A New Way To Voice Your Business

Technology can be a great friend to us in business.  This blog post was written or rather spoken into speech recognition technology and then edited.

As this technology becomes easier to use it makes posting a blog a really simple exercise.

All you need to do is simply talk what you want to say and the technology transcribes that into text for you.

I downloaded a free Dragon Dictation app to my iPad - pressed the red button and the inbuilt microphone picked up my voice and the software converted it (mostly OK) to text within seconds.

I just spoke into my iPad and then e-mailed the document to my main computer for editing - how cool is that!

You can edit in the app screen but I think its always a little easier to do it on the big screen.

What I find though with my funny Kiwi accent is that it can sometimes get the words horrifically wrong but I figure I was going to be typing it anyway and that can be fraught with error!  Plus I always find it easier to edit text that has been written for me, rather than writing it from scratch and then editing it.  After I email the text to myself, its simply just a matter of going in and editing something that is already 90% written.

I could see how technology like this could really help you if you are a two fingered typist.  It would help you do things a lot quicker and also be able to get the message out faster and in your unique voice. 

I think it's brilliant and as time goes on the technology will get better and I'll learn the words it has trouble with and adjust the way I speak.  With each step forward it will mean less time at the screen, less time at the desk and more time having fun at what we love to do, which is helping people.

You can also use the technology to do posts to Facebook.  That's really easy - press the red button - state what's on your mind - edit from the iPad and press the share button.  You would of course need to be connected to the internet to have it post, but the software runs on mobile phones as well.

I daresay there's lots of ways you can use this software and I'd have to say wow - pretty cool - pretty fun!

The only downside is that it just records in short bursts and so you have to record little bite sized chunks and send them through.  I'm sure there's a paid version somewhere that will allow me to make longer recordings, but until it totally frustrates me, I'm happy working one paragraph at a time!