The ON Switch

Tech watch: everyone's talking about voice recognition software

We would all love to be able to dictate vast screeds of text on to the screen and save our tired fingers the bother of typing, but the technology of speech recognition has never quite been up to it. Developers claim that the latest versions of the software, such as Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking, along with the most modern high-powered computers, can change all that and make RSI a thing of the past.
We have been road-testing Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 for the past six months to find out whether the hype is justified.

Installing the program and getting up it and running takes the best part of an hour. The machine invites you to read a few passages of prose so that it can get used to the sound of your voice, and then you're ready to get cracking.

The results are very impressive indeed. The developers claim 98% accuracy, and we'd agree that's about right. There's still room for a few errors, though, and some of those can be bizarre.

The biggest challenge with using this kind of software is changing your writing and thinking style. Some people feel they write more coherently when they're typing or writing things out in full, and the idea of dictating a letter or memo or essay does not come naturally. Many of us think out loud, but not always very coherently. The software often interprets 'ums' and 'ahs' as words and those of us who pause for thought as we speak can find ourselves redoing sentences.

But if you can get used to the idea of dictating, or if you pretty much know what you want to say, then this software works very well. If you have a document which needs to be keyed in and cannot be scanned for some reason – because it's handwritten or on coloured paper, for example – this software is ideal.

One unexpected use (at least to us) for the software is in translating. Normally, translating requires reading off the original while keeping another eye on the screen to ensure that the typing is accurate. This is literally a pain in the neck because your eyes easily lose the place while switching between screen and original.

Voice recognition software will transform this. Get a printout of the original, or even read the original off the screen, get your headset with microphone on, and start translating away as if you were at the United Nations. The computer will faithfully output your every word – brilliant.

You'll need a relatively high-spec computer to get the best out of the program. A five-year-old laptop with 512MB of memory could cope with it, albeit slowly. A new laptop with 2GB of memory comfortably gobbles up the text.

The software comes in three varieties: standard from about £49, preferred for about £99, and professional from about £149 from online retailers. The differences between the versions include the ability to add specialist vocabularies, being able to read your text into a digital voice recorder and then plug it in and have the computer process it, and an option to read back the text you have dictated – a big bonus in proofing your material.

VERDICT: Very impressive, but you may have to form your thoughts in a different way altogether to get the most out of it.


Gamers get fit and Golf goes green

Hot on the heels of the top-selling Wii Fit exercise game, software-makers are working on more health-focused games.
One, My Weight Loss Coach from Ubisoft, is designed for the portable games system Nintendo DS.

This game comes with a pedometer that gamers can wear all day then plug into their DS to feed that data into a game. If a player walks far enough, the game will let them know when they've trekked the length of the Great Wall of China.

In addition to mini-games and quizzes on fitness, the virtual weight loss coach makes suggestions such as taking the stairs rather than the lift and parking farther away from the shops.

Volkswagen, meanwhile, is developing a plug-in hybrid version of the Golf, expected to go on sale on 2010. The Twin Drive Golf will be powered by a diesel engine and an electric motor. The car, which uses the electric motor for main power, should be able to do about 31 miles on a single charge of the battery.