Thanks,
This is a really
good article.
regards
Maria and crew from australia
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On 01/08/2012, at 6:25 AM, Fred Olver <goodfo...@charter.net> wrote:
> “It’s important to understand what speech recognition software can and can’t
> do — we aren’t yet at the point where you can speak normally and have your
> words magically converted into text,” Kirk McElhearn writes for TidBITS.
>
> “I’ve been dictating into dictaphones and using speech recognition software
> for more than 15 years, and while dictating isn’t any faster than typing for
> me, I often find it more relaxing than typing,” McElhearn writes. “For those
> who can’t type quickly, dictation might be faster, and it’s an essential
> technology for those with certain physical impairments or injuries.”
>
> McElhearn writes, “With the release of the iPhone 4S and the third-generation
> iPad, Apple brought simple voice dictation to millions of iOS users, and now
> with the launch of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Mac users can join the voice
> dictation party without buying Dragon Dictate. Whether you can be satisfied
> with Apple’s built-in voice dictation or whether you need the full
> capabilities of Dragon Dictate depends on how you plan to use the software.”
>
>
>
>
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> Macs & Mac OS X | 31 Jul 2012 | Print | Comment (0)
> Take a Memo: Ten Tips for Successful Voice Dictation
>
> by Kirk McElhearn
>
>
>
>
> Perfect speech recognition is one of the Holy Grails of computing — shouldn’t
> our computers be able to transcribe exactly what we say, complete with proper
> spelling and punctuation, as has been the case in science fiction for many
> years? In fact, speech recognition software is nothing new in computing.
> Windows users have long taken advantage of the excellent Dragon Naturally
> Speaking from Nuance. On the Mac, this software has gotten good enough only
> in the past couple of years, since MacSpeech licensed the Naturally Speaking
> engine and was subsequently acquired by Nuance, after which the MacSpeech app
> was renamed to Dragon Dictate.
>
> But it’s important to understand what speech recognition software can and
> can’t do — we aren’t yet at the point where you can speak normally and have
> your words magically converted into text. I’ve been dictating into
> dictaphones and using speech recognition software for more than 15 years, and
> while dictating isn’t any faster than typing for me, I often find it more
> relaxing than typing. For those who can’t type quickly, dictation might be
> faster, and it’s an essential technology for those with certain physical
> impairments or injuries.
>
> With the release of the iPhone 4S and the third-generation iPad, Apple
> brought simple voice dictation to millions of iOS users, and now with the
> launch of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Mac users can join the voice dictation
> party without buying Dragon Dictate. Whether you can be satisfied with
> Apple’s built-in voice dictation or whether you need the full capabilities of
> Dragon Dictate depends on how you plan to use the software.
>
> (It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between voice dictation, where
> what you say is converted into text, just as though you’d typed it, and voice
> control, where you speak commands and the computer or iOS device reacts to
> them. On the iPhone 4S, that’s the difference between voice dictation and
> talking to Siri, and on the Mac under Mountain Lion, it’s the difference
> between the new voice dictation feature in the Dictation & Speech pane of
> System Preferences and the long-standing Speakable Items feature, which is
> now located in the Accessibility preference pane.)
>
> The main thing to realize about speech recognition is that computers don’t
> understand what we say. They may be able to figure out what words leave our
> mouths, but they don’t understand any of the meaning or context. For this
> reason, dictation requires that you employ special techniques to convey what
> you mean.
>
> Plus, speech recognition software works best in a quiet environment, since
> extraneous noise can render transcriptions that read like the work of
> Surrealistic poets. Luckily, technology, in the form of a noise-canceling
> microphone, can filter out background noise and provide a purer stream of
> audio to your Mac. This can enable you to dictate even in a lively office.
>
> Starting to Speak -- If you’ve never used dictation software before, you’ll
> find that the basics of how Apple has implemented it in iOS and Mountain Lion
> are extremely easy.
>
> In iOS, to dictate text, bring up the onscreen keyboard by tapping anywhere
> you can type. Tap the microphone button to the left of the Space bar and
> speak, tapping it again when you’re done. You can also tap and hold on the
> microphone button, then lift your finger when you’re done speaking. The
> transcribed text appears at the insertion point.
>
>
>
> In Mountain Lion, position the insertion point where you want your
> transcribed text to appear, press the Fn (Function) key in the left corner of
> the keyboard twice to start dictation, and then start speaking. (If you don’t
> have an insertion point, Mountain Lion just beeps at you when you press Fn
> twice.) As with iOS, press the Fn key again to alert Mountain Lion that
> you’re done speaking, or, if you keep the Fn key down on the second
> invocation press, you can just let up on it when you’re done. Or, you can
> click the Done button in the dictation balloon that appears, but that seems
> like an awkward action if your hand was on the keyboard. Finally, you can
> just press Return to tell your Mac to process what you said. (You can change
> the key you press twice in the Dictation & Speech pane of System Preferences.)
>
>
>
> Top Ten Techniques -- A number of techniques can help you dictate more
> efficiently and more successfully. These are especially important with
> Apple’s dictation features in iOS and Mountain Lion, which don’t learn from
> what you dictate, unlike software like Dragon Dictate. For the best results,
> follow these rules:
>
> Speak slowly, evenly, and clearly. Pretend you’re a newscaster reading the
> news.
>
> Think about what you are going to say before you say it. The more you
> hesitate while speaking, the harder it is for the software to figure out what
> you mean.
>
> Dictate in short sentences or phrases, but try and dictate complete sentences
> and clauses. This is particularly necessary with Apple’s dictation features,
> which aren’t designed to process long sentences and can listen for only 30 to
> 40 seconds. That’s because, after you tap or click the Done button or run out
> of time, the audio you dictate is sent to a remote server, processed, then
> returned to you as text. In contrast, Dragon Dictate does all its processing
> on your Mac, so if you pause briefly, it can process your text, type it, and
> wait for you to continue.
>
> If you plan to dictate a lot, or if you’re in a noisy environment, use a
> standalone microphone. Built-in microphones are sufficient for basic use on
> both iOS devices and the Mac, but since they lack noise cancellation, they
> may not work well if there’s a fair amount of background noise. With the
> iPhone 4S and third-generation iPad, though, you can significantly improve
> recognition by holding the device so its internal mic is close to your mouth.
>
> Speak all punctuation: say the words “comma,” “period,” “dollar sign,”
> “percent sign,” “degree sign,” and so on. Say “new line” to press Return and
> “new paragraph” to press it twice, inserting a blank line.
>
> Say the word “apostrophe” for a possessive. For example, “I am going to Ahab
> apostrophe s cabin period” transcribes as “I am going to Ahab’s cabin.”
>
> To spell words or abbreviations, say the letters slowly and individually.
> Apple’s dictation features tend to assume you want all capitals, and it can
> be helpful to speak all the letters at the same cadence to avoid spurious
> spaces. If you’re using Dragon Dictate, the program has a spelling mode you
> can activate to tell the program to listen specifically for letters.
>
> In iOS, you can capitalize words by saying “cap” before the words you want
> capitalized. For example, you would say “I’m going to buy some clothes at cap
> the cap gap” to get “The Gap” at the end of that sentence. Oddly, since it
> would seem likely that the remote servers are running similar, if not
> identical recognition code, this technique does not work in cap mountain cap
> lion. We hope Apple will tweak the back end to enable arbitrary
> capitalization in this fashion.
>
> Unlike in Dragon Dictate, the iOS and Mountain Lion dictation features do not
> allow you to correct any mistakes via voice. Therefore, if a sentence is
> wrong, you must edit it from the keyboard, or just delete it and start over.
>
> Drink regularly. A dry mouth and throat will make your voice sound different,
> and will make it harder for the software to transcribe what you say correctly.
>
> As a bonus tip, if you’re dictating email and feel the need to convey some
> emotion, you can say “smiley” to get :-), “winky” to get ;-), and “frowny” to
> get :-(. You can also add “face” to any of them to get the same results.
> Interestingly, if you’re in, say, the address field in Safari 6 or the search
> field in a Finder window, these shortcuts don’t translate, and you’ll just
> get the words you say.
>
> Is Dictation for You? -- Don’t expect miracles from Apple’s dictation
> features in iOS and Mountain Lion. With practice, you will find that they can
> be useful for short texts, such as instant messages, short email messages,
> tweets, and so on. But if you want to dictate longer texts, you need to use
> dedicated speech recognition software such as Dragon Dictate, which learns
> from your speech patterns and enables you to edit the mistakes it makes.
> Nuance also offers software with specialized vocabularies built in —
> MacSpeech Dictate Legal and MacSpeech Dictate Medical — that makes it much
> easier for lawyers and doctors to dictate texts.
>
> Speech recognition can seem miraculous. When it works well, you can go from
> typing 40 or 50 words a minute to dictating a few hundred words in the same
> time. This takes a fair amount of effort, both for you to learn optimal
> dictation techniques and — if you’re using Dragon Dictate — for you to train
> the software to recognize your unique way of speaking. But if you’re
> interested in making the leap to a world where you dictate most of your text,
> give Apple’s dictation features in iOS and Mountain Lion a try, and if you
> find them saving you time, check out Dragon Dictate.
>
> Check out the Take Control ebooks that expand on the topic in this article:
>
>
> Take Control of Using Mountain Lion
> Join Mac expert Mac Neuburg as you make the most of Mountain Lion's major new
> features, including Notifications, Documents in the Cloud, and improved Auto
> Save/Versions. Plus, learn to customize Mountain Lion and get help with
> finding files, launching apps, managing windows, handling user accounts, and
> more.
>
>
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