Talking Clock

If you are finding it difficult to check the time in the taskbar, you can use a sidebar gadget such as Talking Clock. As its name suggests, this application has the ability to use text to speech voices installed on your computer to say what the current time is out loud.

Once installed, the gadget places a clock on your desktop, allowing you to view the local time and date easily. Besides the time display, the interface also comprises two buttons, one for hearing the user-defined default message and the other for adjusting the voice volume. The 'Options' section is where you can change the spoken text and the voice settings, such as the speaker or the speed and pitch levels.

One important feature of Talking Clock is that you can also use it to schedule periodical or one-time alarms. It can handle more than one alarm, no matter if you need a daily reminder or an event notification at a certain date or time in the future.

For each alarm you set, you can change the time interval and customize the message text. For instance, Talking Clock can let you know how much time you have left when working on a time limit project.

You can change the date and time display and spoken formats, the time zone and the language used to display month names and days of the week. The appearance of the gadget is highly customizable, so you can modify the time and date font color and type, as well as the background color to match it with your desktop theme.

Talking Clock is a handy application that provides you with a modern-looking desktop alarm clock with text to speech capability. It is a simple clock gadget, but its voice alarm feature is what makes it stand out from the croud.