dictation

Congrats to Craig L. of East Wenatchee, Wash., for winning a $200 gift certificate to geek shop KlearGear.com in last week's giveaway, and to Chuck V. of Eden Prairie, Minn., for scoring a bag of CES swag the week before that. Now, on to this week's business...

Are you a fan of speech recognition software? Put your hands up in the air. We're giving away a copy of the latest version of Nuance's Dragon Dictate for Mac.

Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 promises 15 percent better out-of-the box accuracy than its predecessor, as well as … Read more

One of Apple's newer features in OS X is the Dictation service that was introduced in Mountain Lion, which allows you to speak phrases and have the system enter it as text in entry fields. While useful in certain situations, some people who have tried using the service have found it to be unavailable on their systems.

When accessing the "Dictation & Speech" system preferences, instead of being able to click the on or off buttons, these options are grayed out, even in administrative accounts that ought to have full access to system services.

The Dictation service … Read more

As OS X has progressed in development Apple has included more and more speech services options, including enhancing the text-to-speech features with smoother and more realistic voices, and also making this service more globally available to applications. In addition, Apple has provided a dictation service in Mountain Lion to allow conversions of spoken words back to text.

If you use these services, you may find it convenient to create hot-key shortcuts for them. The Dictation service has a default hot-key option, but the Text to Speech option does not, and by default requires you to select a body of text … Read more

Whether you have been using Apple's latest operating system for the Mac, OS X Mountain Lion, for a while now, or you are just installing it, you'll benefit from reading through some of the tips below. Some of them are ways to improve on the overall experience, while others will bring back past functionality. Let's get started, shall we?

Preparing your Mac When upgrading the operating system, no matter your platform of choice, it's always a great idea to not go into it blindly. Be prepared, and more importantly, make sure you computer is prepared. Some … Read more

The latest edition of Mac OS X, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, is packed full of new features, over 200 in all. One of them is a built-in dictation service, similar to the dictation feature found on the iPhone 4S.

By default, dictation isn't enabled after installing Mountain Lion on your Mac. If you want to use it, you're going to have to enable it. 

The default shortcut to start dictation on your Mac is pressing the Function (Fn) key twice. The first time you try to start dictation, you'll be prompted to enable it. … Read more

Siri was hailed as a innovation when it was unveiled with the iPhone 4S. But do iPhone owners still talk to her?

In a column for yesterday's New York Times, writer Nick Bilton said he believes the romance may have soured between Siri and her users.

Initially enthused about the new voice assistant, Bilton found that too many of his conversations ended up in a failure to communicate, with Siri either unavailable or unable to provide the right information. And he doesn't seem to be the only one having communication problems with Siri.

Bilton also noted that many … Read more

Sooner than you think, the Holy Grail of mobile password security could land on your phone thanks to new tech from Nuance called Dragon ID.

Dragon ID is a voice biometrics system from the same company behind the voice-recognition tech in Dragon Dictate for PCs and Dragon Go for iOS and Android. It promises a hands-free login system, but Nuance isn't putting it out in an app.

Instead, it's licensing the technology to manufacturers so they can build it into their phones.

"We're going to be pretty aggressive with our longstanding OEM partners, so we certainly … Read more

Voice Assistant is a handy little app that accurately converts your words to text for use in e-mails, SMS messages, and social network status updates. It is not a Siri replacement for older iPhone users (you can't ask questions), but it does a surprisingly good job translating your words into text.

You start by choosing your language from 22 available, then the app brings up the sparse interface of a microphone button to record and a gear icon in the upper right for settings. From there, you simply hit the button to start recording and begin dictating. When you'… Read more

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Apple's third-generation iPad, officially available as of today, doesn't include all of the features we have come to love about Siri, but it does include Siri Dictation.

Siri Dictation is a voice-to-text solution, allowing you to speak what you want entered into a text field, and Siri will automagically type it for you.

You'll be given the option to enable dictation during the initial device setup. However, if you change your mind, you can disable (or enable) dictation by visiting Settings > General > Keyboard > Dictation.

With dictation enabled, you will see an extra … Read more