Talking iPods and cell phones

From The Scotsman's Richard Gray:

FROM Walkman to Talkman. Not content with changing the world's music-listening habits, Apple has come up with another innovation: the talking iPod.

A new generation of machines will use sophisticated software to convert the names of bands, albums and individual tracks into recognisable speech.

The new iPod will tell you what it is about to play, removing the need for users to look at the screen while selecting music, and making the device safer and easier to use while driving, cycling or in badly-lit locations.

The story references a patent application, but I haven't see the details yet.

A comment in The Unofficial Apple Weblog relates

I've had this for -years- on my PhatBox in my car.. All it does is generate .WAV files for the speech, and then upload them to the PhatBox.. The PhatBox uses the .WAV files to announce the track, album, arist, etc.. With more cars having iPod docks, or line-in, I see this as a much safer way to use it..

Music players aren't the only devices that talk. A little looking leads to this talking software for the Nokia Series 60 phones, SpeechPak TALKS:

I think this is a really compelling use of a smart phone, and one that shouldn't be lightly dismissed. Unlike other phones like the cool K700, a mobile phone with an operating system can provide services like this for users who may need special access. I can imagine other applications as well - say blowing up the size of the text for those users who may not be blind, but with visual impairment of some sort. But even just sticking with voice, SMS is suddenly accessible, as is email and WAP pages. In the near future, location services could help the user navigate around town with spoken directions and more - I have no idea what it would be like to visually disabled, but I'm sure there are times when something like that would be quite handy. It's really quite amazing, if you think about it.