Peedy, the talking green parrot, is a Microsoft® Agent character, which can read Ananthapuri.com pages audibly, entertain you with Jingle Bells, wish Merry Christmas, sings Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?, show you magic tricks, tells you Emperor's New Clothes story, etc!

Right click Peedy to try various tasks Peedy can do for you. Click on the speaker icon on the right top corner of the box to listen to Peedy reading the page for you!

If you would like Peedy to read part of Ananthapuri.com page, select the text, right click on Peedy and click on Read Selected Text from the menu.

As a default, Peedy is turned off at Ananthapuri.com pages, unless and until you authorize it to be activated for this computer. This information will be saved as cookies in your computer.

Personalize Your Settings for Peedy at Ananthapuri.com

Peedy (c) 1996-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

System requirements, Downloads and Troubleshooting Tips

For Peedy or any other Microsoft® Agent to work, you must have the following:

• Windows® XP/2000/NT4/Me/9x or later
• Internet Explorer version 4 or later
• A Pentium 100 MHz PC (or faster)
• At least 16MB of RAM
• A Windows-compatible sound card (many laptops have built-in sound)
• Equipped with speakers or headsets
• Recommended that the browser security levels be set to Medium, but that is normal practice and the usual default setting

If Peedy does not appear in your screen, please download and install following programs from Microsoft website and install in your computer. This is an onetime installation, which enable you to enjoy the talking animated characters.

Get Speech API (SAPI 4.0) This is very much required in Windows XP. You will need to restart your computer.
Get Microsoft Agent Control Core Components
Get Text-to-Speech Engine
Get Mary Female Voice TTS Engine

Peedy works best with Internet Explorer's security level set to "Medium."

If your computer is running the Windows XP operating system and Peedy is not talking to you, you may need to install/re-install the SAPI 4.0 speech runtime support

If you still face any problems please visit Agent Output Problems Troubleshooting at Microsoft website

More About Microsoft Agent Technology

Microsoft Agent is a set of programmable software services that supports the presentation of interactive animated characters within the Microsoft Windows interface. Developers can use characters as interactive assistants to introduce, guide, entertain, or otherwise enhance their Web pages or applications in addition to the conventional use of windows, menus, and controls. Microsoft Agent enables software developers and Web authors to incorporate a new form of user interaction, known as conversational interfaces, that leverages natural aspects of human social communication. In addition to mouse and keyboard input, Microsoft Agent includes optional support for speech recognition so applications can respond to voice commands. Characters can respond using synthesized speech, recorded audio, or text in a cartoon word balloon.

The conversational interface approach facilitated by the Microsoft Agent services does not replace conventional graphical user interface (GUI) design. Instead, character interaction can be easily blended with the conventional interface components such as windows, menus, and controls to extend and enhance your application's interface.

Limitations of Peedy

Peedy has several limitations. However, the benefits of Peedy outweigh these limitations.

• Peedy produces rules-based computer speech, and mispronunciations occur occasionally.
• Peedy is punctuation driven. If a heading does not end with a period, Peedy will read the heading and the following sentence with NO pause at the end of the heading.
• Peedy does not understand abbreviations and generally pronounces them as cryptic words, with a few exceptions.
• When Peedy sees all caps, it assumes that it is reading an acronym, and spells out the capitalized letters.
• Peedy tries to add emphasis by raising the pitch of the "voiced" output. This can become strained for long sentences that end in an exclamation point.