Talking iPods

The Scotsman reported over the weekend on a patent application from Apple Computer for a way to convert music track names into speech: TTS on your iPod.

The problem is much harder than it looks. Do you know the correct pronunciation of all the groups on your playlist? I'm still not sure how you pronounce Avril Lavigne. ("Ay-vril"? "Ah-vril"?)  It would be pretty dorky to have the system guess incorrectly, especially since you'd have to endure the mispronunciation every time you play the song.

A lot of ex-Apple people, including Scott Meredith, one of the original TTS people, came to Microsoft years ago, so maybe I should just ask them how it works.  Or for that matter I guess I could ask myself, although I left Apple in 1996, right after Casper shipped.