Chimoo Timer is a nice tool that provides a countdown/up timer featuring speech recognition feature, but also text-to-speech support.

Here are some key features of "Chimoo Timer":

· Speech Recognition (for Start, Stop, Reset, "current value", and "disable speech recognition").
· Speech support for counting seconds, speaking alerts.
· "Tick" sound on seconds.
· Count up and count down modes.
· Floating mini window mode takes up less space.
· Low CPU usage (esp. when in background or hidden).
· Written with Cocoa - native to Mac OS X.
· Dock menu to start/stop/reset timer.
· Multiplier view for counting elapsed frames.
· Detachable controller.
· Customizable settings for what to do upon timer expiration.
· Optional feature to warn before stopping timer - great for timing important things such as time spent working at home which you don't want to accidentally reset.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· New menu extra optionally displays timer in menu bar.
· Dock icon can be hidden when menu extra is shown.
· Greatly expanded text-to-speech options including count down expiration warning, ability to speak last ten seconds of a countdown, and customizable voice and speech rate settings.
· Retooled speech recognition system with a few more options now displays standard floating speech palette.
· New OS X style toolbar for timer control.
· Option to display progress bar during count down.Automatic repeat after delay option.
· Ability to log current timer value and save log to a file.
· Preferences reorganized.
· Lots of other miscellaneous changes.
· Accuracy of timing is no longer affected by automatic internet updates of the computer's date and time.
· Problems getting a count down time to stick have been resolved.