When you develop a website you must transfer a considerable amount of information from the mental form to the written form. Wouldn't it be nice if you could speak to your computer, and it would type your words into your word processor for you?



Well, if you are using Windows XP, voice recognition software (VR) is included in the operating system. If you are not using XP, there are several software packages that will do the job. From the reviews, it appears that Dragon Naturally Speaking is a front runner.

The accuracy of the voice recognition software is very dependent on the microphone and the sound card so consider this before you attempt to use voice recognition. An earphone/boom microphone combo works well and one of good quality can be purchased for approximately $60 - $80 plus shipping.

When you first start, the system requires that you read from text that it displays so that you train the system to understand your voice. This takes approximately 10 minutes.

To make the VR software perform to its best efficiency, you must spend time training it to understand your voice. The more time that you spend doing this, the better the accuracy of the translation.

On Windosws XP, when you click the Tools option on the VR Toolbar, Training is one of the options. When you click on Training, you will be given a list of 8 selections from which to read. These include Aesop's Fables, Bill Gates The Road Ahead, excerpts from The War of the Worlds, The Wizard of Oz, The Fall of the House of Usher, among others. The text is displayed and as you read and the software understands what you read, the background behind the text read turns blue so you know where you are. Allow 10 minutes per training session.

After reading several training sessions, go back and read the first one that you read and see how much the accuracy of your transcription has improved. VR is not 100% accurate and you will have to make your decision if it is faster to enter the data using voice and edit the document, or to enter the data using the keyboard.

The good news is that if you are using Windows XP, the software is free and you can experiment with it for the price of a quality microphone.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.