[gui-talk] Fwd: Article: Karen

[Steve Pattison]

This article is about Karen Jacobsen who is the voice that the RealSpeak
Karen voice is based on that is used in JAWS and some other adaptive
technology products.  More information about Karen Jacobsen can be found
at www.karenjacobsen.com.  You can also hear some of her songs on her
home page.  -Steve.

 From:    Peter.Scanlon at justice.vic.gov.au
 To:      vip-l at freelists.org

Meet 'the other woman' who is always telling you where to go 
                By: Garry Maddox 
August 14, 2010 
Karen Jacobsen, a Queenslander who has been living in New York for 10 
years, is the voice of GPS units in Australia. 
Could drivers be finding in their GPS units something more than just their 
way home? Are American Jill or Espanol Paulina becoming ''the other 
woman''
for harried males who spend hours each day on the road? Are women driving 
to work fantasising about an evening with Irish Sean? 
Karen Jacobsen, a little-known singer known as ''Australian Karen'' in 
millions of TomToms, NavMans and other GPS units around the world, learnt 
a couple
of years ago that she had an underground fan club of smitten drivers. 
''I started to be contacted by people thanking me for getting them through 
a dark lonely road in Italy or being lost in the Black Forest in Germany 
or
around Los Angeles on the freeways or taking them to school and back,'' Ms 
Jacobsen said. ''It's increased to the point where I've realised people 
really do have
an intimate relationship with the voice in their GPS system.'' 
The American writer Bruce Feiler wondered in The New York Times recently 
whether the GPS unit was rewriting the rules of male-female relationships 
after
confessing that he had fallen for the automated voice that had ''guided me 
effortlessly through the maze of freeways and road rage like a graceful 
hostess
- unflappable, efficient and with just enough sex appeal to give some 
sizzle to my protracted absence from my wife''. 
He quickly realised he was not alone. ''At sites like gpspassion.com and 
pdastreet.com, the number of lewd comments about the voices of American 
Jill or
Australian Karen seem more suited to a convention of 900-number [adult 
entertainment line] users.'' 
Ms Jacobsen, who has lived in New York for 10 years, is always meeting 
people who feel they know her already because of her voice. ''They'll want 
to tell
me right away the story of the time we were travelling in this city or 
that country and what happened,'' she said. 
Jacobsen is not surprised that the connection matters to drivers. ''You're 
on that dark lonely road on your own in the car, you don't know where you 
are
and this voice, even though its coming from a machine, seems like your 
companion. It's something that you're trusting.'' 
She believes the voice on the GPS unit can help relationships by stopping 
arguments between couples about directions. 
''They take it out on the third-party GPS. It's kind of like a community 
service - reducing the amount of angst between couples in the car.'' 
The chief executive of Relationships Australia NSW, psychologist Anne 
Hollonds, agrees that GPS units are easing tension on the road between 
couples by
''outsourcing the navigation role''. 
And Ms Hollonds is not surprised that drivers are having an emotional 
response to the voice. 
''The car is actually a very intimate environment,'' she said. ''A lot of 
people will say they have their most meaningful conversations - with their 
partner
or their kids - in the car. It's like a bubble.'' 
Ms Jacobsen's new career started when she recorded almost 50 hours of 
script for a text-to-speech system. Having now achieved a strange kind of 
fame, she
is taking it for a spin. 
Her latest CD is called Take A Little Drive. (And, no, it doesn't include 
lyrics like ''at the next intersection, turn left''.) She also has a 
personal
development podcast called Directions For Life and has shot a pilot for a 
TV show called Travel the World With the GPS Girl. 
''Growing up as a little girl in Mackay in north Queensland, I always 
wanted my songs - my voice - to be coming out of the car radio,'' Jacobsen 
said.
''Now, 
all these years later, my voice is coming out of the GPS.''

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963
Twitter:  steve9782