Speech to text epic fail for articles

I dont think the speach recignition can really work for blogs

It's not much of a threat, anyway, if you don't mind my mentioning it: one should always L.O. in a oral anyway. Or so I've been led to believe.

Yes it's a PITA but it's faster for me to use it because I write from what I'm thinking. So, I write 500 words in 5-10 minutes with the speech tool (it will get better at understanding you) and then it takes me 1-2 minutes to correct them. So, for me aat least it's much faster. Plus some of the stuff it writes is hilarious.

Sean

I guess I am a freak of nature: not only do I type faster than I speak, but my thinking is much better when I type than when I've got my mouth open. An obvious lesson for me, if for no one else...

I tried it for several days once only to discover that it doesn't understand my southern drawl. I finally found that I could type faster than I can correct errors.

If it were intelligible enough to decipher later after a brainstorming session I could live with it, but what it transcribes vs what I say have little resemblance.

I'll hold out for DNS or stick with the 10 finger technique.

That's a pretty good one! Have you tried Dragon Dictation, though? It's usually spot on.

I use it and it's getting to know me better. Sometimes it does get wonky though. It's more of a dictation tool than speech recognition or voice to writer. You have to speak in dictation. first sentence. blah blah comma blah period new paragraph blah blah quotations number 4 blah blah blah end quotations period

I used to lose my train of thought or run off in a different tangent until I got better speaking with punctuation.

The software gets better the more you use it.

I haven't tried Vista's built in speach to text function but I do prefer to use Dragon Naturally Speaking. Once you train it to recognize your voice it works efficently enough to avoid the dreaded L O in an oral.

Respectfuly,
Tim

In both programs DNS and MS, when you are speaking this does not override the keyboard. You can always hit the keys for period, comma, etc. instead of saying the word.

On Windows 7, I love it. It works great for me -- but you do have to TRAIN the system to your voice and you really have to annunciate clearly with a head mic. I find that table mics don't work as well. My wife is Russian, therefore it doesn't work at all for her due to her accent, so it definitely doesn't work for everyone.

I can write a 800 word article in about 10 minutes. The best part is that I am READING another article aloud and rewriting it at the same time by speaking in my own *tongue* so to speak. So while an article may read "The Chicago Bears defeated the Jets in dramatic fashion," -- I will say it differently aloud, such as "The Bears put a smack down on the Jets and rallied behind Cutler."

When it's all done, I review it and then correct the mistakes, which takes about another 5 minutes. But I love it -- as I speak faster than I type -- much faster. It's not perfect -- but I have no problem doing this rather than pay someone to write it for me. Much better on the budget for blog postings and article marketing.

I did try to hook up a youtube video for a review type of article -- but it didn't work out so well... so I still have to repeat what is said manually because on videos, people talk too fast for the speech recognition software I think. As I said, you do have to speak slowly and annunciate correctly.

When you unbox Dragon Naturally Speaking think of what you have in your hands is a tiny little infant(Lizard?), or Pokey Little Puppy, your call.

It needs to be feed, watered, pooped and trained to play well with others.

It will learn fast, very fast, but if you don't teach it to NOT paint on the walls and your other rules, then don't get all huffy if it does so AND poops on your furniture too.
Like little pups or infants it doesn't like to be ignored. Oh, you can turn off your computer sure and think all is right with the world, but it is probably conspiring against you and laughing at you and grinning like a Possum eating Sh*t, when you try to use it without training that little Bas***d

Dragon includes several texts for training. The more you use it AND correct it immediately, then the more accurate it will become.

I like using it for voice notes I have recorded into an mp3 player/recorder I carry. If you have that feature on your cell phone, you can use that too, but, BIG BUT! you need to train it for each device.

It can take you HOURS to get it to behave properly. Do the training upfront to avoid future frustrations. Keep in mind it will never be 100% perfect. We all can make mistakes, so go easy on it. NO time-out chairs! And don't ass-u-me it will catch odd words like, oh maybe Wladziu "Walter" Lee Valentino's (Liberace) Pink Lame Rhine-Stone Ostrich Cape.

When you use it and it errors, right then you will be best served to edit/add/correct that word error in the database and it will be correct the next time it analyzes those same word/s.

DNS is really pretty darned slick.

John "Mr Thick Skinned Big Butt Triceratops"

Speech to text is getting better, but we need a better AI program. Sadly, very little work is done on AI now. Most people feel that artificial intelligence is science fiction, when it is a real science. If only we could get a brand new company to jump in. There is a market for this exciting product, but we need to interest new companies.

I find the speech recognition in Windows 7 to be a godsend, my production increases at least four-fold whenever I use it. In fact I'd go as far as to rate it as the greatest productivity tool since the computer itself. I'm dead serious.

The results you had are likely the result of (a) a low-quality microphone and/or (b) not spending a few hours training the system (time you will make back rapidly as soon as you start to use it).

With a high quality microphone and some time spent training the system I would estimate that I get about 95 - 98 percent accuracy from the Windows 7 speech recognition. Having been involved in a speech-recognition application development in the mid 1990's I find this to be astounding.

FYI I always use Notepad and "talk" into that, I find not having the overhead of MS Word or Open Office really improves performance - in fact I can get great performance even on a little Netbook! After I have my text in Notepad I copy and paste into Word and then do may fancy editing and formatting. Still takes a quarter of the time than it would to type it manually, at least in my case.

Bill

P.S. The microphone does not have to be expensive, I use a Microsoft LifeChat headphone/microphone with excellent results. Now if only I could find a Bluetooth microphone with acceptable quality, I could walk around the house all day talking to my computer!