Just as Amazon killed the incredible Stanza word-processor, a potential rival in the future to the less capable Kindle e-reading software, will it at least throttle back Ivona’s R&D to make the world safer for Audible? Hard to say. Perhaps Amazon’s ownership of Ivona technology will make Amazon more inclined to offer TTS in the Paperwhite in the future, either as a standard feature or an extraġ. Will Jeff let us buy different voices as options? Or, better, supply at least several voices, just as Kindle hardware lets you choose fonts?Ģ. Maybe my Fire will at last offer the voice of Amy, the British-accented voice I prefer, especially for Dickens.

Here are positive and negative possibilities.ġ. It’s too early to know how Amazon’s Ivona purchase-price unknown-will shake out for library users with disabilities and for other fans of text to speech, including many a commuter (as well yours truly, who uses TTS when he walks or treads). Was Amazon’s ownership of Audible, the Kong of audio books, a factor? And the existence of the Fire? A headphone jack and speech chip on the Paperwhite would have cost a pittance, even if a speaker wouldn’t fit-or Amazon could have offered a speech-capable model as an option. Deliberate intra-brand market segmentation? Either way, this lack of audio stinks.

It’s reportedly already using Ivona’s Salli voice in the Kindle Fire, and Ivona tech is also powering “Voice Guide” and “Explore by Touch.” Too bad those features aren’t available on the Amazon’s Paperwhite E Ink machine so far. Well, guess which Seattle-based megaconglomerate has just bought Ivona Software (Web site here, Wikipedia entry here)-perhaps the world’s best provider of text to speech to use with e-books and other texts?

Tts reader ivona