CoolSpeech is an award-winning proprietary text-to-speech program for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, developed by ByteCool Software. It controls text-to-speech engines compliant with Microsoft Speech API to fetch and read aloud text from a variety of sources, including websites

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

, email accounts

Email

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, local text documents

Text file

A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...

 (.txt, .rtf, .htm/html), the Windows Clipboard

Clipboard (software)

The clipboard is a software facility that can be used for short-term data storage and/or data transfer between documents or applications, via copy and paste operations...

, keyboard

Keyboard (computing)

In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...

 input from anywhere in Windows, and the current date and time. It can also bookmark a text source to be read aloud periodically or on-demand.

CoolSpeech has a 14-day free evaluation period, after which the program would require the user to purchase a US$29.95 license, which allows unlimited use and free upgrades.

Features

• Listen to online news from any URL specified by the user.
• Read local text files, rich-text files and HTML files aloud.
• Convert a given piece of text into a spoken wave file (.wav).
• Listen to new messages from POP3 email accounts specified by the user.
• Listen to every word or sentence the user has just typed anywhere in Windows.
• Listen to text copied to the Windows Clipboard immediately.
• Schedule files, URLs and emails to be read aloud.
• Tell the current time and the date in different styles.
• Support all Microsoft Speech API 4.0-compliant voices.

Awards

• ZDNet
  ZDNet
  ZDNet is a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive, along with TechRepublic and SmartPlanet. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991 as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication owned by CNET...
  
   "Hot File of the Day" on June 6, 2001.
• MSN
  MSN
  MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...
  
   "Featured Download" on February 19, 2002.
• SmartComputing
  SmartComputing
  SmartComputing is a monthly computing and technology magazine published by Sandhills Publishing Company in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. It was formerly known as PC Novice, and the first issue rolled out in 1990.-Content:...
  
  magazine's "November 2001 Smart Choice Award".
• More awards at this page.

Sister product

CoolSpeech has a sister product TextSound, which specializes in enhanced capabilities to batch convert text files into audio files, for users who need to produce spoken audio files in large volumes.