Talking Monkeys – Something Ajax Can’t Do

My dear friend Auburn sent my one of the funniest links I’ve received in a long time. CareerBuilder has implemented a personalized monkey email that allows you to type a message or even use your microphone to record one. Using text-to-speech technology the monkey can then dictate what you typed. The monkey’s lips move rather accurately to what you’ve typed, unlike the old kung-fu movies. You can check it out here.

Auburn was taunting me of our recent trip to Miami, but don’t always believe what a monkey tells you. You can check out an image of the monkey making fun of me below.

Stupid monkey. At any rate, I’d like to mention the technology used to implement this is Adobe’s Flash and Oddcast’s text to speech engine. I know Ajax has been receiving a ton of buzz lately, but this is one thing that Ajax will never be able to touch. Flash truly shines when it comes to highly interactive multimedia that attracts eyeballs. This is not an Flash vs. Ajax post since each technology serves a purpose for a given task. As a Flash advocate it’s always exciting to see these type of ad campaigns crop up.