Speech Recognition Software

If you're a blogger or if you have any substantial typing to do in the course of your daily work at recommend looking into speech recognition technology as a way to make the day go easier. When I sit and type for two full days I need to take a day off to work out the kinks that develop and now I can work for a week straight (if I absolutely have to).  :-)

I happen to be using Dragon Naturally Speaking www.nuance.com and have written two books and many papers and columns successfully with it.  I use it to do about half of my e-mails and would use it for all of them except that I don't always have it started and I try to keep my e-mails short, so it's just not worth firing it up sometimes.  There is a new version 9 that has just begun to ship (I'm waiting for my upgrade now) that is supposed to be more accurate while requiring less training; not that the training takes more than 15-30 minutes to do for previous versions.

Choose a good microphone

If you plan to look in to speech recognition be prepared to to spend your money wisely on a good microphone.  It takes a little bit of research, and perhaps trial and error, because one microphone might be good for me but not for you. Choosing the correct microphone depends on a number of factors such as how you speak and the ambient noise level in your office or home. A web site that I found extremely helpful is www.KnowBrainer.com for both hardware and software, including their own specialized add-on software that will allow extra functionality for a reasonable price.

I've just recently purchased a new Plantronics CS-50 USB wireless microphone that I find very accurate and comfortable while allowing me to wander freely around the office as a dictate. The new version of DNS is supporting Bluetooth technology so the choice of microphones should increase.  However, make sure that your getting a microphone that has good noise canceling capability.

Changing your speaking style

The software will adapt to a wide variety of accents and even some foreign languages, but a important factor is that you speak in complete sentences without unnecessary pauses.This can sometimes still be a bit of a challenge for me, but I'm getting the hang of it.  :-) As a matter of fact, I've become so accustomed to speaking into the computer I can imagine that I'll ever go back to typing full-time.  Most of the Microsoft family of software can be run completely with DNS and I've even managed to use it to create simple objects in 3ds Max, though I wouldn't want to try to a project that way.  The day will come, however, that even that will be possible.

Windows Vista speech recognition

Something to keep in mindis that Windows Vista has some speech recognition capability built in that people are saying seems to function fairly well.  You may want wait and try that out before investing in specialty software.