News About Speech Recognition

Hi everyone! It has been several weeks since I have posted anything regarding speech recognition. During this time, I have been actively working behind the scenes on developing a fairly involved project that should hopefully generate more interest in speech recognition as a primary input.

Another piece of news that I would like to tell you about is the release of Dragon 10 Professional and Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred. Preliminary comments from some reviews are suggesting that there are improvements that may be worth upgrading for, or even if you have never used it, buying a copy.

Luckily, Nuance Corporation has been very generous in sending Gottabemobile several copies of Dragon 10 Professional. In the next month, several writers from Gottabemobile have agreed to use Dragon 10 professional as a primary input. One of the writers will begin to use Dragon without supplemental help. The other person will use an additional program called Voice Power. This program should help an everyday person to become very proficient, just by speaking questions about how to do things, while using Dragon.

To make this speech event even more interesting and complete, we will also have a staff writer begin to use the Vista speech recognition program. Although not as robust as Dragon Professional, Vista speech appears to be much improved over the XP version. Hopefully we will help you to see the usefulness and practicality of a speech recognition program in everyday usage.

I have approached several members of the speech recognition community who have agreed to offer commentary, or answer questions as the writers begin to use Dragon and Vista speech recognition. All of us, as readers of this column, will also be able to ask questions of the writers as they begin to use Dragon and Vista.

Here is a chance to see average people using speech, possibly for the first time, as a primary input device. When I began to use speech many years ago there was a long and involved process to having high accuracy. Now, in 2008, it should be rapid and with very little frustration.

I recognize that most of our readers have not spent much time using speech recognition. I hope that we can begin to start a dialogue and generate a new interest in speech recognition. I personally believe that tablet computers and speech recognition are a great combination. Come join us in watching and learning more about this fascinating software.