Acclaimed Musician Joey Stuckey Chooses TextAloud to Read, Work, Produce, and More

Text to Speech Software is a Hit for Award-winning Blind Musician

Clemmons, NC and Macon, GA (PRWEB) January 31, 2007 -- One of the most popular products in the NextUp Technologies (www.NextUp.com) software line, TextAloud continues to find rapidly growing popularity among the blind and visually impaired for its ease of use and superb voice quality. Most recently, famed blind musician, producer, and radio personality Joey Stuckey has discovered TextAloud, and is now an official and enthusiastic endorser.

The voice quality is heaven -- simply remarkable

"We're delighted to have the endorsement of Joey Stuckey, who is one of the Southeast's most famous and remarkable people," comments Rick Ellis, President of NextUp.com. "His use of TextAloud software, as well as NewsAloud and WeatherAloud, is an example of just how easy and useful our software products can be for those who are blind, or who are battling some form of visual disability."

TextAloud seamlessly converts text into spoken audio for listening on a laptop or desktop PC, and which can also save text to audio files for playback on portables like the iPod (R), PocketPC (R), and a wide range of other players and devices. Simple to use for anyone with a PC, TextAloud is inexpensive and affordable, with an array of terrific, natural-sounding voices also available. It's no wonder that TextAloud has already proven enormously popular with the blind and visually impaired, who too often face robotic voices and monotones when desiring to listen to books or articles read aloud.

Stuckey himself is a successful blind guitarist, songwriter, singer, composer, producer, radio personality, teacher, and sound engineer, who in April 2006 was also appointed the official Ambassador of Music for Macon, Georgia by its mayor and city council. He lost his sight and sense of smell as an infant as the result of a brain tumor, yet remained in mainstream education and actually graduated from high school at age 14. By the age of 17, while attending classes at Mercer University, he began his musical career by taking classical guitar lessons from noted music professor Terry Cantwell, and he had found his calling. Joey is now an award-winning musician, producer and entrepreneur in his own right, and he was delighted when he discovered the ease and value of NextUp's TextAloud.

"I was very impressed with TextAloud -- most especially with the quality of its voices," Stuckey comments. "I have a screen reader designed for the blind that I have to use for more advanced applications, but honestly the sound quality is just the pits. I read several eBooks per week, and if I want to read for pleasure, then I only use TextAloud!"

While it cannot replace high-end screen readers (as those offer the added ability to navigate menus, toolbars, and more) TextAloud is a superb and affordable addition to the blind person's arsenal of tools and products (and is quite accessible for the blind if used in tandem with a minimum of JFW 5.1 or higher). Stuckey adds, "Every blind person should have TextAloud on their computer -- the quality of the pronunciation, combined with the excellent audio quality, and the very human-sounding voices, make TextAloud the only choice for reading Word, PDF, web, and other text documents."

Stuckey also values TextAloud's ability to export documents, books, or other text in specific TextAloud voices, to audio files. "It's a great tool for sighted people that have blind folks as friends or family," he adds. "For example, you might use TextAloud to send an audio file of a letter you wrote to a blind friend -- or you can record an eBook to CD for the listening enjoyment of a family member in a hospital or nursing home."

Stuckey's favorite voice for use with TextAloud is "Mike," from AT&T Natural Voices (TM). "The voice quality is heaven -- simply remarkable," he comments. "It allows me to listen to something I have written, like an article or a blog post, with a more human voice. It's something that is very useful when trying to think about how it will flow when someone else reads the final version. It's even helpful for when I write radio spots, as it lets me get a feel for how it will sound with the voice talent as well!"

In addition to use on his laptop and desktop computers, Stuckey uses TextAloud on his iPod in order to learn song lyrics, as well as to assist him in memorizing outlines for his public speaking appearances. "I just get the info in a document, save it to an audio file and then take it on the road," he adds. Stuckey also uses NextUp's WeatherAloud for his daily weather reports, and NewsAloud to catch up on the day's headlines.

About Joey Stuckey
With four successful albums to his credit, Joey Stuckey (www.Joeystuckey.com) operates an acclaimed digital recording facility, Shadow Sound Studio, and has hosted three radio programs dedicated to preserving and promoting Georgia music. He currently owns and operates a 24-hour internet radio station, WTMT, and is also heard weekly on Massachusetts-based "Engage Internet Radio," on his popular audio music magazine "Audio Style." He has been featured in PRI's "The World", GPB's "Georgia Gazette", and "Big Takeover Magazine," and has received such honors as Recording Artist of the Year (1999) from The Atlanta Society of Entertainers, as well as the Little Jimmy Dempsey Award for Musical Excellence (2000, 2005), and the Jazz Artist of the Year in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. He won the Cotton Carrier Award in 2000 from the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame, as well as the 2004 Reader's Choice Award in Eleventh Hour Magazine for Best Singer/Songwriter. In April 2006, Joey was appointed the official Ambassador of Music for Macon, Georgia by its mayor and city council.

Stuckey and his band have opened for legendary artists including Ted Nugent, Bad Company, Trisha Yearwood, James Brown, the B-52's, and Smashmouth. In his other roles as producer, composer, sound engineer or hired musician, Stuckey has worked with such greats as Trisha Yearwood, Carole King, Chris Hillman, Jimmy Hall, Charlie Daniels, George McCorkle, Razzy Bailey, and actor Ron Lester. Stuckey is currently working on his debut jazz album, entitled "Sneakin'," as well as his country album, "Welcome to Stuckey Country: Population You."

About TextAloud
TextAloud has been featured in The New York Times, PC Magazine, Writer's Digest, on CNN, and more. Hailed by critics and users alike, TextAloud is priced at just $29.95, and is compatible with systems using Windows (R) 98, NT, 2000, XP and VISTA. The program is available for fast, safe and secure purchase via http://www.NextUp.com.

NextUp.com also offers TextAloud with optional premium voices from AT&T Natural Voices (TM), NeoSpeech (R), Nuance (R), Acapela (R) and Cepstral (R) for the most natural-sounding computer speech anywhere. Available languages include US English, UK English, Indian Accent English, Scottish Accent English, French, Canadian French, Latin American Spanish, Castilian (European) Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Italian, Dutch, Belgian Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, and Arabic.

About NextUp.com
NextUp.com, a division of NextUp Technologies, LLC, provides award-winning Text to Speech software for consumers, business customers, educators, and those with visual or vocal impairment, or learning disabilities.

In addition to TextAloud, NextUp.com markets other innovative Windows software designed to save time and deliver vital information. NewsAloud (TM) is a talking personal "news agent" that finds the stories users want, and then reads them aloud or to portable audio files. WeatherAloud (TM) is a weather application that lets users select and listen to personalized weather forecasts, while StocksAloud (TM) reads stock updates and related news headlines aloud for specific companies of interest. NextUp Talker is an easy and affordable program that allows people who have lost their voices to use the latest in high-quality computer voices to communicate with others. Most recently, NextUp introduced a new text reader, AbleReader, available with the AT&T Natural Voices (TM) for use on Mac computers. Information on AbleReader is available at http://www.AbleReader.com.

Note to Editors:
Evaluation copies of TextAloud are currently available upon request. To receive a review copy, or for more information on NextUp.com or TextAloud, please contact publicist Angela Mitchell at (904) 982-8043 or via Admitchell Nextup.com.

All companies and products referenced in this press release are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contacts:

Angela Mitchell
Paranoid PR (for NextUp.com)
(904) 982-8043
Admitchell Nextup.com

Jennifer Tade
Senate Records
(478) 742-7956
jennifer senaterecords.com

About TTS Voices

Before I actually highlight some of the great voices out there, Let's talk a bit about voices, their history, etc. Up until about 5 years ago, voices on personal computers were terrible. I'm sure you've heard them by now. They basically all sound like this

SND]"> demo44.mp3

Microsoft developed 3 voices, Mary, Mike and Sam. Then they licensed some similar sounding

voices from Lernout and Hauspie, a now defunct speech product company.  These were all we

had to work with when we first started. Then came AT&T Natural Voices. Bell Labs has invented

a lot of the great products the world uses, and these were a real breakthrough.

Developed primarily for use in Call Centers, like when you call an airline and a comptuer talks to you,
these voices were a significant breakthrough.  Luckily for PC users, they had the foresight to
port these to PC and make them available to consumers for a wide variety of applications.  This kind of kicked
off several companies with new generation voices that are gettting closer and closer to human sounding all the time.

A bit on SAPI, microsoft's speech interface in the next post.

TextAloud Overview

Want to start out things with some overview of what NextUp has to offer. Our main product is TextAloud. We've been making it since sometime in 1999 when I had this weird idea of being able to listen to text during my commute. We were the first to ever do anything like it. Of course, like any good idea, lots of people come along to copy it later.

At its simplest level, TextAloud let's you take pretty much any text on your computer, and hear it aloud, or make an audio file from it. Listening aloud on the PC is great if you

• Want to multi-task, listenning to something while you do something else
• Can comprehend better and faster if you hear instead of, or while you read
• Have any vision or reading impairments, including things like dyxlexia
• Want to really proofread your writing. Spell check gets a lot of typos out, but doesn't do much to really check grammar or that you've actually typed the words you mean to. Using TextAloud's special proofreading features, you can quickly listen to your writing and catch and correct errors.

Creating audio files opens up a whole new worlds of possibilities. TextAloud can create wave, mp3, and wma files. You can take any text and turn it into an audio file. Common uses might include:

• If you just don't have time to read it all, take your reading portable on an mp3 player, pocketpc, or audio CD that can play in any CD player
• Students can speed learning by listenning to assigned reading.
• We hear from a lot of lawyers who listen to contracts they write to proofread them during their commute
• Sick of Radio, make audio books from ebooks to listen to away from the PC.

Over time I'll write more about some of the uses we hear about. Our users are generally smarter than us and keep coming up for ways to use the product we've never even thought of.

Below is a bit of the marketing material for TextAloud that talks more about its features.

The World's Most Popular Text to Speech Tool!

TextAloud reads text from email, web pages, reports and more, aloud on your PC. TextAloud can also save your daily reading to MP3 or Windows Media files ready for playback on your iPod, PocketPC, or even on your TV with Tivo's Home Media Option. Be more productive or just be entertained wherever you go with our text reader. Our TextAloud 2.0 release is here and packed with new features!

If you haven't heard computer speech lately, you'll be amazed at how human-like the latest voices really are. Click Here for a sample audio file created using our text to speech converter with the optional AT&T Natural Voices™. We also offer exciting premium voices from NeoSpeech™ and Cepstral™ to bring you the best quality and personality in speech for your PC.

Why wait? Try our text to speech converter now!

You can download a free trial version of TextAloud. It does not include the optional premium voices, but is a fully functional version of TextAloud that you can evaluate for 15 days with no obligation. Optional premium voices can be added at the time of purchase.

Business people, students, educators, writers, lawyers, homemakers and busy people from all walks of life find TextAloud to be an essential tool they use every day. It's been featured in The New York Times, PC Magazine, Writer's Digest, on CNN and more. Click Here to read some user testimonials and find out what you can do with TextAloud.

What you can do with TextAloud:

•		Sit back and relax while your PC reads to you
•		Save text to MP3 for portable audio players
•		Proofread your own writing
•		Listen to that report while you're on the treadmill
•		Find help for someone with a reading disability
•		Create messages for your answering machine
•		Reduce eye strain from too much reading
•		Listen to information while you work on something else
•		Take some reading along for your daily walk or run
•		Turn your iPod into a tax write-off
•		Listen to an eBook during your commute
•		Study English as a Second Language
•		Help a senior citizen or someone with low vision
•		Add some spice to your PowerPoint presentations
•		Find a great new tool to study for exams
•		Listen to text read in other languages
•		Amuse your kids by letting your PC read stories to them
•		Create audio files for computer games
•		Prepare for a big speech by hearing your words read aloud
•		Read some user testimonials

Download TextAloud Version 2.228

	TextAloud 2 converts any text into voice and even to MP3. Listen to email, web pages and documents on your computer or portable MP3 player.
	Purchase TextAloud 2 today for $29.95 and get an 84 Page Printable Manual!

One thing that really sets TextAloud apart from anything else around is that we have partnerships with the best voice companies around. Most of these companies develop fantastic voices for telephony usage, such as large call centers. But, they've ported these voices to PC and made them available to consumers. In the next few posts I'll highlight these great voices.

New Text To Speech related Blog

Hopefully I'll get some good content up here soon. My goal at first is to introduce many of the products and neat things available from NextUp.com. Once that is done I'll post the latest news related to Text To Speech, what you can do with it, and some other neat things I find along the way. If you find I'm not posting enough, drop a comment to remind me. This was one of my new years resolutions.