【實用休閒app】Talking Magic Crystal Ball|最夯免費app-綠色工廠好玩App

This app is based on the Magic Eight Ball and presents responses to questions selected randomly. It is very interactive and uses Speech recognition, Text-to-Speech, and the accelerometer to recognize shaking motions. After two questions, the oracle asks for a selection of a new language (English words pronounced in different languages). Text-to-speech language files must be installed to run the app.

The novelty toy in the form of a black and white eight ball was commissioned by Brunswick Billiards in 1950. It had a total of twenty questions as has been adopted in this Android version. Ten of the possible answers are positive, five are negative, and five are so-so in between. Answers are produced with a uniform random distribution. This produces positive responses 50% of the time, negative 25%, and noncommittal 25%.

Text-to-speech in the Android supports English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. American and British accents are available for English as well. Before running this application you should access your device’s “Settings” and the “Text-to-speech” selection. If “Install voice data” is selectable, this will take you to the Android Market Place for a free download of the voice data required for speech synthesis. Running the app without this data installed will produce a message that the data is not installed. A final note on Speech recognition – this requires an internet connection either through 3G/4G or WiFi. The device sends speech input to the “Cloud” for translation to text and then sends that text back to the device.

After the app launches, a “Speak Now” dialog window appears for voice input. If no speech is heard, a time out dialog appears allowing either Speak again or Cancel. While speaking, the microphone icon will flash indicating that audio is being recorded. If the device is not gently shaken, a message will appear with the instruction to shake the magic crystal ball. After shaking, a dialog will appear displaying the text version of the voice input, followed by the answer.

After two questions, the Magic Crystal Ball will prompt for the selection of a new Oracle from a short list of languages supported by the device (German, English (UK), English (US),Spanish, French and Italian). A new language is selected at random if the translated voice input does not match any available language. This cycle repeats following every two questions.

This app does not contain internal advertisements.