put it on any number of computers. Just a thought, but try looking on sites for the visually impaired.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top