Gathering Information on Technology, Software and Processes that makes life Easier and Better. Extensive coverage and tutorials of MindManager from Mindjet and Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 from Nuance a great voice recognition software program.
This week, I raced like crazy to get the main Softduit.com site rebooted. After making a major break through in some coding areas that were holding me back, specifically, creating dynamic css menus driven off of a WordPress MySQL database, I then had to actually get the content transitioned to the new site.
I had all of the content transferred by Thursday, with the primary transfer finished on Tuesday (the really important stuff).
Then Friday I spent much of the day setting up 301 redirects in my .htaccess file so that the search engines and anyone that has linked to various pages on my site over the years will not get lost.
That was a whole lot of work!
Now, I’m going through the process of updating the site with a number of graphic elements to reinforce the message on the site. I’m primarily focusing on the use of MindManager mixed with SnagIt to generate a mindmap image and then convert that image into a flash image with hover over buttons for navigation.
The two programs don’t really work terribly well together (they don’t fight, but they don’t cooperate either). So anytime I make an update in the mindmap I have to completely start over again in Snagit with the hotspot links.
That means that I have to have my mindmap as perfect as possible before I start the hotspot linking process in snagit. In the meantime, my metabolism has dropped down almost next to nothing, because I’ve been working around the clock and not getting enough exercise (not running or doing ellipticals, but I have gotten a little swimming in since I work on a dock and only have to jump off to cool off).
About a year and a half ago, during the winter of 2007, I came across this great video demonstrating Dragon Naturally Speaking 9. I had used Dragon Naturally Speaking 3 or 4 about 10 years earlier and my impression back in the 90’s was one that voice recognition and the hardware that ran it, wasn’t ready for the masses.
Dragon Naturally Speaking Official Demo Video
This is What Sold me on the Program and in reality it works this well if not better!
This video helped to show me that both the software and the hardware had come a long way. It got me to get off the fence, and pay about $150 for a software program that would enable me to type at 150 words per minute.
I can no longer find this particular video on the actual Nuance website, but I did find a version on YouTube and uploaded it here. In my opinion it does a very good job of providing an example of just what the software is capable of doing for any user.
I’m even thinking about trying to recreate this video to show that its not ‘just an ad’ and that the capabilities in this demonstration are actually possible. I have a flat panel monitor that is not quite as large as the one shown in the video. I’m going to try and get a plasma tv mount for it and set something up in my wifi dock office to show this off.
For the last 2 - 3 months I have been working on the design of the new Softduit website. The heavy part of the work has been in organizing the content and filling in the gaps on the one hand, and building up the navigational structure on the site to rapidly get to that content on the other.
I experienced a bit of a break through this week when I finally figured out through many many experiments and trials and errors how to build a dynamic menu system that would work with many changing pages run on a WordPress content management system.
At various times, I’ve had to start completely over and over again, throwing out the kitchen sink followed by the showers and shower faucets and every scrap of material on the site, only to rebuild and reform it several times.
I’ve been stuck more times in the last few months than I have been in the state of forward progress and motion, but after the break through this week, its all motion going forward.
Now, I can dive into content organizing mindmaps, fill in the gaps with text and images and start to finish the videos that will accompany most pages. The fun and the hard work starts now and I am definitely looking forward to wrapping up the new site!
Getting ready to have a back yard movie party watching 10,000 BC tonight.
Just because its Monday night doesn’t mean you can’t stay up late and have fun.
We did upgrade our screen this time and established a canvas on a wooden frame. We’ll see if that works better than hanging a sheet. Still shying away fromt he $600 options, but you never know. We might graduate to that eventually.
So now I need to see how my Day/Night web cam works during the day recording live via utterz.
The audio last night was not terribly great and I’m not sure if that was the camera (which has a built in microphone) or my normal recording equipment. I basically do not know which one was recording last night.
So today, I’m only going to use the camera microphone (everything else is disconnected).
Note, I talked about the audio not matching up to the video (last night) but today when I preview it before saving, it looks like it matched well.
