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Are You Talking to Your PC Yet?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hello-computer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "If you have ever asked "Do those speech-to-text apps like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM ViaVoice really work?" Pocket PC Addict has posted a detailed review of Dragon Naturally Speaking for Pocket PC and Desktop machines. It is written from the perspective of someone who has been burned by speech to text software in the past and had vowed to never try one of these apps again. It is encouraging for slow typists who would like to use their voice to write. Plus it details some valuable tips for using it with Pocket PCs."

4 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Fun with Macros by BlueCup · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My brother and I work at a company making efficiency programs... for awhile we toyed with the idea of having all of the programs activated by voice... we tested it out for awhile with an open source cantation originally used for games, that would execute a command, or type text based on what you said... for a while, it was awesome, every time we said something, it'd find the word from our list, and activate the program... problem was, when it listened to your voice, it only compared it to the words you had programs assigned to... so if you had four words, no problem, but if you had 60, it started choosing horribly... we eventually had to scrap the program all together... though it was funny watching what programs it would have to run through when I started cursing in frustration... I'm pretty sure the annoyance of people talking to their computers all over the building would have caused problems as well.

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  2. Re:Spoken programming languages by Coffee · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Has anyone given any thought as to how a programming language should be structured so that it would be easy to code by waving things with particular smells in front of the computer? If not, why not?

    Seriously, this is not a design goal for programming languages. Programming languages are meant to a) be not ambiguous, and b) match or impose a way of thinking. Neither of these map particularly well onto spoken languages, because the bloody syntax (to keep it nonambiguous) gets in the way.

    This is also why Edsger Dijkstra felt that natural programming was not a good idea.

  3. I just always imagine a room full... by Infonaut · · Score: 2, Insightful
    of people talking to their computers. Some people aren't bothered by noise pollution, but it drives me crazy. The babble of people on the phone in a crowded space is bad enough. Add to that people talking to their computers constantly, and postal employees won't be the only people going off with AKs.

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  4. Re:Summary of the article by the+grace+of+R'hllor · · Score: 4, Insightful
    All though Text two speach is a grape gnu technology it is not red E for the main stream yet.

    Now I see the master plan. Rather than improving speech-to-text technologies, the focus is on destroying basic literacy. Apart from the word 'grape', I parsed that sentence without even having to mentally translate it.

    Based on current experience, I'd say speech-to-text is going to be a growing market :-(