eGudieDog History

Aug 2023: Ekho 9.0 with new Mandarin voice (baker) released.
May 2023: Cantonese TTS released on Google Play. Source code is available at Github.
Mar 2023: AI Asistant released.

Sep 2022: Fix serious Mandarin bugs of espeak-ng, which affect Chinese NVDA users for a long time.
Apr 2022: eGuideDog Linux 0.9 releaed.

Jun 2019: Linux基础教程 released.
Feb 2019: An Android App called "二郎神" was released, which can recognize text and object with camera for visually impaired.

Jul 2018: Taking personal health and family issues into account, Cameron planed to suppend eGuideDog project for one year.
May 2018: 【开源访谈】独家揭秘 | Linux 界导盲犬 eGuideDog 的光明之路
May 2018: eGuideDog Scholarship (2nd) was setup.
May 2018: eGuideDog Linux 0.5 releaed.

Sep 2016: Ekho 7.0 released. New overlap algorithm applied. eSpeak was used as default English engine.
Apr 2016: eGuideDog Linux 0.2, which was based on Ubuntu Linux 16.04, was released.
Feb 2016: 听风者收音机 - a network radio software was released.
Feb 2016: A command-line weather query tool tianqi was released.
Jan 2016: eGuideDog Toolbox was released.
Jan 2016: ibusreader-2.0-alpha was released.

Sep 2014: A new male Mandarin voice was released.
Jul 2014: Linux盲人教程 was finished.
Feb 2014: A plan of writting Linux tutorial for the blind (Linux盲人教程) was carried out.

Dec 2013: Ekho 5.8 released. English was supported with Cantonese in Android version.
Oct 2013: Ekho 5.7 released. Noises between characters were greatly reduced.
Aug 2013: Ekho for Android 2.0 released. Android 4.x supported.
Jul 2013: eGuideDog Linux released.
Jun 2013: Linux ibus input method screen reader software - ibusreader was developed.
Mar 2013: WebSpeech module for Drupal 7 was developed.
Feb 2013: www.eguidedog.net was moved to web server within China instead of web space provided SourceForge because long term (some weeks) of inaccessibility in China. (I believed it was not a technical issue of SourceForge)
Jan 2013: Ekho 5.2 released. Naturalness of voice was greatly improved.

Dec 2012: Thanks to Tennom YK and Trinley Pedron, Tibetan was supported since Ekho 5.0.
Nov 2012: Thanks to Zhao Qianshan, Ngangien (an acient Chinese before Yuan Dynasty) was supported since Ekho 5.0.
Sep 2012: Cantonese version of eSpeak for Android released on Google Play: eSpeak TTS (粤语)
Jul 2012: Made a speech on Opensource Inovation Meetup held by Open Source China. Blog: 【源创会广州站内容回顾】中文文本转语音开源引擎EKHO, Video: Ekho语音引擎
May 2012: WebSpeech 3 released. Android supported.
May 2012: Speech-dispatcher API is supported since Ekho 4.12, which means Ekho can be used with Linux screen reader like Orca.
Apr 2012: 放大镜, a magnifier on Android, was released on Google Play.
Mar 2012: Ekho TTS was released on Google Play.
Jan 2012: Ekho 4.9 for Android released.

Nov 2011: Thanks to Liao Weicheng, Ekho supports Zhaoan Hakka since version 4.8.
Nov 2011: Helped to edit JyutDict Cantonese dictionaries: JyutEnDict (Cantonese-English), JyutDeDict (Cantonese-German), JyutFrDict (Cantonese-French).
Jun 2011: Updated Cantonese dictionary
Mar 2011: Mirrored Vinux at http://dir.eguidedog.net/vinux
Feb 2011: eGuideDog project won the award of SourceForge Project of the Month: February 2011

Dec 2010: Ekho supported Android since version 4.0.
Aug 2010: 粤语歇后语大全 was released. Just for fun :-)
Jul 2010: A web-based self-voiced classic Chinese game - 华容道 was released.
Jul 2010: A web-based self-voiced Chinese game - 记忆翻牌游戏 was released.
Jun 2010: WebSpeech javascript library was released, which is for web developers who want to write pages with voice.
Feb 2010: A WebAnywhere server, which supports Cantonese, Mandarin, English and German, was setup in China for public use. http://wa.eguidedog.net

Dec 2009: eGuideDog project began to accept donation with SourceForge's donation system through Paypal.
Nov 2009: Ekho 2.0 released, which supports SAPI5 on Windows.
Oct 2009: eGuideDog team finished the draft coding for multi-language framework of WebAnywhere.
Aug 2009: eguidedog.net was registered as the official domain of eGuideDog project.
Mar 2009: Ekho 0.91 was released, which was the first stable version of Ekho.
Mar 2009: A new Cantonese voice with 7 tones recorded by Cameron Wong was released.
Feb 2009: zhspeak, which is a mini version of Ekho in Python, was released with the help of Dr. Colin Kong.
Jan 2009: Michael Tang joined in eGuideDog team who made great contribution to the Cantonese dictionary and Ekho voice improvement.
Jan 2009: eSpeak-Chinese was stopped updating because we have no time to maintained.

Oct 2008: With Silas S. Brown and Hae-Sung Jeon's help, a Korean voice was supported in Ekho 0.75 for trial.
Sep 2008: eGuideDog Browser is deprecated because its prospect and our limited time.
Jul 2008: With Silas S. Brown and Yali Cheng's help, a Mandarin voice was released. Ekho supports Cantonese, Mandarin and English (through Festival) since then.
Mar 2008: eGuideDog TTS - egdspeak was released, which was renamed to Ekho later.

Dec 2007: eSpeak-Chinese was reported by Hong Kong Blind Union. (無障礙數碼科技通訊第二十一期)
Nov 2007: With Kyle Wang and Silas S. Brown's help, eSpeak-Chinese was released. It is a Chinese version of eSpeak with Chinese installer and build-in Cantonese/Mandarin dictionaries. eSpeak-Cantonese was merged into it since then.
Nov 2007: The project was reported by Hong Kong Blind Union. (無障礙數碼科技通訊第十九期 )
Sep 2007: eSpeak-Cantonese was released, which is a Cantonese version of eSpeak.
Sep 2007: After annotating phonetic symbols for about 40,000 words, a draft Cantonese phonetic dictionary was done.
Jan 2007: eGuideDog Browser became a functional voice browser for the blind.

Dec 13, 2006: eGuideDog project was founded by Cameron Wong. eGuideDog Browser written in Perl was the first software in the project.