dictate

Dragon iPhone app tweaked, search tool released

Nuance, which makes Dragon voice-to-text software, is forging ahead in the iPhone app market.

Over the weekend, the company updated its Dragon voice dictation app for the Apple iPhone and unveiled a new Dragon Search app to let you find info via voice.

The 1.2 version of the free Dragon Dictation app--which was initially released last month--now supports the iPod Touch 2G and 3G. Touch users can plug in an external microphone and dictate up to 20 seconds of speech that is converted to text.

Besides adding support for the iPod Touch, Nuance resolved an issue that had created … Read more

Dragon for iPhone: Texting without typing

There've been some dictation apps before, but now Nuance, maker of the world's most popular desktop dictation software, is invading the App Store with its own.

Dragon Dictation (link opens iTunes), which is based on the desktop Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, lets you do pretty much everything you'd use the iPhone's keyboard for, but with your voice.

That includes using the iPhone's clipboard for cutting and pasting, as well as saying your latest Twitter or Facebook update aloud (warning: Saying "Just ate a sandwich LOL roast beef LOL" aloud may frighten those around you). … Read more

Speak your e-mail

Business professionals who spend a substantial amount of time behind the wheel will find a helpful dictation secretary in MyCaption. A simple interface mirrors the application's ease of use. Click to record an e-mail up to 3 minutes in length, or a memo, task, or calendar item. You can opt to review the e-mail message before sending it out. MyCaption then uploads the content to secure, Amazon-hosted servers, where it's transcribed using a combination of machine-based speech recognition and human transcription, and rerouted.

Thanks to human interception during lengthy dictation, e-mails were accurate during our tests. More complex … Read more

Recording on the go

SpeakEasy Voice Recorder is a full-featured audio recording app with a slick interface, smart workflow, and a handful of clever extras. You can use SpeakEasy for recording any kind of audio with your iPhone's built-in mic--interviews, music, personal reminders, meetings, and the like--and this app makes it easy to start, pause, and stop recording, organize and listen to past recordings, and annotate your recordings with categories (custom and default), comments, and even photos (from your stored photos, or taken directly from within SpeakEasy). SpeakEasy also autosaves when you quit out to your home menu, and it autopauses for incoming … Read more

ShoutOUT that SMS with a new iPhone app

Tired of fumbling around the iPhone's onscreen keyboard to send a text message? Soon you can skip that altogether, as long as you can speak English properly.

This is thanks to a new iPhone application that Promptu, a talk-and-type mobile phone application developer, introduced Monday called ShoutOUT. The application is going to be the first voice-to-SMS application for iPhone users in the United States.

The application lets you dictate text messages instead of typing on the iPhone's touch-screen keypad. It also allows for checking the transcribed messages for errors and make corrections if necessary before sending them out … Read more

Sony's new MP3 player takes dictation

Well, that's one way to do it. After having lost so badly to Apple in the Walkman World it once dominated, Sony is at least making some music with alternative devices. But its latest player is one we never saw coming: a dictation recorder.

Tech Digest says it has only 1GB or 2GB of built-in storage, so you may still want to hang onto your regular MP3 player--after all, you'll presumably want to use some of that space for voice recording too. But it looks a lot better than other attempts by Sony, most notably the "Walkman Bean.&… Read more

Dictation device talks the talk

Whenever we hear the word "dictation," we recall those cliched movie scenes of executives calling secretaries into their offices to take shorthand. But products like the "Digital Pocket Memo 9600" from Philips remind us how far technology has evolved the practice.

When used with its new docking station, the device can transfer dictations through a local network or the Internet to a transcriptionist or voice-recognition system without a computer, according to Gizmag. Real-time encryption and password protection ensure security, and a bar-code reader can be used to scan patient or client information and attach it directly … Read more