Version 3.4
iTunes 8.2 compatibility.

Version 3.3.9
Removed News since Google keeps changing it. Please use RSS to get your news.

Version 3.3.8
Bug fixes.

Version 3.3.7
Changed RSS feed processing to better process the text from web pages.

Fix News processing for the US.

Version 3.3.6
Updates Driving Directions to work with Google’s new mapping features.

Version 3.3.5
Improves RSS feed processing and the extraction of full articles from web pages.

Version 3.3.4
Improves the processing of PDFs and pages documents.

Improves RSS processing.

Fixes problems with News and Directions downloading.

Fixes a problem with slashes (“/”) in the track name.

Version 3.3.3
Fixes News downloading under Tiger.

Fixes RSS downloading under Tiger.

Gracefully handles there being no replacement rules when you select that they be applied.

Version 3.3.2
Leopard compatibility.

Fixes a problem with creating audiobooks.

Version 3.3.1
Added the ability to include play/stop buttons in the iSpeak It toolbar so you can quickly start listening to your documents.

Fixed PDF processing to correctly handle accented characters.

Fixed a problem with the downloading of directions.

Version 3.3
Ensures compatibility with Pages ‘08.

Version 3.2
Directions has been improved:

• Tracks are now named with the “to” location appearing first — making it easier to search on your iPod since the “from” location if often the same and what you really care about is where you’re going.
• Properly supports the loading of non-English directions.

Your tracks in iTunes now have the iSpeak It icon as album artwork.

There are now News, Directions and Weather albums so you can easily organize and access that information by album (in addition to the existing albums for each RSS feed and document).

Document splitting has improved:

• News is split based on categories so that Top Stories, World, Sports, etc. will each have their own track in iTunes.
• Weather and Directions are never split since the split settings rarely make sense for both documents and this information. Now you can keep your split settings optimized for documents and get Weather and Directions in useful tracks.
• Note that RSS feeds continue to be split based on article so that each article has its own track within the feed’s album.

You can now have multiple problem phrases replaced by the same text using a single replacement rule — see the Replacement Rules Help for details.

The feed button icon is now the standard RSS icon.

A number of minor bug fixes regarding splitting, editing replacement rules, deleting existing tracks from iTunes, RSS (atom) title extraction and Directions error handling.

Version 3.1
Documents encoded using AAC can be made into Audiobooks so that they can be managed as actual audiobooks in iTunes and on the iPod.

You can now split documents based on page breaks. This is especially useful for PDF documents — when iSpeak It processes a PDF document, page breaks are inserted between every page.

Directions has been changed to use Google Maps and you now access the website directly from within iSpeak It.

Replacement Rules has been revamped to make it easier to edit rules while working with documents.

Document splitting now provides better support for documents edited under Windows.

iSpeak It now includes a time estimate of how long it will take for document processing to complete.

Extending breaks now includes a break at the end of each section (when splitting a document) so that there’s silence between consecutive tracks.

RSS feed text and full article processing has been improved to make extracting the desired text more reliable.

You can now edit an RSS feed’s location (URL) by option-clicking its name.

Fixed the extracting of US weather forecasts.

Version 3.0
Added Xgrid support. Now you can harness the power of multiple Macs to convert sections of a document into audio tracks. See the on-line help for full details on making use of Xgrid.

A number of additions to Web Feed support:

• Drag and dropping a URL to an iSpeak It document will cause the download of the page. If the URL is a document (a PDF, Doc, RTF or text file) then the document will be downloaded.
• Added support for Atom feeds (in addition to RSS).
• When adding a web pages iSpeak It detects embedded RSS and Atom feed URLs and will ask if you want to add the feed or the web page. If there are multiple feeds iSpeak It will always choose Atom feeds over RSS feeds (since they tend to include complete article contents).
• There are a number of minor changes to ensure that titles are generated correctly and to allow for more variability in the entering of URLs to add.

Document processing has been enhanced:

• You can now split documents based on any sequence of characters. This allows you to define your own pattern to use for things like splitting at each chapter in a story.
• Splitting of Feeds and News ignores any settings and splits based on articles/sections. iSpeak It ensures that each Feed article and News topic (World, Sports, etc) appears as its own track in iTunes.
• Paragraph splitting now automatically detects if the document uses blank lines or carriage returns to delineate paragraphs. If blank lines are found iSpeak It will use them to split the document and only uses carriage returns if no blank lines are found. These same rules are used for determining paragraphs when extending the breaks between paragraphs.
• You can now extend breaks between sentences (silence before beginning the next sentence) in addition to extending breaks between paragraphs.
• Added a summarize option to the replacement rules. Each paragraph will be summarized into two sentences — great when you don’t need to listen to an entire document.

The document user interface has been updated to use a proper toolbar and the Save As AIFF option has been added as a button on the toolbar.

Improved error handling when there are problems downloading Driving Directions and News.

There are a number of other minor changes and fixes — version 3.0 contains over 30 changes/additions.

Finally, a number of these changes make use of features unique to version 10.4 of OS X. As such, verion 3.0 of iSpeak It cannot run on earlier versions of OS X.

Version 2.2.1
Fixes a crash problem some people were experiencing.

Ensures that the new track naming scheme (introduced in version 2.2) limits the name to a few words from the beginning of a section (instead of the potential for an entire paragraph with Word documents).

Version 2.2
Now a Universal application.

iSpeak It takes full advantage of the latest iTunes features, including:

• Adding document/section text to track lyrics. Now you can read along as you listen to your document — great for enhanced learning.
• Bookmarking can now be set regardless of the track encoding used.
• Setting the skip when shuffling setting so you won’t hear your documents when shuffling songs.

Can now load Pages 2 documents.

Break extending includes the ability to control the length of a break — anywhere from 1 to 10 second breaks between paragraphs.

Weather forecasts include the sun/moon rise/set for the current day.

Splitting documents now uses the first line of a section for the track name instead of simply numbering each section (which you get via the track numbering). This makes it easier to figure out where each track starts.

Improved direction download error handling and added the ability to save the From address for use in future downloads.

When automatically replacing text iSpeak It no longer displays the replaced text (which modifies the document unnecessarily). The replacements are made but are only used in the generation of the audio.

Fixed a number of minor bugs and made a few user interface enhancements.

Version 2.1
Added the ability to download driving directions.

Many improvements to web page and RSS processing (too many to list).

The web feed list now shows the feed name instead of the URL.

Adding web feeds is now more intuitive.

Fixed problems with weather downloads, playlist manipulation and system version checking.

Version 2.0.2
Fixed a problem with Service menu loading of text into iSpeak It.

Fixed RSS feed and web page formatting when running Tiger.

Version 2.0.1
Now Tiger (OS X 10.4) compatible.

Better handling of problems when trying to download podcasts.

Properly splits Windows formatted text files (when using paragraph splitting). For example, Project Gutenberg files are Windows formatted.

iSpeak It and iTunes are no longer made the front most application as conversions take place — they won’t interfere with your work as files are processed and/or downloads proceed.

Version 2.0
Adds podcast support — including the ability to download all or just the latest podcast and conversion into your preferred format (such as AAC with bookmarking).

Adds RSS history support to ensure you only get the entries you haven’t heard yet. Also used with podcast support to ensure you only download a podcast once. Note that the history is updated even if you don’t download podcasts — a great way to catch-up on a podcast without having to download every cast.

When adding a URL iSpeak It checks the clipboard and will automatically add any URL found there. It will also check to ensure that the URL isn’t already present (highlighting it if it is).

You can now select multiple URLs for downloading. The selection is saved for quickly downloading the same feeds in the future.

The Full Article option for RSS feeds is ignored if iSpeak It determines that the complete article is present in the feed text. If there is more than one paragraph it is assumed that the entire article is already present.

You can now have tracks placed in a playlist after they have been transferred into iTunes.

Adds standard find/replace functionality as an addition to the automatic and global replacement rules functionality.

When automatically transferring to iTunes iSpeak It no longer creates new windows but overwrites the contents of the current window with new content (when downloading multiple web feeds for example).

Fixed HTML processing when processing the contents of an RSS feed.

Fixed news processing (again).

A number of usability enhancements, such as the ability to quickly save settings without have to apply the changes and then close the dialog (it’s now a single operation).

Version 1.7.1
Properly handles extended characters (e.g. accented characters) in full article downloads for News and RSS feeds.

Fixed a problem with Word support under OS X 10.2.

Fixed a problem processing PDF files on certain Mac configurations.

Version 1.7
News and RSS downloads now include the option to download the full articles.

Web page processing has been greatly improved.

PDF processing now supports multi-column files (requires pdftotext — a free download).

Added batch transferring of all open windows to iTunes by holding down the control key while selecting Transfer to iTunes from the File menu.

Added the ability to load all URLs by holding down the control key while selecting Web Page from the Load menu.

Documents can be dragged onto an iSpeak It window for loading. You can also select multiple documents from the Load File dialog.

Extending breaks now uses speech directives to ensure more consistent and reliable breaks.

The Web Page dialog is now resizable so you can adjust it to see complete URLs.

iTunes isn’t launched until absolutely necessary.

When splitting you can now set the song name.

Weather and News downloads have been fixed.

Version 1.6
Added the downloading of RSS/XML news feeds.

Added control of the iTunes encoder used when transferring a document into iTunes.

Splitting a document can now be done based on paragraphs separated by a single return (as is common with Word documents).

A number of minor bug fixes and usability enhancements.

Version 1.5
Long documents can now be split into multiple tracks, just like audiobooks. Splitting can be done based on number of words, sentences or paragraphs. Enable this feature via the iTunes settings dialog.

Documents encoded as AAC can be made bookmarkable, just like audiobooks. You can stop listening to a track and it will remember where you left off for the next time you want continue listening to it. Enable this feature via the iTunes settings dialog.

To support the splitting of documents iSpeak It now does the following. The file name is now used as the album name (instead of the song name), the track numbers are set to ensure correct ordering in iTunes (and your iPod), and all tracks of an album are deleted (instead of just the one song of previous versions).

Keyboard shortcut have been changed (sorry) so that you can apply the option key to initiate automatic processing, which could only be done via command-clicking in previous versions.

Replacement rules are now ordered alphabetically by the problem phrase (finally!).

Fixed some bugs with weather downloads, strange start-up errors and attempts to transfer an empty file into iTunes.

Version 1.4
Panther users no longer need Word to load doc files.

Can now extend pauses between sections, paragraphs, etc via the replacement rules.

Added a help section detailing the use of speech directives in text to control speech volume, rate, emphasis and pauses.

Fixed problems with automated downloads under Panther.

Fixed a number of formatting problems with News.

Non-registered users now have access to all features. They are, however, limited in the size of document that will be converted to audio.

Fixed some minor bugs.

Version 1.3.1
You can now have iSpeak It automatically exit after the completion of automatic load and transfer operations.

Holding down the Option key on launch will override any automation preferences so you can have a “normal” launch.

Loading via the Services menu now supports the automatic iTunes transfer preference.

Fixed a problem with the replacement rules getting confused if iSpeak It isn’t the front most application.

Change URL completion to allow for domain names that don’t start with www.

Corrected the binding of the Load News menu item so that it now correctly opens the news window.

Version 1.3
You can now download web pages. The text from a page is loaded ready for transferring to iTunes. iSpeak It maintains a list of downloaded URLs so you don’t need to re-enter commonly downloaded pages (requires registration).

You can now automate iSpeak It such that it will automatically transfer a document/web page to iTunes after it has been loaded and automatically load news, weather and web pages when iSpeak It launches (requires registration).

You can now control the artist, album and genre settings (in addition to the song name) applied to the document as it’s transferred to iTunes.

Added a Services menu item to take selected text from any application and load it into iSpeak It. Note that to have the menu item added iSpeak It must be within the Applications folder and you must log out and back in again.

You can now command-click the iTunes, Web Page, News and Weather buttons to automatically perform the action using the current defaults (e.g. the last entered artist, album and genre for iTunes).

The file name for loaded documents is now applied as the default iTunes song name. For web pages, the URL is used as the default song name.

Fixed potential problems with deleting old iTunes songs. The file is now moved to the trash, just like iTunes does when you delete a song from your library.

Added news regions to the news downloads.

Fixed problems with weather downloads and changed the update time to reflect the time the forecast was last updated, not when it was downloaded.

Version 1.2
You no longer need Acrobat (or any other application) to load PDF files.

If you download news or weather and then transfer it to iTunes the song name will default to an appropriate news or weather title.

You can now open the Speech preferences pane directly from the iSpeak It menu.

There are a number of improvements and fixes to the weather and news downloading features. Directions has been removed since the source is no longer available. If there’s enough interest I’ll look into finding an alternate source.

Version 1.1
You can now load PDF, Word and AppleWorks documents in addition to text, HTML and RTF documents. All file types are available through the Load File option.

Note that PDF requires Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) and Word and AppleWorks documents require their respective applications. If the applications are not present you won’t be able to load the files.