Mac Speech Voice Recognition
Some of you out there that are writing your own newsletters or typing into your blogs daily know what "finger-tunnel" is by now. It’s the direct cousin of carpal-tunnel (my personal/medical opinion). That is why I recommend and use Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking to "talk" my entries into my computer, instead of typing them in manually. Then I heard that some of you out there snared at my article on Dragon because it wasn’t available for Macintosh.
Well, that all changed today as Nuance released the Mac Version of its program, that allows you to plug in a headset and microphone and talk your way through pages and pages of content. The new release is very easy to install and configuration (given that it is a Mac product), is of course very easy.
I find that some of the best material that goes on paper, can sometimes be accomplished by not looking at your monitor and watching the text go by. What I do is make sure the page is ready to go and then I turn away from the computer and look out the window and talk. It clears my mind and allows me to focus on the subject and topic, instead of how the little cursor thing is moving along the monitor.
Something else to keep in mind when using speech recognition tools like Mac Speech, is that you have to take the time to input names that the program would not be aware of. Remember, it’s still a machine so you have to tell it that Best Buy is a store and not a combination of words for example. Other than that, I have always been very satisfied with Nuance products because they are made from the coals of the lessons they learned over the years of what speech recognition should be like. Meaning that when the company first started, the program did not do anywhere near as well as it does now.
And by the way, just to put some statistics into perspective, I find that even though I type about 80 words a minute, I can talk into Mac Speech DICTATE and get results back at about 180 words a minute. Twice the speed and no contact with the keyboard! Okay, I’m satisfied.
This article was written using Mac Speech, just to see if it was that different than Dragon. It’s to close to call for me.
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If you do anything regular on your computer like typing or blogging, I highly recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking to you. I was amazed at how efficient this little program is. In the past, when I needed to write something I would have to set my mind into the writing mode and begin. In the course of things, I would begin to write as if I was being formal again like when our old high school teacher used to tell us to write in a certain manner. In other words, it really wasn’t much of me and more of what I thought was needed on paper to get my point across. With Dragon, I can just talk about whatever it is I have to say and the program writes it on my screen.
If you can type 80 words per minute, Dragon allows you to speak (and type) at 180 words a minute. In fact, I find that because I can just say what I am thinking, my conversation tends to flow better since I don’t have to stop and think about what may go well next in writing. I don’t have to pause either, I can just talk and go. I don’t even have to look at the screen while its typing for you. You can close your eyes and say what you want to and when you open them and look, there is your text on screen.
Like any other software program out there, there is a little bit of a learning aspect of it, but that is okay because while you have to learn how to use the program the program has to learn to use your speech too. When you install it, I suggest you go through the little tutorial because it will quickly show you how to get up and running but it also begns to teach the program exactly how you speak. Once that is out of the way and every time you use it, the program continues its learning curve until finally, the program can interpret your speech completely and without any effort. It took my program about seven minutes of speech to become generally accustomed to my speech pattern. All I had to do was enter some words and say them that the program would not know what they are, unless I tell it what they are like CompUSA or iTunes etc.
There is a Standard Edition and a Professional edition but honestly, I found no difference between the two unless you really want to spend more money. The Standard Edition is what I used to “say” this post and I find that when I used to post once a day, I can now post five times a day if I choose to. When you go to their website they also have it available in many international languages too, including Spanish.
In the end, it doesn’t just do speech recognition for typing purposes, it can actually learn to operate your PC by voice. I haven’t used it for that purpose, but I’m sure you will find a way to make that happen.
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