iDictate – Digital Voice Blog

Voice recognition software is nothing new, it has been around since 1997 on Windows with the well known Dragon NaturallySpeaking software. Nuance the makers of NaturallySpeaking also have a Mac offering in the form of Dragon Dictate which shares the same voice recognition engine known as Dragon. In the following quick video I wanted to just show you Dragon as it is most commonly used, simply to type as you talk.

Perfect for those of you just want to speak your thoughts, maybe writing a blog post, your first novel or a story for publication if you are a journalist. Simply sit back, relax and talk using Dragon – yes there will be mistakes (there is one in the video, did you spot it?) but the key point is you can get your thoughts out without being interrupted or slowed down with your typing speed. Voice recognition, as I mention in the video, is said to be upto five times faster than typing yourself. Couple the speed of transcription with a quick run through proof read and you still have text down much quicker than typing it yourself. More

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Transcription like most things these days has gone digital. Gone are the days of loading and listening to poor quality analogue tapes now we just load and listen to crystal clear digital audio which arrives via email, on a shared network drive or downloaded from a cloud. Regardless of whether you are an experienced micro cassette transcriptionist or someone who is new to transcription the equipment you will need is the same. Transcribing voice to text for digitally recorded audio letters, notes, interviews, focus groups, meetings etc is a highly skilled job, below are the key tools you will need to make this task easier: More

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Dragon Voice Recorder Edition or DVR Edition as it is more commonly known is often the keyword of many a Google search that ends up on my blog. I have referred to this product a couple of times over the life of iDictate but now feels like the right time to dedicate a post to this often overlooked Nuance family member.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Voice Recorder Edition is a Windows only product and comes, depending on which country you are in, with either an Olympus, Philips or Sony digital voice recorder. Now the recorders included are not particularly flash – they are generally the lower end of the range recorders, but they are good enough for digitally recorded voice to text. The DVR edition is generally priced very low and for those unaware when bundled with a voice recorder looks to be a bit of a bargain. But buyer beware there are a few things you need to know about this little bundle. More

The Dragon voice recognition products from Nuance – NaturallySpeaking for Windows & Dragon Dictate for Mac – are not just a useful aid for teachers and educators but are also fast becoming essential tools for learning in our schools and universities for students too. Allowing children to speak their thoughts and not be held back by the speed of their typing which lets creativity flow. Helping children with their spoken diction and instantly showing the correct spelling of words as they are spoken are a huge benefit. That coupled with the fact that students are comfortable using computers it makes sense for schools and universities to be looking at this speech recognition technology. In summary benefits of speech recognition technology for students and educators include:

• Improves core reading and writing skills for students of all abilities
• Helps students with language-based learning disabilities more easily express themselves in writing
• Provides accessibility for teachers and students with physical disabilities that hamper typing
• Bridges English Language Learners’ oral and  written communication skills
• Prepares students to use emerging interfaces in the 21st century workforce
• Enables teachers to prepare more detailed assessments of student work through dictation

This is where we, Dictate Australia, can help as certified Gold Nuance Australia resellers. We can supply site education licences for learning facilities across Australia. This not only opens you up to larger discounts on Nuance pricing but also makes your software asset management more manageable compared to buying odd licences ad hoc. The licensing of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (Windows computers) and Dragon Dictate (for Macs) is slightly different for educational purposes than it is for commercial or government bulk licensing the differences being: More

One of the social media tweaks added to Dragon Dictate, voice recognition for Mac, in its recent upgrade from version 2.0 to 2.5 was the ability to post status messages directly to Facebook and Twitter simply using a voice command. With so many of us using twitter these days it was an obvious add-in to make by Nuance. So just how easy is it to tweet using your voice?

Piece of cake, I just did my first voice tweet and like a new born baby I filmed it for the memories. It’s quick and easy. The steps are:

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One of the most common searches that end up with visitors landing on my blog is people looking for a trial version of Dragon Dictate for the Mac. Good idea, it is quite a hefty purchase price (AU$180+) for some software that most know little about and therefore the cost vs risk factor is high. A trial version would be a good lead into the software and would allow people to have a play, see how accurate it is and become more comfortable before committing to a purchase. Great idea but alas a free trial version is not available.

As a compromise Nuance have just released to the Mac App Store Dragon Express for a cut down, yet still significant price of $US49.99 (AU$51.99). This app is an excellent introduction into voice recognition on the Mac and is essentially a cut down version of Dragon Dictate 2.5 – Nuance’s flagship speech recognition product for the Mac.

So how does it work?

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Now that we have Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 for Windows and Dragon Dictate 2.5 for Mac fully social in the sense that using them they can both post to Twitter or Facebook using voice only we thought it might be useful to track down some of the Nuance and Dragon related twitter id’s for you to interact with.

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No, is the short answer. Voice or speech recognition software will only successfully work with one spoken voice and that spoken voice, for best results, needs to have trained the software to understand their voice and style of speaking known as creating a voice profile. Most people who use voice recognition software typically pop on a headset and mic and chat away to their Windows PC or Mac and watch as their voice is magically (or using the Dragon voice recognition engine if you don’t believe in magic) converted to text.

Voice recognition is currently going through a spike in popularity, especially since the release of the iPhone 4S running iOS5 with Siri, which has raised awareness of just how good voice recognition technology has evolved over the last couple of years, Nuance being the company leading the way in this technology on Mac, Windows and now inside iOS5 working closely with Apple.

Because of this everyone now has an iPhone which is capable of recording audio and most who need to capture important meetings or interviews also have a high quality digital voice recorder. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium and Professional edition on Windows and MacSpeech Scribe on the Mac can take recorded audio and transcribe it, that is only for that single trained person who is speaking. So it is understandable that the leap is often made that if it can transcribe one voice it can transcribe many, not so. The technology is not there yet and in my opinion won’t be for quite some time.

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