Power of Voice

For as long as I can remember using a pc and smart phone for, the keyboard and mouse have been the input methods of choice. If your keyboard and mouse were defective you would be unable to use your PC. However, this is slowly changing with the evolution and rapid improvement of voice commands and speech recognition integration into operating systems.

As I have lately discovered and started using, voice control can now perform several tasks hands free. Even better, on the computer platform it can almost all together replace a keyboard if you use a program such as Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking. I was first introduced to Nuance by a doctor at the hospital where I work as an IT Technician. The doctor in question was not only dictating notes but also operating his MacBook Pro all through his headset.

So I decided to try Dragon Naturally Speaking 12.0 on my own laptop running Windows 7 to see what the hype was about. After installing the application and going through a 20 minute or so training tutorial for the speech recognition engine, I was on my way! Dragon integrates seamlessly within Microsoft Office, Windows, Firefox and even media players. I was able to dictate a word document but also to access websites and launch audio files using my voice!

On the smartphone front, Apple has been promoting Siri for quite some time and even though I personally never used it the general feedback is that it performs quite well for day to day tasks. On the other side of the spectrum, Samsung’s voice control integration with Android is quite surprising as well. Using my Note 3 I am able to perform tasks such as place calls, search for info online or on the phone itself. I can also launch applications. The main advantage is seen while driving where saying “call home” prevents me from having to distract myself from the road.

Although I cannot still control the pc from A to Z without my mouse and keyboard, the recent advances of voice and speech recognition have made it more intuitive and easy to perform some of the repetitive tasks. As for those that type a lot and suffer from carpel tunnel or other office related aliments, using voice control may be a good alternative. The only major downfall is that you need a quiet space so if you share office space with one or more colleagues this may not work optimally.