ATMac

Speech to text involves the computer understanding words spoken by the user. This includes dictation-related applications and command and control type speech-to-text.

MacSpeech Dictate is a great program but learning so many commands all at once can be very intimidating. I’ve put together a full list of all the known commands for MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.*, ordered by their function, to help you learn and remember them.

It’s been announced that the MacSpeech company has been purchased by Nuance. Nuance are the company behind the Windows product “Dragon NaturallySpeaking“ and other recent Dragon products for iPod Touch and iPhone. So what does this mean for MacSpeech Dictate and the other MacSpeech products? What would you like to happen?

One of the major things that the MacSpeech Dictate family has been lacking is the ability to take pre-recorded files and convert them to text. Not any more: MacSpeech Scribe will do just that for you, with up to 99% accuracy.

In December, Nuance surprised everybody by releasing two apps for the iPhone - Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search. Those apps are now also available for iPod Touch users and they’re free for a limited time.

This video shows one way to create new commands for MacSpeech Dictate - using the “Menu Item” command type. The article also discusses using the “Press the key combo” command to accomplish things which have no menu entry.

What would you do if you lost all your files because your computer’s hard drive failed? For less than $100 and with no technical knowledge you can have a backup of all the files on your computer, and you’ll never need to worry about hard drives failing and losing all your files.

Two of the biggest requests since MacSpeech Dictate has been released have been the ability to dictate with a Bluetooth headset, and to have voice control of the mouse. Today I’m pleased to bring you news of both and some discounts too!

The iPhone and iPod Touch don’t have a lot of voice control commands, but they’re very picky about you getting the wording precisely right. We’ve compiled a printable cheat sheet you can store with your iPhone/iPod Touch while you’re learning them.

Finally, multi-language continuous speech recognition is available for OS X. MacSpeech has released Dictate International, which offers recognition in US and UK English, French, German, and Italian. It has been implied that Spanish will soon be added also.

Upgrading to Snow Leopard might not make your computer look enormously different, but the hidden guts of the operating system have been extensively worked on. This has implications for assistive technology users - you’ll need to check that your assistive technology will work with Snow Leopard.