Re: Using voice/speech-recognition software

[Candace Bamber <cbamber -at- CASTEK -dot- COM>]

Hi Lori,

I use IBM Via Voice, Executive Edition and have been doing so for about a
year.
In fact, I am dictating this message. I am using a Pentium 266 - which is
the
slowest machine I imagine you could use. And I take a giant performance hit
when
I dictate directly to Word or other applications (like this Lotus Notes
Email
program, for example). But, I had a goal to cut my keyboarding by 30-40% and
that has certainly happened, along with a huge improvement in my hands,
wrists
and shoulders (yes, the cure for RSI is to avoid the repetitive movement
that
causes the stress injury!)

Here are my answers to your questions:

>1. What kind of work are you doing with it (e.g.,
>    primarily translation, manual composition,
>    white papers)?

I do all kinds of text entry with it - manual writing, status reports,
proposals, RFI responses, lots of various reports, project plans, email etc.
I
think what I don't do may be of more interest: I don't edit with it. That
is, I
don't enter updates by voice and I don't do on-line review of other people's
materials with it. It's just too cumbersome. But for strict text entry, it
can
"type" about 120 words a minute, which is a lot faster than I can, and it's
a
much better speller :^)

>2. How long is the startup?
It takes a couple hours to set up if you're thorough. You read a passage to
it
that takes about 40 minutes. Then you feed it samples of your writing until
you're bored senseless. It recognizes speech by "listening" to your sounds,
and
matching what it "hears" against a list of the words you were most likely to
have used, based on the rules of grammar and your writing style, which it
analyses from your samples.

Then it takes about another 6 weeks of using the "correction window" to
correct
any mistakes it makes. When you use the "correction window" it "learns" the
proper word. If you don't use the correction window, it doesn't learn the
word
and you keep correcting that word manually forever. This is especially
useful
for acronyms and industry-specific words, but it requires a lot of patience!

>3. How accurate is it? Of 100 words, how many
>    do you have to correct? What about punctuation?

I'm actually not a very accurate or fast typist, so I found the accuracy and
speed to be an improvement. If I'm dictating work-related stuff it's very
accurate because VV is very well trained on our house style and vocabulary.
I
usually have to make corrections to emails because it is not as well trained
to
my "personal" voice. I will forgo correcting this mail so you can see for
yourself how accurate it is. Punctuation is actually not a separate issue.
What
I actually say is: Punctuation is not a separate issue PERIOD Instead COMMA
you
name the punctuation as you go along PERIOD

>4. Does environmental noise affect the software? We
>    are in an open cubicle environment (and I keep having
 >   nightmares about that Dilbert cartoon where someone
>    looks over Dilbert's shoulder and yells, "Close!").

Sometimes funny things happen when it picks up unusual ambient noises, but
if
you train it in a noisy environment, it adjusts.

>5.  What are the optimal system requirements?

I have a pentium 266.I can't imagine trying to run it on anything slower.
I'm in
line for a 400, and I'm dying to get it!

You didn't ask for other issues, but I'll give you two:
If you are running VV with WORD, your personal voice file is very vulnerable
to
Word crashes and file corruptions. You must save a copy of your personal
voice
file to another directory every day. Also, you cannot install VV and
Robohelp or
Doc To Help on the same machine. The DLL's and registry changes at install
interfere with each other Very bad.

Another key issue is training yourself to use the software. Language to be
spoken and language to be written are processed by different parts of the
brain.
It's a very difficult adjustment to learn how to write with your mouth
rather
than your hands. As well, you have to learn all the commands. I am now at
the
stage where I am developing "dictation" macros for a lot of the things I say
often (for example, if I say ME WORK, my sig line displays as at the end of
this
email, or if I say CASTEK SHORT, a three paragraph marketing text about
Castek
displays). As I add more macros, the language I use for dictation becomes
more
cryptic and personalized as well as more efficient. It takes a lot of
practice.

In fact, the whole thing is a lot of work and requires tremendous patience.
In
my case it was worth it because my other option is to not work - which isn't
really an option.

I hope this is helpful. If you have any further questions you think I can
help
with, feel free to email me.

(ME WORK :^)

Candace
******************************
Candace Bamber
cbamber -at- castek -dot- com

Castek
--Putting the Future Together
******************************

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