Monday 22 September 2008

Pic of the day: A dragon in disguise (from the anime Sumomo mo Momo mo, not that I could dictate that.)

MacSpeech

Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world's best speech recognition software, has been ported to Mac. It goes by the name MacSpeech dictate (www.macspeech.com).

As of today, Dragon is the only speech recognition software you can talk to in a casual manner and have it take dictation with human accuracy, as well as perform formatting and file commands merely by your say-so. If you are a Mac user and have problems with typing, please give this your consideration. The PC program was essential in keeping me in the workforce when my wrists became chronically inflamed some years ago. The least I can do is give others the same chance.

I have not tested MacSpeech, since I don't have a Mac. It is released just after Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, so one might hope that it is roughly equivalent to that. But even if it is just the equal of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, it would still be very valuable. I don't use Dragon NaturallySpeaking so much now when my wrists no longer hurt (although they still do a few days of the year), and I cannot speak for long since I barely speak at all to my fellow humans. There are probably very few who have tried this, but if you speak very little over several years, you will gradually lose your ability to speak for more than a few minutes. Like for instance the time it takes to dictate an entry like this.

But if you have Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 and talk to it regularly, it is supposed to be approximately 99% accurate. (I don't use it so much, so it isn't used to my voice, and besides I'm a foreigner to the English language.) Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is supposed to make 20% less errors than its predecessor and use about half as much processing power. I have ordered it from Amazon UK and expect to have it in time for NaNoWriMo. And now you can do the same, even if you have a Mac.