Orange Has a Funny, Growing Text-to-Speech Facebook App

Orange, the lead brand of France Telecom, has a new Facebook application out called VoxCards, Using text-to-speech recognition technology, it lets you send virtually any type of message to your friends in French, or at least in an outrageous French accent. Though the application is in French, it’s pretty easy to figure out (Google Translate helps a lot too). Users are able to access a drop-down list of any number of odd and quirky characters. Most of the options are fictional, such as the robot Rob HO-X22Z36PO or the yeti Joe Monster, but there are a few celebrity voices as well. Likely, those outside of the francophone world won't recognize them, but some examples include the voices of Fred and Omar from the show Omar et Fred. Each avatar comes with their very own unique set of animations and very distinctive caricature-style artwork. From the overly sultry female characters, to wannabe rappers, to the fictional King Stone’s smoke-producing hat (use your imagination), each one is more or less unforgettable. From here, players can choose from a set of pre-determined messages or replies that range from the bizarre - J'ai été attaqué par des renards tout à l'heure (I was attacked by foxes earlier) - to the curious - Je suis un vrai Pitbull, je vais te sauter dessus! (I am a true Pitbull, I’ll jump on it!), said by a “sexy” looking female avatar in a bikini. Of course, while amusing, these are hardly personal, so the user is given the opportunity to write their own personal message, up to 250 characters, themselves, and the chosen avatar will, in their own unique voice, speak it. Truthfully, it doesn’t work perfectly, and certainly not as well as the pre-made messages, but it still does the job decently well. Furthermore, VoxCards’ text-to-speech does a pretty impressive job with other languages. As the app was created in French, all the characters have a thick French accent and will pronounce anything you type in such a manner. However, if you type a language (so long as it is using the Latin alphabet) such as English or Spanish, it will still nail a fair number of the words. Nevertheless, it does sort of become a game of trial and error to see what will work, pronunciation-wise, and what won’t. What adds a kick to these voice messages is also the fact that they don’t get sent to a message box but can either be posted directly to your wall or a specified friend’s wall. And as an added bonus, VoxCards takes a look at your friends profiles and lets you know whose birthday is coming up; in case you want to send them an amusing birthday greeting. As far as anything negative goes regarding VoxCards, the only real qualm is the animation is a bit jittery, and speech to lip movement doesn’t synch up at all. To be fair, however, the latter is something one only typically sees in major video games and software such as Rock Band or Guitar Hero. All the same, VoxCards is still a very cool way to send your friends personalized messages through Facebook. The text to speech works surprisingly well, and decently well in other languages beyond French. Moreover, even if it doesn’t work for the language you’re trying, it’s still quite fun to figure out what will, and the characters are so unique that it’s unlikely anyone will forget them, or this app, any time soon. Currently, VoxCards is earning upwards of 200,000 monthly active users. On a final note, the promotion for Orange itself is limited within the app. All that really exists are a few banner ads advertising an Orange tablet, the RadioMee iPhone application, the site Memory-Life, and a few other random items; nothing terribly unique -- perhaps this is more of an experiment by the company, rather than part of a strategic marketing effort.

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Orange Has a Funny, Growing Text-to-Speech Facebook App

Christopher Mack

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Christopher Mack