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.
Of course the Dragon offerings from Nuance for both Mac and Windows can do more than just dump out your spoken word into a document. You can pretty much control your PC just using your voice to write emails, surf the web and switch between and launch applications but the majority who use this software rely on it to enable very fast transcription of spoken word.
The above video shows Dragon Dictate in use to simply type as I speak in real time. The following text is what was dictated into Dragon to make the video:
“Hello world this is Dave from the iDictate Digital voice blog.
I just wanted to show you Dragon Dictate in its simplest and most commonly used form which is to just dump out text from your spoken word. For this example I’m using text edit on my Mac. Dragon Dictate however will work with any text editing software, in fact Dragon Dictate will convert voice to text in any window that you can type in. As you can see Dragon Dictate is very fast and very accurate.
Not only can you create documents in text edit but also pages, Microsoft Word, Google Docs or any word processing application. You can also use Dragon to write text in your favourite chat application, write e-mails or dictate a blog post directly in WordPress or using an application like Mars edit. As I said, anyway you can type then you can dictate and Dragon will do the typing for you.
So what are the advantages of using voice recognition technology to write? Obviously the speed of transcription is way faster than if you were to type yourself. Typing can often impede your thought process so with Dragon Dictate you can just sit back, relax and just speak what you’re thinking.
Nuance, the makers of Dragon Dictate for Mac, claim that this is up to 5 times faster than typing the text yourself. I tend to agree.
Dragon Dictate and its Windows equivalent Dragon NaturallySpeaking is perfect for students, journalists, bloggers in fact anyone who writes can utilise voice recognition to quickly get their ideas, thoughts and essays down in writing.”
Do you use Dragon Dictate on Mac or NaturallySpeaking on Windows, how do you like it? How has it changed what you do?
YouTube video created using iShowU 
screen capture software for Mac which also captured the voice feed from my Parott VXI noise cancelling headset/mic direct into Dragon Dictate.