Speaking more naturally than ever - iTWire podcast

by Tony Austin

Sunday, 17 August 2008

Page 2 of 2

In summary, I've started using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and found it to be vastly improved over the speech recognition software that I used before.

It certainly deserves very serious consideration to be added to everybody's basic toolkit of desktop productivity aids. It's definitely not just for doctors and others with high-volume transcription needs.

The training (to better recognize your own voice patterns) is much smoother to carry out than what I experienced way back then. The recognition of words in context seems superior. The spelling correction mechanism is more flexible and efficient. And on top of that there's the extremely handy capability (that the early products didn't have this, or only to a very limited extent) to issue a wide range of verbal commands for both the transcription process plus for driving your operating system and general applications. I've been using the Windows version, not the Apple Mac version, so can't comment on the latter although I'd expect the results to be similar.

It was NaturallySpeaking version 9.5 that I installed in July. NaturallySpeaking 10 was in the offing and now in early August has been released. See the coverage by fellow iTWire contributor Stephen Withers: Dragon NaturallySpeaking goes double-digit.

Derek Austin, Sales Manager, Integrative Technologies, Nuance Communications Australia Because of my intrinsic interest in spoken languages and speech recognition, I got in touch with Derek Austin who's the Sales Manager, Integrative Technologies for Nuance Communications Australia. to find out more about NaturallySpeaking 10. (You can also read a bit of background about NaturallySpeaking at Wikipedia.)

Here's a podcast of my discussion with Derek, where he summarizes the history and progress of speech recognition software, and explains the new features and benefits of NaturallySpeaking 10, and where you can purchase it in the Asia/Pacific region. [Added 05 September 2008 -- Derek is no relative of mine!]

With Nuance being headquartered in Boston, this led me to ask how well it handles regional (non-American) English accents: Australian, New Zealand, South African, south-east Asian (e.g., Singaporean), or whatever. Should New Zealanders use the Aussie flavor of NaturallySpeaking, for example?

Don't miss out. Listen to the podcast to find out Derek's tips on this, and more. (File size 10.6 MB, Running time 11 minutes)

I don't want an iPhone... To each his own! I just can't wait to get my copy of NaturallySpeaking 10.

Have some fun and a try a challenge or two that I've devised for you!
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