Narrator, my fun application to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices, has been updated to version 2.0.7.

This is a minor bug-fix update to correct an issue with looking up licenses in certain situations, but is recommended for everyone.

Download Narrator 2.0.7 now!

Two Dejal products are in separate bundles at the same time currently:

• Narrator, my fun application to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices, is in Mac Bundle Box, a collection of 6 handy apps for only $29.00.
• Caboodle, my lean clean snippet machine to help store and organize text and images, is in TheMacBundles, a collection of 12 useful apps for only $49.95.
• Also, Narrator is available separately as a weekly special for only $9.95 via TheMacBundles, for this week only.

20% of Mac Bundle Box purchases will be donated to the American Red Cross for Haiti disaster relief.

Check out the Mac Bundle Box and TheMacBundles websites for more information about the bundles, including the other applications included in each, or to take advantage of these great deals!

Yesterday around 150 independent Mac and iPhone developers participated in Indie+Relief. These developers pledged to donate proceeds of all yesterday's sales to a charity of their choice for Haiti relief efforts.

This event was organized by Justin Williams of Second Gear Software. It started off as an idea for himself, and he shared it with people on Twitter, and the idea spread. Soon, he was gathering information from other developers and setting up a website, with the design help of Garrett Murray. What started as a simple idea for himself grew into a major fundraising effort involving hundreds of applications.

I was more than happy to join in, and am pleased to be able to report sales totalling $1,350 yesterday (which is definitely more than a typical day!).

I will be donating this amount to Mercy Corps, a very worthwhile Portland-based charity. Read more about what they're doing in Haiti.

Furthermore, my wife's corporate overlords have a program of matching charitable donations, so that will bring the total up to $2,700.

It'll probably take a few days to get a total from all developers participating in Indie+Relief, but it sounds like more than $100,000 has been raised.

A very big thank you to everyone who participated, and especially to the many kind people who purchased Dejal products yesterday. I got emails from a few people saying that they had been thinking about buying Simon, and decided to buy the Enterprise license as a way to help donate to Haiti.

If you missed this event, not to worry — you can still make donations to the charity of your choice. I recommend Mercy Corps, but Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross and others are also excellent choices.

Finally, Narrator is currently in the Mac Bundle Box promotion. The bundle organizer will be donating 20% of all proceeds from this bundle to the Red Cross. So you can still donate while getting great software.

I've just released an update to Narrator, my fun app to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices.

Version 2.0.6 fixes a couple of small but annoying bugs, and is a recommended update for everyone:

• Fixed a bug where the age, gender, and sliders might not update when changing actors or characters.
• Fixed a bug that could occasionally cause the Play button to stop working when playing/pausing or changing voice attributes quickly.

Download Narrator 2.0.6 now!

I'm pleased to report that we now have a solution for the Snow Leopard incompatibility of Narrator, the fun app to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices.

The issue was a bug in Snow Leopard, which prevented Narrator from open its own documents. The bug stumped Apple's Developr Technical Support engineers, and definitely seems to be a bug in the operating system itself, not in my code. But the DTS engineers finally came up with a workaround for the bug, which this update implements. Narrator can once again open its documents, and so now appears to be fully compatible with Snow Leopard.

My apologies for any inconvenience this bug may have caused.

Download Narrator 2.0.5 now!

And remember, you can still get Narrator and 11 other useful apps for just $49.95 from TheMacBundles for another few days.

TheMacBundles promotion is almost over! Last chance to get Dejal Narrator and 11 other great apps for just $49.95.

Narrator utilizes speech synthesis to read out the contents of a text document, using different voices for different parts. You have a range of "actors" that can portray any number of "characters", so various passages of your document are spoken with differing voices, pitches, inflections, etc. You can have it read out a play or story with appropriate voices. The words are highlighted on-screen, and there are also a couple of silent read-along options for stage directions, or for you to read out your own parts. A full license is included in the bundle, not some cut-down version.

You can see more of it on the Narrator page, or download it now to give it a try.

Note that at present Narrator has an issue on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): everything works okay, except that it can't open saved Narrator documents. It can open other kinds, though. I'm still waiting for help from Apple to fix this, but will release a free update to fix this as soon as possible. Of course, if you're still on Leopard, you won't be affected.

This bundle also includes 11 other fine apps, for only $49.95. A bargain!

The included apps are:

• CrossOver Games
• DVDRemaster Pro
• Entourage Email Archive X
• EastPrint
• ImageFramer
• Money
• Neutrino
• Scribbles
• Speed Download
• Super Flexible File Synchronizer

Plus bonuses:

• Mac DVDRipper Pro
• Narrator

12 apps for just $49.95 — a saving of over 85%!

Visit TheMacBundles.com to learn more, or to take advantage of this great deal before it expires. Don't delay!

I'm pleased to announce that Dejal Narrator, my fun app to read out stories and interviews in multiple voices, is included as a bonus in the fourth TheMacBundles collection.

Narrator utilizes speech synthesis to read out the contents of a text document, using different voices for different parts. You have a range of "actors" that can portray any number of "characters", so various passages of your document are spoken with differing voices, pitches, inflections, etc. You can have it read out a play or story with appropriate voices. The words are highlighted on-screen, and there are also a couple of silent read-along options for stage directions, or for you to read out your own parts. A full license is included in the bundle, not some cut-down version.

You can see more of it on the Narrator page, or download it now to give it a try.

Note that at present Narrator has an issue on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): everything works okay, except that it can't open saved Narrator documents. It can open other kinds, though. I'm waiting for help from Apple to fix this, but will release a free update to fix this as soon as possible. Of course, if you're still on Leopard, you won't be affected.

This bundle also includes 11 other fine apps, for only $49.95. A bargain!

The included apps are:

• CrossOver Games
• DVDRemaster Pro
• Entourage Email Archive X
• EastPrint
• ImageFramer
• Money
• Neutrino
• Scribbles
• Speed Download
• Super Flexible File Synchronizer

Plus bonuses:

• Mac DVDRipper Pro
• Narrator

12 apps for just $49.95 — a saving of over 85%!

Visit TheMacBundles.com to learn more, or to take advantage of this great deal.

Good news: most Dejal apps work fine on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

One issue that you may find with Caboodle and BlogAssist is that the Services menu has been enhanced, and the items for those apps might be disabled by default. You can re-enable them via the Keyboard Shortcuts page of the Keyboard system preferences.

However, it's not all good news. Narrator seems to be broken on Snowy. Opening a document fails, whether it was saved on Leopard or Snow Leopard. The document opens, but no content is loaded. It still opens version 1 documents fine, but not version 2's, which is rather a problem.

I've spent several hours last night and this morning trying to figure out what the problem is, without any luck so far. I'll keep on it, but just wanted to warn anyone using Narrator.

Once again, Seth Dillingham is offering bundles as a fund-raiser for the Pan-Mass Challenge, which supports cancer research and treatment. A very worthy cause.

Unlike typical software bundles, where hundreds or thousands of people might get a fixed collection of apps at a discount, this one is a bit different: you can use his Bundle Builder site to make your personal ideal bundle of iPhone and/or Mac apps, and offer your own price for it.

I am happy to participate in this effort again this year. A Standard license is available for Dejal Simon, my essential server monitoring tool, along with licenses for Dejal Caboodle, my lean clean snippet machine, Dejal Narrator, my fun app to speak stories in multiple voices, and Dejal BlogAssist, my handy HTML markup tool. Plus hundreds of other great products from other developers.

Go ahead, take a look, and put together your ideal bundle of apps, and help fight cancer!

Narrator, my fun text-to-speech tool to read out stories or interviews in multiple voices, has now been updated to version 2.0.4.

It includes:

• Fixed an issue with the Preferences window, where edits might not be saved when quitting with the window still open (specifically when an edit is still active).
• Fixed an issue that could prevent finding licenses in very rare circumstances.
• Updated the built-in Kagi purchasing tool to the latest version, which fixes some issues with Leopard.

Download Narrator 2.0.4 now!

Macs are used by people with taste; the taste to know that the Mac is the best computing platform in the world!

So people with discerning tastes of course want only the best ingredients. Once again, the Give Good Food to Your Mac promotion is here to help.

You can select from a delicious range of quality Mac software, sampling each to find just the right items for you. Then construct a recipe of delights, receiving an increasing discount the more you purchase.

I am very pleased to be able to include Dejal Narrator to this elite selection. Narrator is an elegant speech synthesis application that has a unique feature: the ability to mix multiple voices in one document, e.g. to listen to an interview or read out a story with multiple characters. It also supports exporting to iTunes or sound files, so you can make your own synthesized voice podcasts.

So take a moment to browse through the ingredients and enjoy the savings on many fine specimens of Mac software!

Visit the Give Good Food to Your Mac site.

Did you miss out on Dejal Simon on MacUpdate Promo recently? Never fear — I've agreed to list it at a great price in their extended deals section.

What's more, Caboodle, my handy app to keep snippets of text, images, PDFs, etc organized, and Narrator, my fun app to speak text in multiple voices, are also still available via MacUpdate Promo special deals, for a limited time:

• 33% off Simon Basic
• 30% off Caboodle
• 30% off Narrator

Narrator, my fun text-to-speech app that allows mixing multiple voices in a document and exporting to iTunes, has been updated to version 2.0.3.

This release includes some important bug fixes, and is a recommended update for everyone:

• Fixed an issue with the Export to iTunes feature, where the importing-into-iTunes phase could fail with a "parameter error" if exporting a lot of text.
• The lyrics value in the Export to iTunes is now limited to a length of 20,000 characters, to avoid overloading the export mechanism.
• Fixed an occasional crasher if the word highlighting is out-of-sync with the spoken text for some reason.
• Disabled automatic emphasis in speech for non-Apple voices, to work around a bug in the Cepstral voices, where it gives a spurious exception regarding an unexpected emphasis close tag, when there is nothing wrong with the text.

Download now!

The Mac Bundle Box collection of 15 great applications is now available!

The bundle includes my own Caboodle and Narrator, plus 13 more excellent applications from other independent developers, for the low price of $49.95 total. Save hundreds of dollars over the cost of buying them separately! My two apps are together worth $35, so If there are even just one or two other apps in the bundle that you want, you'll be saving lots of money.

Visit the Mac Bundle Box site to take advantage of this great deal, while it lasts!

Coming on August 1st:

A bundle of 15 great applications, including my own Caboodle and Narrator, for only $49.95 total.

Get a sneak peek at the contents via Chris Pirillo:

Visit the Mac Bundle Box site to sign up to be notified when it's available, or come back in a couple of days!

Narrator, my app to read out stories in multiple voices, has been updated to version 2.0.2.

It is also available for half price for today only, via the MacUpdate Promo page. Be in quick to take advantage of this one-day offer!

This bug-fix release includes a few important issues:

• Fixed an occasional crasher when saving a document immediately after making text or ruler changes.
• Fixed a bug where the license reminder in the window title would appear even when licensed, when launching the application by opening a document instead of launching the app directly.
• Fixed a cosmetic bug with the Check for Updates feature when using a general release and wanting only general releases, and a beta release is available.

Download Narrator 2.0.2 now, and check out the MacUpdate Promo deal before it expires!

Narrator version 2.0.1 is now available. This release fixes one important bug, that prevented the rate and pitch controls from working properly in some situations.

I've also put together a new screencast on Narrator, showing what was discussed in my previous blog post: using Narrator to read a web interview in multiple voices, including exporting it to iTunes.

Interestingly, I used Narrator to narrate the Narrator screencast... very meta of me. :)

Check it out:

Download Narrator now!

My German localizer, Ulf Dunkel of DSD.net, recently suggested an excellent use for Dejal Narrator. The app was designed with reading out stories using multiple voices in mind, but it's certainly not limited to that. Any text that includes multiple people is a good candidate.

One common case when people are conversing is a web interview. The format is pretty standard: each paragraph represents something one of the participants said, and is prefixed with their name or initials. Narrator's Casting Assistant feature recognizes this format, making it very easy to mark up the text.

When you find an interview you'd prefer to listen to, rather than read — perhaps just so you can rest your eyes, or maybe you want to listen to it on an iPod — you can easily use Narrator to read it out, with different voices for each of of the participants.

Here's how:

1. Select the interview text in the web browser (e.g. this Macworld interview on iPhone gaming, or this Phorum interview).
2. Choose Services ▶ Narrator ▶ New Document with Selection from the web browser's application menu.
3. In Narrator, edit the names at the start of paragraphs, if necessary, to make them consistent (sometimes the first usage is a longer name).
4. Choose Director ▶ Casting Assistant... (or click the toolbar button).
5. Click Cast to have Narrator add Characters for the participants.
6. Change the Actors' voice attributes, if desired.

That's it! You can then export to iTunes if desired, or listen directly in Narrator. A great way to enjoy an interview while doing other activities.

Narrator version 2.0 is now in general release!

Use Narrator to read out a play or story with different voices for each of the parts. It uses speech synthesis to read out marked passages using specified voice attributes. You can choose different voices, rates, pitches, inflections, and volumes for each character in the story. The words are highlighted on-screen, and there are also a couple of silent read-along options for stage directions, or for you to read out your own parts.

Narrator 2 is a major upgrade, a complete rewrite. It requires Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" as it uses the latest technologies. Version 1.1.4 will remain available for people who aren't ready for Leopard.

This upgrade includes a much-requested feature: the ability to export the speech to an AAC sound file, or export directly to iTunes. This is great for listening to stories on an iPod or iPhone, or directly in iTunes. Make your own audiobooks! The tracks can be bookmarkable, too, keeping track of where you're up to when listening to them.

Narrator 2 also has several other enhancements, including preferences to substitute words to fine-tune the pronunciation, the ability to organize your work into multiple chapters, a fancy new look consistent with other Leopard apps, Spotlight and Quick Look support, various text features like tables, links, lists, spelling and grammar checking, and more. It is also localized for English, German and French, and is a Universal Binary, to run natively on Intel and PowerPC machines. See the release notes for details of the enhancements in this version.

This is a paid upgrade (just $9) for existing customers. But I'm offering a generous free upgrade period: everyone who purchased Narrator since October 1, 2007 is eligible for a free upgrade. If you qualify, just contact me to get your upgrade license.

You can see Narrator in action without even downloading it: check out this video, if you haven't seen it before:

Here's a feature graphic for Narrator 2.0, as currently seen on the Dejal home page:

Download Narrator 2 now!

Narrator 2.0b5 is now available.

Well, remember how I talked about the only reason for another beta would be important bugs? It turns out that the previous beta had a doozy: the help book wasn't included correctly! Oops. Apparently a last-minute change to it broke it.

So, here's another beta, that fixes that, plus fixes an issue opening the Welcome document for non-English localizations.

Sorry for the hassle, if you downloaded 2.0b4! You can download Narrator again to fix those issues. (Of course, if you don't care about the help book, you could skip this beta release.)

As always, I welcome feedback, if you find any other issues.