Monday 06th of September 2010
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
for all budding bloggers and people who love to write
It is not often that either Enzo or myself are given to praising software, but we have both agreed on something,and that in itself is noteworthy! And it all started like this:
When Enzo and I wrote Cooking at the Café, it was not without it's strains and stresses - and a great deal of fun too. Once our masterpiece was finished one of our friends at The Depot Cafe suggested that for our next exciting bunch of recipes and stories, we should consider investing in some speech recognition software. To be honest that was some months ago and we have slept since then. But due to the excessive amounts of work that involves sitting infront of our computer screens these days, we decided to take a closer look and set about doing some research.
It appears that there are quite a few different types of software you can choose, but Dragon Naturally Speaking from Nuance continuously demonstrated itself to be at the top of the speech recognition software tree. So Enzo and I sat and entered the website together. Well,
actually he was frying up some shrimp when I entered the website, where I continued to read around and finally entered their chat room specifically designed to either take your order, or to help you with any questions you might have.
At first our typist on the other end of the little box (Anna) seemed only to be interested in talking to us and taking an order. However, after a few gentle prompts we continued to communicate via the written word. She helped us understand what requirements we needed to install it until finally we couldn't contain ourselves any more and we called her to place the order.
We ordered Naturally Speaking Preferred 10 with a wireless microphone and it was then we learned that Anna was all the way up north in Canada. Anyway, we placed our order very simply over the phone, bid a farewell to Anna who was willing to stay on the line to answer further questions, but Enzo's grilled shrimp were calling - enough said... It was four days later when our little box of goodies arrived. We were so excited, and even as I opened the box, a list of the possibilities were already in my head. Here's what it can do:
IT'S AMAZING!!! And extremely accurate. As I explained to Enzo who has just handed me a little something that he has written, editing this will now only take a day as opposed to the usual 3 months as I try to organise his grammer (not that mine is anything to write home or here about).
Dragon Naturally Speaking is quite simply the best piece of software that Enzo and I have ever purchased, even though it does involve me putting a gizmo in my ear in order to remain totally hands-free. But it does mean that given a quiet enough environment, I can be developing a recipe in my kitchen and speaking the ingredients into my microphone - how FABA-TECHNO is that! Well, I think it is.
It took me a few moments to figure out how to wear the ear-thingy and to set it all up to recognise my speech. I really do mean a few moments too - I couldn't wait to practise all over my documents, including this one. YEP! This has been achieved with dictation.
The possibilities are endless - and as Enzo loses a few more of his marbles due to dementia, he too is looking forward to being able to put many more of his memories down for furture generations of Ardovinis...if only he could remember where he put them...
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