Tweets Aloud FAQ
Tweets Aloud reads your Twitter news feed aloud so that you can stay connected with your friends anytime, anywhere. It is part of VoiZapp's Aloud series of reading aloud apps that also includes Friends Aloud, Messages Aloud, Read It Aloud, and (soon) Emails Aloud.
What's new with Tweets Aloud 3.0?
Tweets Aloud 3.0 adds speech recognition from Nuance to all iOS devices (not only iPhone 4S with Siri), so that you can not only hear your friends' tweets, but you can talk back to them by dictating tweets of your own. Just tap the little microphone icon on the right-hand side of its iPod controls, say anything, and let it transcribe and auto-send what you said as a new tweet. You can cancel auto-sending during its 5-second countdown (or turn it off altogether in the Speech Recognition settings screen), and edit its transcription with the built-in keyboard. Or tap the microphone icon in the speech-to-text box to say more. As with regular Nuance-based dictation, you may speak punctuation marks -- for example, to post "I think, therefore I am!" you would say, "I think comma therefore I am exclamation point." With Tweets Aloud 3.0, you'll never need to touch a keyboard again on Twitter!
What's new with Tweets Aloud 3.0?
Tweets Aloud 3.0 adds speech recognition from Nuance to all iOS devices (not only iPhone 4S with Siri), so that you can not only hear your friends' tweets, but you can talk back to them by dictating tweets of your own. Just tap the little microphone icon on the right-hand side of its iPod controls, say anything, and let it transcribe and auto-send what you said as a new tweet. You can cancel auto-sending during its 5-second countdown (or turn it off altogether in the Speech Recognition settings screen), and edit its transcription with the built-in keyboard. Or tap the microphone icon in the speech-to-text box to say more. As with regular Nuance-based dictation, you may speak punctuation marks -- for example, to post "I think, therefore I am!" you would say, "I think comma therefore I am exclamation point." With Tweets Aloud 3.0, you'll never need to touch a keyboard again on Twitter!
How does the Lite (Free) version work?
Tweets Aloud Lite is designed to be a free introduction to VoiZapp's reading aloud technology. After logging into your Twitter account, you may choose to mute any of your friends. When you tap "Read Aloud Now," the latest 10 tweets from your Twitter feed will be retrieved and read aloud to you. Reading aloud is controlled by iPod-like controls at the bottom of the screen. At any time, and as often as you wish, you may tap the refresh button in the upper right-hand corner to retrieve & read the latest 10 tweets. You may also tap on any displayed tweet to jump there, and flick the screen up/down to view other posts, even as others are being read aloud. A banner ad may be displayed just above the iPod controls, and after the latest 10 tweets have been read aloud, an alert will pop up asking you to purchase Tweets Aloud Pro.
What do I get if I pay for the Pro version?
The Pro version extends the Lite version as follows:
How do I switch between reading only new tweets and reading all tweets displayed in the Pro version?
To read new tweets only, tap the refresh button in the upper righthand corner of the Tweets screen. To read all tweets, tap on any displayed tweet to start reading aloud from there down the entire list.
How long will the Pro version keep reading tweets aloud?
If the app is kept in the foreground, it will read tweets aloud as they arrive in your Twitter feed for as long as your battery lasts. If sent to the background, it will continue reading all displayed tweets aloud, but because of a limitation of Apple's iOS multitasking, it cannot automatically retrieve new tweets from there. So if you want to check for and continue reading tweets, you must tap its icon to bring it to the foreground and refresh its list of tweets to be read from time to time. You can always send it to the background once again and it will continue reading aloud.
Why did Tweets Aloud 3.0 stop recognizing my dictation?
Nuance limits you to 20 "speech events" per day, with each dictation counting as one event. They don't return any error code if you go over this limit; their servers simply stop responding to your device until the counter is automatically reset at midnight. Most Twitter users will not notice this limitation, since we typically listen to many more tweets than we ever make ourselves.
Please report any problems or make suggestions by emailing support@voizapp.com. Your feedback will make Tweets Aloud even better!
Tweets Aloud Lite is designed to be a free introduction to VoiZapp's reading aloud technology. After logging into your Twitter account, you may choose to mute any of your friends. When you tap "Read Aloud Now," the latest 10 tweets from your Twitter feed will be retrieved and read aloud to you. Reading aloud is controlled by iPod-like controls at the bottom of the screen. At any time, and as often as you wish, you may tap the refresh button in the upper right-hand corner to retrieve & read the latest 10 tweets. You may also tap on any displayed tweet to jump there, and flick the screen up/down to view other posts, even as others are being read aloud. A banner ad may be displayed just above the iPod controls, and after the latest 10 tweets have been read aloud, an alert will pop up asking you to purchase Tweets Aloud Pro.
What do I get if I pay for the Pro version?
The Pro version extends the Lite version as follows:
- Tweets Aloud 3.0 now gives you speech recognition (like Siri on the new iPhone 4S) enabling you to dictate tweets, all using just your voice.
- It also has a built-in keyboard for typing in or editing dictated tweets.
- It imports and reads aloud a selectable initial group of the latest tweets (user settable between 10 - 100).
- Additional tweets may be queued to be read aloud by tapping the "Older Tweets" button at the end of the tweets display, thereby going as far back in time as you wish.
- After all displayed tweets have been read, or whenever you tap the refresh button, it will automatically start reading aloud only new incoming tweets as they arrive for as long as you wish. To return to reading down all tweets displayed in sequence, tap on any specific tweet.
- It will continue reading down the list of displayed tweets in the background while you use your iOS device for other tasks.
- It does not display advertisements or pop up an alert box and bell at the end of the latest 10 tweets.
How do I switch between reading only new tweets and reading all tweets displayed in the Pro version?
To read new tweets only, tap the refresh button in the upper righthand corner of the Tweets screen. To read all tweets, tap on any displayed tweet to start reading aloud from there down the entire list.
How long will the Pro version keep reading tweets aloud?
If the app is kept in the foreground, it will read tweets aloud as they arrive in your Twitter feed for as long as your battery lasts. If sent to the background, it will continue reading all displayed tweets aloud, but because of a limitation of Apple's iOS multitasking, it cannot automatically retrieve new tweets from there. So if you want to check for and continue reading tweets, you must tap its icon to bring it to the foreground and refresh its list of tweets to be read from time to time. You can always send it to the background once again and it will continue reading aloud.
Why did Tweets Aloud 3.0 stop recognizing my dictation?
Nuance limits you to 20 "speech events" per day, with each dictation counting as one event. They don't return any error code if you go over this limit; their servers simply stop responding to your device until the counter is automatically reset at midnight. Most Twitter users will not notice this limitation, since we typically listen to many more tweets than we ever make ourselves.
Please report any problems or make suggestions by emailing support@voizapp.com. Your feedback will make Tweets Aloud even better!
