Can I use LiSA with any email account? Yes, any regular email will do. However, this means it does not work with Hotmail or AOL. This is not because we don't want LiSA to work with these services, it is just that they don't comply with Internet standards (POP3) so we simply cannot check their email servers. We apologize.

If you are a Yahoo user, your POP server is: pop.mail.yahoo.com Note that Yahoo has recently started charging users to access their Yahoo email through regular email programs, ie. not through their site.

Mac.com users' (Apple's email service) POP server is: mail.mac.com

Does LiSA use computer synthesized speech? No, LiSA uses pre-recorded voice samples which are combined to create a wide variety of informative announcements.

I have got some great ideas for relationships, can I email them to you? Absolutely. We'll keep adding relationships as we keep improving LiSA. There will be additional voice packs and relationship packs available for the Pro version. The corporate version will include custom relationships but is not due out for another couple of months.

Can I have more than one user per computer? Oh yes. Just make one copy of the entire LiSA application folder per person. Then name the folder with the name of the person whose settings it contains. All you have to do then is use the Speaking Assistant in the folder with your name on it. It is a fully self contained application with all preferences stored in the same folder as the application itself.

Can I have more than one email account checked per computer? Sure. Just make one copy of the LiSA folder per email account, as you would per person. At some point it will include more than one set of pop settings in the actual application. Version 2.5 will allow you to check more than one account. It is expected to be out in January/February.

Do I need to be logged in to my email service via the Web or an email application to be notified of new messages? No, LiSA is completely free standing. As long as LiSA itself is running, you're good to go. It is useful to have an email application running though, as LiSA won't actually speak the contents of the message to you or even show it to you, so when an interesting message comes in, it's convenient to be able to read it straight away.

Do I really need to be connected to the Internet all the time? Yes. You can connect via modem and LiSA will speak, though LiSA is designed to be used in an office where there is continuous Internet connection or through DSL or Cable modem. It's the wave of the future baby!

However, you can use Lisa to speak the time when you are not connected to the Internet, but that is about it. At this point.

Can LiSA run in the background on OS X? Yes, though not as easily as we'd like her to: Andras Dombovari did some research and found out the following. Using the Terminal type in the following:

cd "path to Lisa's directory"
pico Lisa.app/Contents/Info.plist

Note: replace "path to Lisa's directory" with the actual path. That will switch you to that directory. If you do not know the path, but can see the file just type in "pico" in the terminal with a space after it, and then drag and drop the Lisa application on the Terminal window. That should add the path of the app to your Terminal session.

Look through the file and find the line containing this:

<key>NSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>

Note: If this line is not in the plist file, then add it. Giving the value of 1 or 0 in the second line will hide or show the application in the Dock when it is running.

The only drawback of it, is if Lisa hangs you will have to kill the app by its process ID using the Terminal, since now it is not a simple foreground running process. To get its process ID just type the following in the Terminal:

top | grep LiSA

Note: remember the process ID that you will get back by using this command. Then to kill it just type the following into the terminal

kill "process ID"

Note: where you would replace the "process ID" by a number.How can I import Apple's Address Book?

How can I import from Outlook's Address Book? Do the following:
1) start Outlook, go to "File" menu and select "Import and Export" menu
item;
2) select "Export into file" option and click "Next" button;
3) select "Tab-delimited values (Windows) and click "Next" button;
4) select "Contacts" folder and click "Next";
5) specify where you want to save the exported addess book and click "Next";
6) click "Finish" button.
7) start LiSA, go to "Address Book" screen and click "Import Address Book";
8) in the opened "Import an address book file" dialog window point the
exported address book file and click "Open" button.

Note: If your address book contains a lot of contacts then the
import process can take few minutes.

How can I import Apple's Address Book? To import address contacts from Apple's OS X Address Book, you'll need to select the contacts in the Address Book, using the 'command/Apple/ key to select more than one, then choose 'Export vCard' from the 'File Menu. I recommend you put the contact on the top level of the hard drive, as LiSA is not too clever at navigating the folders on the Mac (a problem with LiSA's Java code).

The resulting vCard you can then import. If for some reason the vCard does not end with '.vcf' I suggest you add it, to make it easier for LiSA to know what you are importing.

How can I make LiSA start up when the computer starts up on Mac OS X? Go to the 'System Preferences' in your Apple Menu. Choose 'Accounts'. Choose your account. Click on the 'Startup Items' Tab. Drag LiSA in there. Youre set.

How can I make LiSA start up when the computer starts up on Windows? Do the following:
1) find LiSA's shortcut on your desktop and click right mouse button on it;
2) select "Copy" item on the context menu popped up;
3) click on "Start" button and select "Programs" menu item;
4) find "Startup" folder in the opened "Programs" menu and click right mouse
button on it;
5) select "Open" menu item;
6) click right mouse button on the just opened "Startup" window and select
"Paste" menu item.

What about privacy, what do you guys collect? We only collect information to make sure the registered versions are actually registered and paid for. Nothing else. And we will not sell your information nor send you advertising.

Does LiSA interfere with my email application? No, but if you set it to very frequent checking you might be unlucky. Your email (POP3) server will only allow a single application to be accessing the mailbox at any given point in time. This wouldn't be so bad itself, but when another application tries to do a check while the previous one is running the server will respond with an error message, rather than just make the latter client wait for its turn.

This translates into: "The lower you set the delay between checks in LiSA, the bigger a chance of getting 'mysterious' errors in your regular POP3 client becomes".

Does LiSA support proxies/firewalls? Sure corporate dude. The address and port of a HTTP proxy has to be entered in the Advanced Settings window that comes up when you hold left mouse button in Preferences (or on a Mac, click and hold the mouse down on the Preferences tab once you are in the Preferences screen, for 5 seconds). For example myproxy.somewhere.com:8080 or just myproxy.somewhere.com for standard http port (80).

We don't know whether POP3 will work with all firewall settings, however. There may be POP3 proxies necessary as well, but this is not supported yet.

Is LiSA spying on me? LiSA looks at our site (.org) to see if you have paid, to determine if she should run as full or lite.

She also checks google and yahoo and apple (I think) to see if she is online, so that she know if there is a problem with the email server or not. She also uses this info to say 'online' when she gets online.

As for all the other stuff she looks at, a user sent us this question:

"There are two issues I don't understand:- Upon startup, it tried to connect to you at 64.191.83.29
(liquidinformation.org) on port 80, a site which is using Apache, mod_ssl and OpenSSL; after denying the connection, it endlessly tried to connect to 216.239.39.99 (Google) and w15.www.dcn.yahoo.com (Yahoo) (?????). Please do not get offended if I use the term spy-ware (after all I didn't check what info was sent out when connecting to your site, if any), but a priori, this smells fishy; even more when suspecting that the connection to your site is encrypted via OpenSSL. Can you explain?" to which the answer is:

1) host.liquidinformation.org is a multihomed server, so that www.speakingassistant.com is also 64.191.83.29.
2) LiSA doesn't use SSL protocol when she tries to connect to our server. She just sends a plain HTTP POST request in order to find out is your copy of LiSA is registered or not.

He went on to ask: "It then connects twice to (in my case) 'smtp.terra.es', even though the server I entered is 'pop3.name'. I don't understand why it tries to connect to the SMTP server. Isn't that the server for outgoing e-mail? It just has to connect to the POP (incoming) server, right?"

As far as I understand you have a personal firewall program that allows you to see the server names and protocols which LiSA tries to connect to. So, actually LiSA doesn't try to connect to 'smtp.name'. I'll try to explain why you see that she does. In order to connect to your mail server 'pop3.name' LiSA requests its IP-address on DNS server and the server replies 'pop3.name' = [xxx.xxx.xxx]. When your firewall program tries to detect which server is accessed by LiSA it requests so-called reverse name resolution, i.e. it asks DNS server which name is associated with [xxx.xxx.xxx.] IP-address. DNS server replies [xxx.xxx.xxx.] = 'smtp.name'. Actually both the names refer to the same IP-address. You can see this by pinging both the servers. Go to command line and type: 'ping pop3.name' and then 'ping smtp.name'.