FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


ThingTone Software Releases SpeakAlong

Rancho Cordova, CA -- December 15, 2006 -- ThingTone Software today announced the immediate availability of its new SpeakAlong 1.0 software for Mac OS X. For home and educational use, SpeakAlong is a talking storyteller able to read digital books aloud. In this first offering, "Children's Classics Edition," ThingTone Software delivers over a hundred story titles ready to be told using any of the built-in or third-party voices in Mac OS X Speech Preferences.

SpeakAlong introduces new technology for properly handling the sentence and phrase structure of the texts that it reads, resulting in more lifelike computer speech. SpeakAlong cues the text being spoken visually to the user, one phrase or sentence at a time, using other visual tools to help the user easily navigate through lengthy texts.

ThingTone Software breaks new ground by including texts for hours of listening with each edition of SpeakAlong. Every book is prepared using a new markup format called Silent Markup Language (SML), which enables section headings and other areas of a text to be presented in a hierarchical interactive table of contents.

For visually impaired users requiring the accessibility features of the Mac, SpeakAlong can be controlled through its talking table of contents and can easily be made to respond to spoken commands. The editors at ThingTone Software have planned a series of follow-on editions for children and adults specializing in classics in English literature.

ThingTone Software is the maker of the popular GrabBack portable backup application for Mac OS X. More information about ThingTone Software products is available at www.thingtone.net.

Information: http://www.thingtone.net/speakalong
Contact: contact @ thingtone.net