Expressivo 1.4 - the latest version of the software that reads books with a beautiful voice - has been launched. Buying the software with the English-speaking voice of Jennifer you also receive a free collection of 50 popular e-books in English.

The free collection of e-books - supplied with the version of Expressivo which speaks American English with the voice of Jennifer - includes 50 of the most popular literary works of the world made available as part of the Project Gutenberg. Users of Expressivo have free access to a collection of books including Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"”, James Joyce's "Ulysses" or Mark Twain'’s "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Additionally at www.expressivo.com you can download, free of charge, other e-books and then play them on your computer or save them as MP3 files and then play them e.g. on an iPod. Such an MP3 book can be a perfect, eye-friendly entertainment during long holiday travels.

The new Expressivo also comes with an enhanced feature of converting text files into sound. With Expressivo 1.4 you can convert any text file into an MP3 file even 50 percent faster than with the previous version of the application.

Apart from the voices embedded in the Expressivo you can also add external and enjoy the speech it generates in other languages. Expressivo 1.4 version has been adapted to the international character encoding system, UNICODE. Now after adding the appropriate text-to-speech voice to the application, Expressivo can read texts written in any language of the world, including Russian, Japanese or Chinese.

Expressivo 1.4's other new attractive features include the new clock-reminder compatible with the Google Calendar! Clock-reminder will also read out the events planned in the calendar of your email application (e.g. MS Outlook, Mozilla Sunbird).

Expressivo is a computer application for anyone which can read any text with a human voice. It may also be used to facilitate learning of foreign languages or to read out film subtitles. Expressivo allows you also to listen to books, RSS feeds, Web pages, e-mails - not only via a computer but also via a portable MP3 player, such as iPod or iPhone. With Expressivo you can also easily create audiobooks. The affordable price makes it possible for virtually anyone to enjoy the text-to-speech technology with Expressivo. To find out more about Expressivo visit http://www.expressivo.com.

Expressivo is voiced by IVONA, the speech generation technology developed by IVO Software and regarded as one of the best in the world. This is confirmed by the numerous honors and awards it has won. IVONA's voice quality was also recognized at the prestigious international Blizzard Challenge. Two times in a row, in 2006 and 2007, it was considered one of the closest to a natural voice. To find out more about IVO Software and to test IVONA's voices free of charge visit: http://www.ivosoftware.com.