ViaVoice: more tidbits; Voice-Power and MacSpeech as alternatives

Speakable Items: Using With IBM's ViaVoice A new Apple TIL article (#31155) asks: "Can I use IBM's new ViaVoice product while Speakable Items is active? The answer: "Some users may wish to do both command and control using Speakable Items as well as dictation using ViaVoice. The one technical limitation is the sound manager, which permits only a single client to own the sound input source at any time." The rest of the article explains how to work-around this limitation.

Reader tip and feedback For getting ViaVoice to work at its best, Steve Orr suggests: "You need to read all of the stories, as each one teaches it something different about your voice. I think it is a remarkable piece of software especially for the price. It is amazingly accurate and certainly better than my typing."

Voice-Power and MacSpeech If you want to check out an alternative to ViaVoice, Chakaranda take a look at Voice-Power Pro 3. Reader Chakaranda writes: "It works within any text processor and it has special features for working with Microsoft Office and AppleWorks among others, uses AppleScript technology and more: you can control almost every task on the Mac from it (it moves the mouse and lets you search with Sherlock to mention two examples). And It runs on practically every PowerMac or clone from the 6100 and up (I'm running it smoothly on a 6400/200)."

MacSpeech is also coming along. It has licensed "Philips' natural speech recognition technology to create continuous speech applications for the Apple Macintosh."