We're asking for your thoughts on voice recognition software in a poll, but first a few thoughts.
November brings the release of ScanSoft's Version 8 of
Dragon Naturally Speaking. eWeek writes that the program is greatly improved, especially in terms of accurracy which has improved by over 20%. One reseller of the software says "It really works; it's not an accuracy problem." (Of course, over the years I've heard that sort of comment a lot. Usually it means that a capability is almost there, but not quite yet!) But Chuck Runquist is the CEO of a software evaluation company, and he said "They did a super job in bringing it up to speed, in particular with the accuracy." So maybe there's something to it.
My own interest was due partly to the mention of support for Palm handhelds. It turns out that there is support for both Palm and Pocket PC, but the voice recognition and transcription only happens when you get back to your PC. Not quite enough processing power in your handheld for the full-blown program, but even integrated remote dictation starts to conjure up all kinds of new uses.
For example, imagine taking most of your notes verbally, and keeping them for future reference as text. Or, how about keeping your PDA in front of you during a meeting and catching all your comments for a sort of personal mini-minutes in text form. (I would say you could transcribe the meeting discussions, but I doubt the little mic on your PDA would be sufficient to catch any more than one person's words at best.)
And now things could get really exciting for tablet PCs also, where one
would be able to do transcription on the fly!
Please give your opinion of voice recognition in the poll, and check out the full article at
Voice software makes strides