rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
April 13, 2009 at 9:14 am · Filed under Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
I use speech recognition a great deal – and I recently switched to Windows Speech Recognition on Vista. And I’ve been using Chrome exclusively for Google Apps, because I think it offers superior performance for JavaScript apps.
Unfortunately, Chrome doesn’t support WSR. According to Rob Chambers this would be easy for Google to do, and I suspect it is just an oversight on their part (both in terms of making their software more accessible as well as following Windows best practices).
Google: when are you going to put the effort into this? The Chrome 2.0 Beta doesn’t do it either.
Rob Chambers: how easy is this really? You also said that Firefox does support WSR – maybe it does, but not in Google Docs.
So now, I’m using IE8. Google Docs with WSR works great there.
Tags: Chrome, Firefox, Google, IE, IE8, Microsoft, WSR
April 1, 2009 at 1:57 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I am a heavy user of speech recognition technology. I find that I can write faster than typing (and I have a reputation for being a fast typist).
I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for several years now. Every new edition has gotten a little bit better. And I’ve found it quite useful except that the last two versions have tended to get corrupted databases. And now, I will very commonly get some error that causes it to lock up. I have found that it tends to fail if I switch around between different applications.
Of course, I am an avid multitasker, so these errors has become really irritating, and essentially stopped me from using voice recognition. I just can’t commit to staying in a single application for very long.
Today, I started using the speech recognition built into Vista. While I am struggling a little bit with differences in the verbal commands,I am already sold. Why?
- It feels much faster.
- I can switch between applications with no problems.
- The recognition engine is doing a terrific job with very little training.
I know that while I continue to use this I may come up with some problems, but so far I’m blown away.
Plus, Vista doesn’t try to sell me things through its auto-update feature.
Tags: Dragon, Speech, Vista, WSR
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