Posted on 12/08/2009 10:34:48 AM PST by Star Traveler
by Mel Martin
on Dec 8th 2009 at 12:00AM
Put this into the 'I didn't think they could ever get this to work on an iPhone' category.
I'm talking about Dragon Dictation [iTunes link] from Nuance, the developers of the very popular Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance also provides the speech recognition engine for MacSpeech Dictate on the Mac platform.
To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the text has been created from your speech, it's possible to email it, send it as a text message, or put the result in your clipboard. After recording your message, you can edit the resulting text before you send it off for others to read.
It's pretty slick! When you record your message, it is quickly transmitted to Nuance servers where a speech recognition algorithm is run against your data. The resulting text is returned to your iPhone very quickly; my informal benchmarks showed that it took about a second for text to be processed on a Wi-Fi network, and less than 5 seconds over 3G. You'll need a data connection for the app to work, but having this speech-to-text capability is going to be very important to a lot of people, who will find all sorts of uses for it.
I tested the app for about a week and found the accuracy to be very good. Accuracy diminishes if you are in a very noisy environment, as I found when I tried some dictation while being driven down the interstate. There were a few errors, but they were easy to correct. To add punctuation to your text, you can say 'period', 'question mark', or 'new paragraph,' and Dragon Dictation adds the appropriate punctuation.
Since your dictation goes out over the internet for processing, I asked Nuance about security. Their reply was as follows:
"Search queries and dictation requests are transcribed by fully automated speech recognition software, without the use of humans. Data is uploaded and collected in order to improve performance for individual users, and to improve the general performance of the system.
All speech recognition requests and associated data are processed in data centers in the U.S. that meet stringent security and privacy standards; these are the same standards that we use for processing private information in other areas of our business."
How much will this capability cost? Nothing. For a limited time Dragon Dictation is absolutely free, but at some point there will be a charge for it. I spoke to Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager for Nuance Mobile, and he said they see all sorts of specialized applications of this technology, such as in the legal and medical professions. The app has gone live and is available now.
Lots of reasons really.
Now I agree, people that text and drive should be summarily shot. Talk about stupid.
You know, if they can do speech to text, why not reverse it when receiving messages?
Yes these apps sound really cool, I hope they hurry up with Tethering. Yea, were with AT&T (USA) and waiting.... I have heard about jailbreaking the iphone and enabling the tether function....
My question is about Tethering (using the iphone) to connect my laptop to the internet when traveling..
Well, it's not ready, officially, through AT&T yet. So, if you are going to be a "normal user" of the iPhone, you won't be able to do it right now. But, it will come, down the road...
BUT, there is a way to do it, by "jailbreaking" your iPhone. However, I don't recommend anyone doing it. It's basically "hacking" your iPhone and getting around Apple's apps and being able to load up whatever is "out there" from hacks and others programmers -- outside of Apple's iPhone store. It's a "real hack" of your iPhone.
And for that, anyone who wants to "hack their iPhone" really doesn't have to be told by me how to do it, they'll figure hacking their own iPhone on their own, not through me. If someone can't do that, without some help from me, then that tells me they don't need to hack their iPhone... LOL..
That's not saying something bad about you or anything, but just to say the "real hackers" know how to do that already. If you're not a real hacker, you basically don't need to wreck your iPhone... :-)
Here's an article on the subject...
October 8th, 2009 | by Ben Parr
When Apple announced iPhone OS 3.0, one of the somewhat unexpected but awesome features Apple added to it was Internet tethering. Ever since its June release, the iPhone has had the ability to provide 3G internet to your laptop via USB or Bluetooth. So why aren’t you able to tether right now? AT&T, of course.
Even though tethering will likely carry a monthly fee, AT&T’s already stressed network isn’t ready for thousands, if not millions, of tethered iPhones. It’s the same reason that it delayed the rollout of MMS. But with MMS now out and AT&T’s recent support for VoIP via 3G, you’d think tethering wouldn’t be far behind, right?
Wrong, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog. We’re just going to have to wait a while longer.
AT&T, when it originally announced that support for tethering and MMS would be delayed, stated that it wasn’t supporting the feature in order to “offer the best possible customer experience.” Translation: the AT&T network could and likely would explode. Today’s statement from AT&T reflect that this has not changed.
While it’s likely that tethering will arrive late this year, it’s still embarrassing that many non-U.S. carriers supported both MMS and tethering right off the bat and AT&T is still struggling, months later. Apple has been dropping iPhone exclusivity in other countries recently. A lack of tethering support only provides Apple more incentive to drop the agreement.
Complete How-to: Tethering an iPhone with 3.0 firmware
It's not jailbreaking, but it is "mucking around"... LOL...
text messaging also has it’s disadvantages. People are relying more and more on their texting skills and less on their actual communication skills.
People used to thrive on their imaginations and social skills when they were kids. Now we have technology that does all the imaginations and socializing for us.
When my buddy starts sending me more than a couple of text messages, I finally just call him, talk to him real quick, and get it over with.
Like I said, there should be no need for a 1009 gadget running a piece of software like that to need input from any other site, using html or any other protocol. PCs of 1999 ran the same software very nicely and today’s gadgets have to be at least that strong.
PCs of 1999 ran the same software very nicely and today’s gadgets have to be at least that strong.
I'm thinking that the company is running considerably more powerful software than they were running in 1999. That's ten years ago, and I would find it hard to believe that the company has not kept up with the increase in computing power.
But, who knows... maybe this company is stuck back in the past -- staying exactly where they were ten years ago... some companies do that, and eventually go out of business... :-)
Star, hey thanks for the great info and article. Hopefully (Tethering - AT&T) will just be a few months out, that I can wait for.
Thanks!
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