Thursday, March 01, 2007

Speech recognition in Windows

Talking about typing, Pogue just posted this article about controlling the PC and Speech recognition in Windows Vista. It sounds very cool. Perhaps I should get Parallels and install Vista on my big Mac. Even when you're a good typist, it still takes a lot of concentration and corrections. At least it does for me. And Pogue and others say Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is "eerily accurate", and that Vista is very close even without it.

OK, I would not imagine it would be good for programming, but somebody had to try. This is funny. (The funniest thing is that the guy starts out making a demo of how easy it is, and at the end, after a million silly problems along the way, apparently still thinks it's a good demo of that!)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

It does look impressive, but it's not the right tool for all purposes. To demonstrate that, here's a YouTube video I linked to on my blog.

I'm a Mac fan. I was rolling on the floor.

Anonymous said...

Another Mac fan laughing. My wife is trying to work with Vista. Apparently better than XP, but I better tell her not to cuss in front of it.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, especially if you have kids! :-)

In the first PlayStation Spider-Man videogame, there's a screen to input cheat codes with letters. It so happens that it has an extra feature : if you enter rude/swear words (or attempt to), Spidey pops up on the screen, and punches it into a random neutral word. I read that in a tips magazine, and immediately tried it for myself to make sure. I never would've gotten such a childish idea by my own.
"Political Corrector strikes again, hahaha!!!" :-D

Hey, looks like those Mac fans are a very merry bunch. Good-natured, relaxed... I think I'll check in on their weird cult some day.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

It is a funny thing, but amongst the best and most enduring friends I have made in the last ten years, an amazingly big percentage are Mac users.

I am not a Windows-hater by any means, but I do think that Macintosh has more style, more fun, and better userfriendliness, and I tend to like the kind of people who gravitate towards those things.

Anonymous said...

I agree. Our choices in computing systems do reflect our personalities. A bit like our choices in breeds of dogs.

I'm a cat person myself. :-)

Jerry said...

ROTFLOLPMP! I wonder if Vista was developed by a MAC subversive?

Anonymous said...

ttl said...
I'm a cat person myself. :-)


Meowrrr?...
(You too? I like you!)

David Toyne said...

I'll post a vote for Dragon Naturally speaking. Use it to transcribe interviews now and its spookily good.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I'm struggling at the moment with getting NS to install on my virtual machine.

How do you use it? I don't imagine you can just play it a recording of an interview?

Unknown said...

"And Pogue and others say Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is "eerily accurate", and that Vista is very close even without it."

Did Microsoft reverse-engineer their technology the same way they've stolen,(and horribly botched), everything else they've ever sold?

Unknown said...

Eolake-

I've got NS 8.something. You first have to train it to recognize your voice by reading some texts. There is a pretty broad variety of them.

It's much better than previous technology and version 9 was supposed to be leaps ahead of it. I just haven't been able to justify the cost to upgrade yet.

Anonymous said...

"You first have to train it to recognize your voice by reading some texts."

Um... what if the other voices have a different accent? This could SPELL trouble!

"T-R-U-B-B-E-L"