Speech to text, with a really good accuracy rate.

When I got back from CES I had a stack of new product press releases. My normal plan is to type a brief description of each new gizmo into an “Interesting New Products” file on my computer. But it’s one of my least favorite things to do. I would read something on the press release, type it in, read more, type it in, etc. As I looked at the stack of press releases I wish I had a secretary. A light dawns! Wait a minute; I have speech-to-text software that I never tried. At a press event a while back a kind spokesperson at Nuance Software sent me a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking 10. Fortunately I knew exactly where it was & I installed it. Setup took about 20 minutes. It detects and tests your hardware and you make some choices like where you were born, I guess to adjust for local accents. Then you read something from the screen into your microphone until the program tells you it’s finished with setup. Among the choices of things to read aloud are commands you use with Dragon. That’s the choice to make, because you’re multi-tasking. The program is tuning itself to how you speak, while at the same time, you’re learning some basic commands. There’s another option I didn’t use. You can also read some of your e-mail and word-processing docs so that Naturally Speaking can match your writing and dictation styles. My setup took about 20 minutes and then I just started dictating. I really was amazed at how accurate the text was. I’d say it got better than 90% of what I dictated perfectly. If you read something that the program mistypes – like GPS Padlock instead of GPS Maplock, it’s best if you manually correct the written text right away. If you do that, Naturally Speaking learns that new word and doesn’t type the wrong one again. It’s really smart. It turns out the Professional version Nuance sent me is the most expensive version. But it includes features that you and certainly me will never need, like automating complex workflow actions and other corporate chores. The basic version, which is probably all most folks need, list for $99.00. But I did a web search and it’s widely available for about $50. You can see all the various versions at the company’s website. There’s even an new iPhone version.

www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking

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