Deskbot

 

Back in the 90s desktop toys and avatars were all the go on Windows computers. I had a man climbing a ladder and a little mouse who used to play the violin and eat scones. They were toys. Brain breaks. We used to have Clippy too and other animated avatars to help us with spreadsheets. They went out of vogue but you can install Deskbot and it runs on Microsoft Agent as did the desktop toys and avatars. Deskbot will read text to you. On the one I have downloaded I can only get American English, it sounds a bit robotic but is nevertheless a very helpful genie which is the only avatar/personal/bot currently available to me. I got it to read a whole blog post to me. Great asset for if you want to hear something rather than read it. Great asset if you are learning to read or learning to read in another language. Great asset if you need someone to read to you because you cannot see the text very easily. So Genie has those uses and would have plenty more. He is about saving time, energy, accessibility, literacy. Pretty handy little deskbot. You can read a detailed review here on makeuseof. You can download the deskbot here  free from Bellcraft. There is no malware which comes with it or extra programs you might not want. it takes a few seconds to download, a few more seconds to install and a couple of minutes to go through the options of the setup. I look forward to exploring this more.