Review: Magnetictime text-to-speech utility

Magnetictime aims to let you take your emails and Word documents with you wherever you go by converting them into audio files. The idea is you can transfer all your emails and documents to your mp3 player before a commute and listen to them on the go.

Documents and emails can be individually or bulk-converted to speech using the main Magenetictime interface. A shortcut button is also added to Microsoft Word and Outlook, allowing you to quickly convert the email or document currently on screen.

Once converted, you can then transfer your files to any mp3 player, be it an Ipod, smartphone, PDA or any other mp3-capable device.

A voice list sits in the Settings menu, but there's only one option - Magnetictime Platinum Voice. This female voice is reasonably easy on the ear, but it is a little stunted at times and, as expected, struggles to consistently emphasise words correctly.

During testing, we found signatures and various other types of email furniture resulted in painfully long audio files being created, leaving you to either frequently fast-forward through the file or listen to the voice struggle to pronounce email addresses and complicated headers.

Other issues we found included phone numbers being read out as ordinary numbers (ie 0207 would be read out as 'zero two hundred and seven'), but on the whole we were quite impressed with the pronunciation and handling of unusual words.

Should you come across a mispronounced word, Magnetictime encourages you to let it know so it can make the necessary changes. Whether you, or indeed other Magnetictime users, do this is another matter.

This latest version includes support for abbreviated text speak, allowing it to read 'c u l8r' as 'see you later'. However, when we supplied it with a list of the most common text speak abbreviations it struggled with the majority.

Besides, since Magnetictime is aimed primarily at business users, this feature does seem a little redundant – when was the last time your boss sent you an email proclaiming ‘ur doing gr8 m8’?

Of course, one major problem with listening to emails on the go is that you can’t reply to them, leaving you to make notes for each one you need to respond to. We suspect it will mostly be used to convert documents as opposed to emails.

Text-to-speech applications have never really taken off and we don’t see Magnetictime bucking the trend. It’s an interesting tool and has some good features, but at £22.99 it’s also very expensive.

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