The reason I created it as a console application and not a windows app is because I envisioned this program only really only having a valid function when it’s called from another application. Or even better, you want to spook your girlfriend or parents by making their laptop talk to them when it turns on! Whatever your reasons are, enjoy! Oh and let me know how you use this program in the comments.

Download SpeakToMe App

Here is the complete source code to the above application. Let me know what you think in the comments!

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'This application was developed by Gerardo Lopez and was downloaded from www.brangle.com
'Complete source code is available at:
'http://www.brangle.com/wordpress/2009/08/make-your-computer-talk-with-vb-net-app-source-code/
 
 
Module Module1
    'We want to make sure we grab any arguments as args so that we speak them    
    Sub Main(ByVal args As String())
        'If there are no arguments UBound will return -1
        'Therefore we want to make sure to let the user know how to run the app if 
        'they don't enter any arguments
        If UBound(args) > -1 Then
 
            'Generate an empty string, we'll use this to concatenate all of our arguments 
            'together so we can pass it to the narrator
            Dim input As String = ""
 
            'Concat all of our arguments together and make sure to put a space in 
            'between them so the words don't run together
            For Each arg As String In args
                input = input + arg + " "
            Next
 
            'Create an object and gain access to the narrator
            Dim voice = CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice")
            'Tells the narrator what to say
            voice.Speak(input)
        Else
            'The is where we tell the user what to say if they didn't enter any arguments
            Console.WriteLine("No arguments specified")
            Console.WriteLine("Try this instead: SpeakToMe.exe Hello World")
            Console.WriteLine(vbCrLf + vbCrLf + "Visit www.brangle.com for other apps")
        End If
    End Sub
End Module
'The End

To run this program from the command line, you can type in something like the following:

SpeakToMeConsole.exe Hello World

And here is the beautiful one-liner!

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CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak("hello from brangle.com")

To shutdown/turn off your computer, just execute the following line of code:

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System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-s -t 0")

To restart/reboot your computer, just execute the following line of code:

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System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-r -t 0")

To log off your computer, just execute the following line of code (and yes, that’s a lowercase L, not the number 1):

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System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-l -t 0")

The number zero at the end of each of those examples is how long the computer should wait in seconds before shutting down/restarting/etc… In this example, I’m going to shutdown the computer in 5 minutes (5 minutes * 60 seconds = 300 seconds)

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System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-s -t 300")

Another example of needing a custom ip address is at my company, I’ve needed to check the status of a printer and if I want to try the access it via its hostname http://printername it wont work because the SysAdmin has shared the printer on the network without adding a custom dns host name, even though it has a static IP address on the network. So I added the name of each printer to my hosts file so now I have no problem accessing any printer via its name, without having to first look up its IP address.

Also, if you intend to block a website by its hostname then this is also the solution for you.

You can find the hosts file in the following folder…
Windows 95, 98, and ME in the %WinDir%\ directory
NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7 in the %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\ directory (%SystemRoot% is almost always C:\Windows)
iPhone and iTouch in the /private/etc/hosts directory
Linux in the /etc/hosts directory

Also, a note for 0.1% of Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, and Windows 7 users, the actual location may differ, to find the real location you’ll need to dig into the registry key, give the following a look up

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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

and look for the following string key DataBasePath. On my computer it was declared as %SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc I know that’s what I said it would be above, I just want all you SysAdmins to be aware of that 0.1% chance.

Lastly once, you finish making any modifications you’ll need to flush your locally cached DNS on your computer.

In WinXP you can edit the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file by opening it in notepad or any ascii text editor. By default the last line you’ll see is

127.0.0.1       localhost

but other programs can change this. The IP address 127.0.0.1 is always the ip address of the local computer. It doesn’t matter if the computer has a different IP address on the network, 127.0.0.1 is considered a loop back address, in other words, it always points to your computer.

you can add a new hostname followed by the ip address in the text file that’s it, it’s just that simple! Let’s add example.com to our local host names, now if we had apache installed, this ip address would always map to our computer just by adding the following line to the end of your hosts file…

127.0.0.1    example.com

Now what if you want to block a website like MySpace? Add the following line

0.0.0.0       myspace.com

The problem with this approach is it only blocks the hostname myspace.com, it leaves www.myspace.com and login.myspace.com completely accessible, and other hostname that I don’t know about (or worse yet, any future host names that they decide to add). So let’s block all we we can by pointing them to a null IP address

0.0.0.0       myspace.com
0.0.0.0       www.myspace.com
0.0.0.0       login.myspace.com

Ok great, I added my login.myspace.com to the hosts file, but I can still access it, what gives?!? There is two possible fixes for this solution. First close all of your browsers, for example, if you can still access the domain in Internet Explorer or FireFox it’s because the IP address has been cached, close the browser so that the browser can "forget" the IP address. Now before you reopen the application we also need to clear the DNS entry from Windows. We can clear a DNS entry from windows by clicking Start, Run typing ipconfig /flushdns then clicking ok. This will flush the ip address address stored by the operating system. You should now by able to open FireFox and Internet Explorer and verify that they no longer have the IP address cached.