Speak will make your computer even more helpful and entertaining than ever.

Speak will use Microsoft Agent Animated Characters to read your text for you. You can tell Merlin (or any other character availanle) to read the contents of your documents, web pages, emails or any text in the clipboard. Just keep the cool animated character on top of your desktop and click on him whenever you want him to read for you.

Control the speed and pitch and enjoy many characters with different expressions and animations. In addition, Speak features Voice Recognition Technology, enabling your computer to accept spoken commands.

Voice Recognition can be used to launch applications, web sites, play some music, shut down, restart your computer or just reply back. Speak will also remind you of your appointments with Speak Reminders. The character will also try to entertain you by telling you jokes, sing or just yawn and sleep. You can also play wav files and change voices and/or languages with the download of extra speech engines.

Here are some key features of "Speak":

■ Copy any text from any application and Speak will read the clipboard's contents.

Speak will read the contents of any text document.

■ Voice recognition: You can let Speak run your applications just by saying in your microphone the application's name.

■ Run speak at windows startup and the character will greet you and inform you of the time and date, or just ask the character about the time and date and it will respond.

■ Add quick notes and Speak will read them for you when asked, or remind you at a set time. - Adjust reading speed, in words per minute for your comfort.

■ Adjust the pitch to whatever you feel is suitable and comfortable to hear.

■ Chime, the character will say the time every one hour or half an hour.

■ Unlimited Support

Requirements:

■ Internet Explorer version 3.02 or later

■ A Pentium 100 MHz PC (or faster)

■ At least 16MB of RAM.

■ A Windows-compatible sound card.

■ Microsoft Agent 2.0

Limitations:

■ some features are disabled