读出声来的电子邮件

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Yes, gadgets that speak text out loud are bursting onto the scene like monks just released from a decade-long vow of silence. The Amazon Kindle 2 reads your electronic books out loud. The new iPod Shuffle is only the size of a tie clip, but reads your song titles.

And now there's the iLane, a dashboard-mounted box, entirely voice-controlled, that reads your e-mail aloud while you drive. It's ingenious, polished and efficient — and at $600 and $8 a month, it had better be. It's pretty obvious that the iLane was designed when mobile executives still had things like expense accounts and jobs.

The iLane system comes in three pieces. Piece No. 1 is the iLane itself: a slim, sleek, hollow-feeling plastic box with a couple of status lights and a cigarette-lighter plug. You can mount it on your dashboard, visor or air vents, but it doesn't actually have to be accessible; you can just let it lie there on the floor amid the McDonald's wrappers, for all it cares.

This box doesn't actually connect to the Internet or download any e-mail. Instead, it's just the voice box for Piece No. 2, a BlackBerry that you already own. It communicates over a wireless Bluetooth connection, so you don't even have to take the BlackBerry out of your pocket.

(Yes, a BlackBerry. The Web site and marketing materials coyly refer only to "your smartphone," as if other phones are welcome. But no, it's BlackBerry or nothing at this point.)

Piece No. 3 is a tiny Bluetooth earpiece, made by BlueAnt but included with the package. It's held in place by an over-ear wire as well as a dime-size, rubber-ringed disk that you're supposed to wedge into your ear.

To me, inserting this earpiece feels like someone's trying to ram a flute through my head, but maybe I'm just weird. Fortunately, you can substitute any Bluetooth earpiece.

The three pieces require a good bit of setup, and it's not for the technologically timid. You have to register at myilane.com, make up a user name and wait for the system to send you a confirmation e-mail message with a temporary password. Then you return to the Web site to make up a new password — not to be confused with your BlackBerry name and password or your e-mail account name and password. Then, on the BlackBerry, you open the little Web browser and download and install a piece of BlackBerry software called iLane Gateway. This entails approving six dire-sounding permission requests.

Next, you have to "pair" the iLane box with the BlackBerry via Bluetooth (wirelessly link them), which took several efforts in my tests. Then you connect them wirelessly, which is not the same thing as pairing them. (Silly, really. Why would you pair them if you didn't want to connect them?)

Finally, you pair the iLane with its earpiece via Bluetooth. This, too, seems unnecessary — didn't you buy the two together as a kit?

In any case, the fun begins almost immediately. With the earpiece in place, you hear a synthesized woman's voice giving you instructions for managing your e-mail.

The demonstration video at ilane.com is an honest representation of the experience (well, all but the pulse-pounding background music). That video lets you know what Syntho-Lady's voice sounds like, what her wording is and what kinds of responses you're supposed to supply.

Here is a typical transcript.

She: "You have six new messages. Message from Chris Robinson about 'The restaurant incident last night.' Say, 'Read' to read this message. You can Reply, Forward, Call Back or Delete. To read the next message, say 'Next message.' "

You: "Read message."

She: " 'Hey, David. Don't worry about last night. I spoke to the headwaiter, and he said that he managed to get most of the wine stains out of the carpet. He did ask if you'd take your family reunions elsewhere in the future. Regards, Chris.' Would you like to Reply, Forward, Delete or Read this message again?"

You: "Reply."

The voice now gives you the option of sending a canned e-mail message back to the sender (either "I am in transit and will respond shortly" or "Call me if it is important") or recording a 15-second MP3 audio message that gets sent to your correspondent as an e-mail attachment.

In other words, iLane's creators have wisely avoided trying to transcribe your spoken e-mail utterances into typed e-mail text. Without any way for you to see its results before sending them, disaster could result.