Talk to Me

Check out this demo of a new speech synthesis program by IBM. You give it text, it gives you speech. I tried it with part of the prologue to Star Trek, which the "US female 1" voice made sound quite surprisingly natural, and part of the prologue to Farscape, which "US Male 1" rendered rather more stiltedly, but with major bonus points for pronouncing Crichton's name correctly. I think Stephen Hawking is going to feel jealous. (Link via Transterrestrial Musings.)