Note: Are you on a Mac using Leopard? Stop reading this post and instead, select the text for the post. Then go to Safari > Services > Speech > Starting Speaking Text. Alex is the new default voice and it’s really natural sounding!

I’ve been working with my new Macbook Pro for a few weeks now and the surprises keep coming. All over the system I’ve found neat little trinkets and touches—no surprise, really, considering the developer. One of the more interesting features that I’ve discovered is a new voice in the speech section of the System Preference. If you’re on a Mac using Leopard, the new default voice for all things Speech related, “Alex,” is impressively natural sounding (see instructions above to try it out).

I encountered this new voice when I checked out something called Textcast, an impressive little piece of software from Bitmaki that allows you to automate podcasting with the new synthetic voice, Alex. I can’t yet think of any particular use for Textcast, but it’s one of those applications that just strikes me for its potential. I, for one, have a lot of fiction online and I’ve always wanted to make it easy for people to listen to it as well as read it, but the sheer amount of it has generally kept me away from such a project. But this could be a nice alternative for folks who’d like to listen to my fiction instead.

[source: Daring Fireball]

Stop all the downloadin’! Okay, sorry for the Fensler Joe reference—it’s been on my mind lately. But it may not be long before you need to look out for being conned by a machine. Aside from some strange footage of a CGI person, this article over at Cognitive Daily discusses research that shows how people can be fooled by machines. The most effective method?—when the machine simply imitates a human.

About a week ago I introduced the new category of “fabertising” and that was a good call, because where human thinking and media are concerned, you really have to keep an eye on advertising—a kind of perpendicular axis to the simple philosophical notion that there are facts that can be proven to be true or false.  That much done, I now realize, after watching this brilliant piece from Scientific American and Alan Alda that it is time to stop discussing the difference between two categories that I have had here before; namely, “It’s thinking” and “Those Crazy Droids.” In fact, it is time that we realize that our capacity to recognize data within a context—what we call information—is totally dependent on (or embedded in) our construction and our ability to aggregate data in the first place. Intelligence is about prediction and is therefore architected on the foundation of inductive reasoning and data assimilation. Our intellect is embodied—without multiple forms of perception, there is no predictive ability. Watch the video after the jump:

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With all the bad news lately, I decided it was time to put together an upbeat punk-pop-rock station on Pandora so at least something sounded kind of happy, if not peppy-mad. The thing is, I could think of a few bands I wanted to seed this one with, among them, The Ting Tings and Metric—both good at being mad with an upbeat sound; rebels all. But there was this other band… swedish, I think. I hadn’t listened to them in years and just couldn’t think of the name, even though I knew it was really simple. Well, three songs into listening to my new station who comes up but the Sounds! Wow. The very band I couldn’t recall. Pandora borders on psychic when it does stuff like this. By far the best music web site out there, folks. Tune into my new station and check it out for yourself!

Despite the fact that “Semantic Web” has been trending down (at least in Google searches), it seems like more web sites devoted to it are popping up these days. I’ve been messing around with Twine for a fews weeks now and it seems pretty useful, although it definitely can’t accomplish what they claim. [^1] A new one that I stumbled into, via KurzweilAI.net is Powerset. My 30 second review is that I tried searches on two pretty obscure subjects that I’ve been reading about lately, the St. Petersburg factor[^2] and kriegsspiel. Basically, I got the same search results at wikipedia, powerset and google—no immediately discernible differences.

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