Amazon’s enormous new Kindle is poised to save newspaper journalism — but only if President Obama can stop making the news. The Times reports today — on its front page, for some reason — that, owing to its primitive text-to-speech software, the talking robot living inside of the popular e-reader pronounces our president’s name “Bay-rack Oh-bamma” (rhyming with “black” and “Alabama”). This has apparently always been a problem, but now that the Kindle DX is being advertised as a savior to newsprint, it’s a doubly embarrassing one. An Amazon spokesman says the correct pronunciation will be added in a future software update, though it probably would’ve been easier if we’d all just voted for John McCain.
The President’s Name Trips Up a Would-Be Voice of the News [NYT]
