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Voice recognition software has come a long way
By Michael Stern 30th January 2008
From Razrs to BlackBerrys to Curves, business people are always busy testing new electronic gadgets that promise to increase their productivity.
But I've found that performance-oriented executives are missing an important efficiency tool that's probably already on their computer: voice-recognition software.
I know what you're thinking: talking to your computer is Star Trek stuff. Besides, maybe you tried it a few years ago and it didn't work. Not... Even...When...You... Talked... Like... This...
Get ready for a surprise. The voice-recognition software bundled with Office 2003 (and of course the new Office 2007, which I've heard is even better) actually works. You can dictate business-quality notes, letters and documents whenever you have quiet surroundings and space to think.
There's a bit of training involved, and it certainly doesn't work perfectly. But speech-recognition software has come a long way since I first tried it out 10 years ago.
I now use Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 (retails for $99.99) for dictating letters and notes - and the results are incredible. There's magic in seeing your words form onscreen as you talk. When I've dictated a letter to my computer, I still have to proofread it, of course. There are lots of mistakes. But never having been the world's best keyboarder, I can attest that the program makes fewer mistakes than I would if I'd typed out the whole document.
Here's how it works. If you have a recent version of Office, you can find speech- recognition software under the Tools menu. You may have to install the program if you haven't already, and you'll need to take 20 minutes or so to train it. (You'll also need a good microphone, available from any computer store.)
Training involves reading a series of short text pages into the computer so it can recognize your pronunciation and speech patterns. It's pretty easy - unlike the old days, when "speech training" was really about teaching you to slow down and enunciate clearly for the computer to understand (i.e., it was training you).
To take advantage of speech recognition, it helps to have experience with dictation. You should be comfortable with forming coherent thoughts while you speak. In the years B.C. (before computers), I dictated notes into five different generations of Dictaphone machines. I'm used to thinking ahead of my words and knowing what I want to say. It takes effort to get used to talking aloud in complete sentences. And keep in mind that every er, uhh and umm gets picked up by the software (and often transcribed into real-looking words, such as "of," "and" and "the").
Never take your computer's stenographic skills for granted. You have to proofread every word, because you never know what wild, random guesses the software may make. Here are a few phrases I've dictated to my computer that just didn't work out:
- "the rising Canadian dollar" became "Verizon Canadian dollar"
- "HR" became "beach art"
- "Pull out all the stops" became "Pollute the stops"
- "apprenticeship programs" became "friendship programs"
- "line executives" became "lying executives"
- When I coughed one time the computer transcribed it as: "But it had"
- "Billing" became "building"
- "Forgivable" became "forgettable"
- And "why don't employers do more?" became "What employers do more?"
Those last three examples aren't particularly funny, but they demonstrate the most insidious problem posed by speech recognition: if you don't review each line carefully, you may approve a sentence that only looks like it makes sense. Your spellchecker can't help you here; only a careful proofread will catch these terrible typos.
Some people also use speech software to dictate emails or for entering short notes in a database. I still find it easier to type those out, since it means not firing up my speech processor or putting on my headset. You'll undoubtedly develop a style all your own.
The more you work with speech recognition, the more you will build your computer's accuracy rate. And while I'm just a dictating dabbler, you can get even more out of the system and save time by learning the commands that let you modify documents by the power of speech alone ("delete word," "open file," "highlight that").
If you can type 100 wpm, you don't need to dictate to your Dell. But most hunt-and-peck business people will save time (and improve their ability to extemporize) by working with speech recognition. I think the biggest barrier preventing people from adopting this technology is awareness: it took me years to realize that this function was already embedded in my word processor. I think most business people gave up on waiting for this technology years ago, and lost sight of the advancements it has made.
Speech software isn't perfect, but it's a huge step toward freeing business leaders from the tyranny of the keyboard. Give it a shot. "Testing one-two-free..."