Do you use voice recognition to talk to your computer?
This is an area of interest of mine. A few years ago our sympathetic office manager thought that it just didn't make sense for his employees to be typing all the time - so he bought DragonSpeak for WordPerfect for our PC work computers. We all said "great". We all tried it. We all gave up.
I get the sense that voice recognition, despite all of the promise some thought it showed, just has not lived up to expectations for anyone.
But, am I wrong? Are there actually users out there who are making practical use of voice recognition? And by practical use, I am talking about more than just playing around with it for fun. I mean actually using it to control your computer and to enter data. Is anyone at least using Speakable Items to give basic commands to their computer? Is anyone actually giving many of their commands by Speakable Items. Is anyone occasionally using DragonSpeak or ViaVoice to enter text with voice recognition? Is anyone regularly entering text this way?
Also, if you have any thoughts about the future of voice recognition, I'd like to know.
I get the sense that voice recognition, despite all of the promise some thought it showed, just has not lived up to expectations for anyone.
But, am I wrong? Are there actually users out there who are making practical use of voice recognition? And by practical use, I am talking about more than just playing around with it for fun. I mean actually using it to control your computer and to enter data. Is anyone at least using Speakable Items to give basic commands to their computer? Is anyone actually giving many of their commands by Speakable Items. Is anyone occasionally using DragonSpeak or ViaVoice to enter text with voice recognition? Is anyone regularly entering text this way?
Also, if you have any thoughts about the future of voice recognition, I'd like to know.
Comments
A couple of comments about what a few people have posted. I think that the "shouting at it" issue is addressed by having a headset microphone. That's what they got us at the office when they tried it a few years ago and the microphone at least addressed that issue. With respect to whether the technology will improve - I think that it probably will, but I wonder if that is the issue. Maybe people just don't want to 'talk' at their computers.
Originally posted by Matt Danger
it doesn't work well for me at all...
Same for me. I tryed to use the voice recognition software in OS X to play chess, it barely worked at all, it always gave me the "?". \
Hence it's too much effort to put on an accent, and I feel like an idiot doing so. m.
Originally posted by Merovingian
I simply don't use it, because I have to speak in an American accent, and I don't have an American accent - I'm an Aussie, (pronounced "o-zee", not "or-see" -- how many times I've heard it mis-pronounced)!
Hence it's too much effort to put on an accent, and I feel like an idiot doing so. m.
Actually, last year a few guys from Apple gave a talk at my school about the speech recognition in Jaguar (also about the CHUD tools). Point is, the guy who gave the talk on it was Aussie and spoke as such; he ran the speech recognition quite well though. Apparently they pre-train the speech recognition system to many different accents of english and it magically figures out what you say.
Then again I could never get "Tell me a joke" working consistently, and I think I have the standard 'american accent'.
I use both platforms, by the way.
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
Actually, I used it very regularly in the past on my PC. I do a lot of writing and when I am at home in the quiet of my office, it is very good. PC voice recognition, that is. Feature for feature, the Mac software is five plus years behind the PC versions. Also, there are some very powerful choices on the PC side. If all you have is Mac experience or ancient PC experience, then you have really not experienced the current state of the art in voice recognition. I frankly do not believe that the Mac will ever catch up in this area.
I use both platforms, by the way.
But isn't ViaVoice available on both Mac and PC?
Originally posted by Sir Mac o' the Isles
I have tried voice recognition and it never bluidy works. Whatever I tell the computer tae do it ends up telling me a knock knock joke: a bluidy feeble one at that. Voice recognition has nae future - put your bets on eye-contact language whereby rolling the eyes controls the a pair o' independent pointers on screen. An accomplished eyemac operator moving each roving orb asychronously can input up tae 5 exabytes in full stereo before lunch..
Well, no wonder it couldn't understand you.
Originally posted by Rick1138
I use voice recognition to open, close and switch applications, it works extremely well - it is the fastest way to do it.
Do you find that you have to talk quite loudly and distinctly at it, or do you use a normal voice tone?