Text-To-Speech Services
Mashups
It’s been called the essence of Web 2.0. It’s the ability to combine pieces of different web sites to create something new, something meaningful. Something for you and the people who have your tastes. Your social network. Not some mass market portal built by corporate programmers who think that they know you and your personal tastes.
Referred to as a composite web site by some and Mashup site by others, we call it amalgamating web data through the process of transcoding. Whatever. It’s about giving you the data that you want on your mobile phone or desktop browser. It’s Web 2.0. It’s about you.
The Audible Web
Visually impaired users have been waiting for equal access to the Web. Web 1.0 technologies failed to provide "data neutrality". One hundred "Voice" standards but nothing worth listening to. Until now... whether it's for your users with disabilities or for your power users who want more intelligent user interfaces.
You can now listen to your Mashups. You can now hear your widget/gadget announce its content. We've made it possible by integrating FreeTTS, the text-to-speech technology from Sun Labs, into all of our Web 2.0 tools... from the widget/gadget tools to our semantic RDF Mashup metamodel.
Did you hear that? It's the Audible Web finally arriving.
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Runtime Client Support for Text-To-Speech Services
Our integration with the FreeTTS speech synthesis engine extends the reach of our Mashup development tools to include any audio-enabled technology as a deployment client. This includes MP3 players, web browsers, mobile phones, widgets/gadgets, .NET applications, and Java technology-based clients such as JavaFX.
To understand the underlying technology of our Mashup tools—and in fact to build a Mashup Widget—you will use our StableDOM technology. The StableDOM product documentation is located at http://altmobile.com/pdf/StableDOM.pdf. The XML Transcoding product documentation is located at http://altmobile.com/pdf/XML%20Transcoding.pdf. Review the DOM Browser product document to understand how to create enterprise Mashups that integrate SQL data, Web Services data, and HTML content. It is located at http://altmobile.com/pdf/DOM%20Browser.pdf. And finally, our Mashup monitoring and metadata implementation is documented here: http://altmobile.com/pdf/Mashup%20Tools.pdf.Leveraging the StableDOM and code generation technologies, our Mashup Designers allow the user to specify if the generated widget/gadget should announce its updated content. This option may be found in the "Content Properties" section as seen here:
This capability is available in the Mashup Designer for Opera Widgets, the Mashup Designer for Apple Dashboard Widgets, the Mashup Designer for Vista Sidebar Gadgets, the Mashup Designer for Adobe Apollo, and the Mashup Designer for JavaFX.
It is not available in the Mashup Designer for Google Gadgets, the Mashup Designer for RSS Feeds, or the Mashup Designer for Yahoo! Pipes.
Apollo HTML applications currently do not support audio output.JavaScript-based Widgets/Gadgets as well as Adobe Apollo applications have access to the source code that instructs the client to announce the Mashup. This is available in the "AJAX Properties" section of the Mashup Designers as seen here:
The function announceMashupResult() is found in the generated file named mashupWorld.js as seen in this Vista Sidebar Gadget example:
Currently, the Mashup Designer for JavaFX as well as the class com.altmobile.platform.ui.mashupClient.JavaFXClient do not provide user access to its audio player source code. As an alternative, the Mashup content announcement API is defined as follows:
- 1.void playWav (String url)
The Mashup Designer for JavaFX documentation is found here: http://altmobile.com/pdf/Mashup%20Designer%20for%20JavaFX%20Clients.pdfSound Resources and Cache Busting
The code generation technology of the Mashup Designers correctly handles the problem of sound resources/URL caching on all platforms including browser-based widget/gadget systems, .NET, and the Java platform. Without implementing "cache busting," most of the audio clients would continue to announce the initial Mashup results even though the client visual content would continue to be updated.
Development Support for Text-To-Speech Services
As part of providing testing capabilities during the Mashup development process, the Mashup Monitor Tool allows you to listen to your Mashup content by clicking the "audio" icon as seen here:
Additionally, if you are building a text-to-speech enabled widget/gadget, Adobe Apollo application, or JavaFX application you can also listen to your Mashup prior to deployment by refetching the content after selecting the Text-To-Speech option as seen in this next screen shot:
This is especially beneficially if your Mashup includes content from multiple websites, statically defined content, or content from enterprises data sources.