So I've been using speech recognition quite a bit lately, especially on the new iPad. This is appropriate, I suppose, since I do work for a speech recognition company. I love the Dragon Dictate app (get it now while it's still free), and I've really fallen hard for Siri, the "personal assistant" app. This thing is awesome! You say what you want to know, and it finds it for you, or does errands for you.
Want a dinner reservation? "Find a table for two at 5:00 near here." After displaying what it thinks you've asked, and you confirm its accuracy, it searches. Next thing you know, it's showing you available reservations on Open Table. You pick what you want, and you've got reservations.
"What's playing in Imax?" "Where's the nearest supermarket."
"Tweet I'm heading out for dinner and a movie." Yes, it will post it on Twitter for you.
"Remind me to pick up tomatoes after work." It will prompt you for a date and time, and will then email you the message on schedule.
I did just stump the Dragon recognition engine, though. I'll admit, it was a challenging dictation. I wanted to create a note in SimpleNote (another cool app I found today), listing the take out order I was about to place. I decided to say it in Dragon and then copy it to SimpleNote. What I said was:
"Samba style tuna salsa
El topo maki
Spicy tuna tortilla maki
Hibachi filet with fried rice
Fried gyoza"
What it came up with was:
"So much time to cell phone and tempo monkey spicy tuna tortilla month killed so you may have thought she was fried rice."
Oh well, most people would have had a hard time deciphering what I had said, and the output was quite entertaining. Other than this, the recognition has been quite accurate, though I haven't tried it on anything lengthy. Perhaps the next blog post will be dictated.
And remember - watch the tempo when with your monkey, or you may be mistaken for a fried grain.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
