I am very excited as I anticipate the launch of Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 from Nuance. I have been using version 9 since January of 2007, and I’m ready to see some new bells and whistles.

The new version is rumored to have a great deal more support for Blue Tooth devices and applications. I have not heard or seen any notes or rumors yet on increases in speed or accuracy.

I do not have a blue tooth connection on my own laptop yet, so for me to use that I’d have to pick up some USB blue tooth adapter probably. That said, I think I would really appreciate having the ability to use a wireless headset or microphone with Dragon Naturally Speaking. I like to pace just a bit when I’m thinking and composing and this could be a real boom to my work. Not to mention this could be useful for people that want to send off a few emails while working out on a tread mill or elliptical machine or something. All you need is a screen at a distance with the zoom set large enough to read from a distance.

These days with projectors and large flat panel monitors that is becoming easier and easier to set up all the time!

Sounds crazy, but I’ve tried it before and run into a few tangles (in the cord) so a wireless version might be kind of nice.  Who knows maybe by version 20, the program will be so good that it will be able to transcribe an infants ‘goos’ and ‘gas’ with microphones sewn in the crib bedding so that new parents can receive a text message letting them know that their little one is hungry or needs some fresh air.  Its not always easy to see where new technologies will take us, but it seems practical to always leave conceptual options open.

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Today, I am on the road. Almost literally, I’m a passenger in a van headed from North Carolina to Georgia on a 3 hour drive. I have my laptop and my air card and dramamine.

When I type on the computer while driving, especially on winding road, I sometimes get a little car sick. Not so much that I’d have to worry for the safety of my keyboard, but sick enough that I feel dizzy and need to pamper myself for an hour or so until my equilibrium returns.

So this trip, I’ve taken a dramamine and am hoping that this will help keep my physical human system running long enough to get some work done on my computing system. It’s a kind of silly thing, but at the essence of it, I am using dramamine as a performance enhancing drug. I do not do this regularly. In fact this is my first time ever.

I doubt that dramamine will prove to be a gateway drug for an expansion of performance enhancing drugs or procedures. I can not see myself taking drugs normally prescribed for ADD or ADHD like many executives do from time to time.

That said, I have had my eyes lasered several years ago and that was a bit of a performance enhancing procedure.

Last night I watched the All Star game and had pause to consider just how bad it is for ball players or athletes to really take performance enhancing drugs. Don’t get me wrong, some of those drugs are un-tested and have serious and dangerous side effects. I’m not suggesting that they should be used. However, maybe efforts to prevent the use of all performance enhancing drugs is off base. Maybe the emphasis should be on driving science and medicine to find safer performance enhancing drugs for both athletes as well as regular people.

I don’t think twice about boosting my performance by purchasing more RAM for my computer or picking up a faster system or better software. My brain and my body are the most important systems I have so why should we consider ways of improving their performance that include diet and exercise and the application of science to give us an assist from time to time.  I’m not a big fan of the concept of diet pills like Leptitrex that are essentially something like speed.  But all in all there just seems like there should be a better way out there awaiting discovery and application and possibly a shift in cultural attitude.

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I’m trying a new experiment this evening with Dragon Naturally Speaking and the online Social Networking service Utterz.  I’m trying to take the .MP3 file generated by Utterz when I phoned into their service and left a message from my cell phone. 

The message could likely be considered to be of the quality of a digital voice mail message.

I then downloaded the Utterz mp3 file to my computer and ran it through my Dragon Naturally Speaking profile to transcribe the file into text.  Here are a couple things that I learned:

1. It is possible to get the file and run it through transcription
2. The transcription was less than successful.  Accuracy was low and the likely culprit is the quality of the audio (recorded via cell phone and possibly at less than optimal bit rate for dragon naturally speaking  The bit rate was actually 64kbs which should have been fine if anything maybe a little high.)
1. Utterz probably uses a bit rate slightly on the low side to serve thousands of audio messages
2. Dragon Naturally Speaking works best with a higher MP3 bit rate (32 - 48 kbs or better)
3. When I left the message, I did not leave a several second pause at the beginning before I started to speak which can sometimes make a transcription from a file or device skip the first few words in Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.

Follow Ups

I’m going to next try to create an audio dictation on my pocket recorder.  Then upload that audio to Utterz.  I will then run the original file through transcription and separately download the mp3 file from the utterz site separately and run it through as well.

I’m going to do this just to see if the audio quality is adjusted after upload.  I doubt that it is, but I just want to check.

Tip

If you happen to create an audio file that you want transcribed and you forget to leave a few seconds of space at the beginning. You can use the free program audacity to insert a space of several seconds into your audio file and then generate a new mp3 file.

If a file transcribes poorly, you might try converting the file to a different KBS rate.  I mentioned that I seem to get the best results at about 48kbs.  I tried this tip with my own file and it did improve the accuracy (although not enough as I was still getting word substitution errors that were nonsensical like child insurance for ‘file in this instance’).

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