If you build applications for the consumer or enterprise market, you may be interested in letting your customers talk to them. We know people talk to their pets, their houseplants and even their cell phones via speech recognition capabilities, but what about that trusty desktop or laptop most people spend so much time with (probably even more time than their pets, houseplants or cell phone)?

No, we're not advocating creating applications for people who have gone off the rails a little: merely to consider adding speech recognition via voice interface technology to your desktop applications. While we'll cover the “why” a little later, here's the “how”:

Turin, Italy-based speech recognition company Loquendo is now offering voice synthesis technology that allows application developers to add a voice interface to all their desktop PC, Linux or MacOS applications, allowing users to “talk” to their applications (and let them “talk” back).

Loquendo's (News - Alert) TTS (text to speech) technology is available in a new “multimedia” profile in a great variety of languages and voices, offering users the level of quality they want, even in the compact version of the solution. The company offers a synthesized voice that can speak with emotional intonation and even laugh or cry (in case your customers need more drama in their lives) thanks to a set of effects that can provide particularly effective (read: human) expressions.

All of these can also read text in other languages, says Loquendo. Plus, thanks to the provided tools, it's even possible to mix voices and audio files to create unique, customizable results. You can create screen readers, make your applications more accessible to the blind and visually impaired, enhance games, offer more interactive and effective e-learning solutions and more.

Now for the why. According to Loquendo, the benefits of synthesized voices are compelling:

•       It can facilitate the development of applications for the visually impaired and elderly

•       It offers users more engaging applications

•       Allows for a reduction on recording costs

•       Allows for rapid updating of audio files at any time

•       Maintains the same voice over time.

For more information about Loquendo's speech recognition and text-to-speech solutions, visit http://www.loquendo.com/en/speech-solutions/desktop/.