Every once in a while a software application comes along which turns out to be so mind-bogglingly useful that it leaves you scratching your head and wondering how you had ever lived without it. Dragon Dictation for the iPad is one of those applications.
First, a lot of users have complained that the iPad keyboard is a little weird to type on for any extended period of time. I personally disagree with this complaint, and find myself typing on the iPad’s virtual keyboard with fair accuracy, but I’ve found that pairing an Apple bluetooth wireless keyboard to my iPad turns the device into a seriously powerful communications device. Still, there are times when it’s simply inconvenient or impractical to pull out my iPad and a wireless keyboard.
For these times, there’s Dragon Dictation. So.. What IS Dragon Dictation? Have you ever wished that you could simply talk to your computer or to your cell phone, and have the device magically transcribe your spoken words into accurate text? Well, as it turns out, you won’t have to wait for the future to arrive, we have the technology. Instead of typing on the iPad, you can use Dragon Dictation to type out your text for you, using the power of your voice.
Dragon Dictation from Nuance Communications has been around for several years, and has been available only for Windows users until early 2009, when Dragon’s awesome voice to text engine was rolled into MacSpeech’s Dictate software for the Mac. Macspeech’s previous Mac-only speech to text product, iListen, was a huge disappointment, and really wasn’t very usable or accurate at all.
Nuance Communications was recently in the news for releasing a stellar version of Dragon Dictation for the iPhone, and they’ve raised the bar again.
What surprised us the most when we tested the iPad application, was that the program worked great on first launch with no need to train the software. See, both Dragon Dictation for Windows, and MacSpeech Dictate for the Mac require an initial training process, by which you read several pages of text into the system, and the software familiarizes itself with the unique nuances of your voice. In this way, you really customize the software to your own way of talking.
The iPad version of Dragon Dictation doesn’t require any training, and somehow works really well right out of the box. We tested it out with both male and female voices. We noticed that it had a bit of trouble tracking the voice of a child, and could tell the difference between a real person and a recorded playback of a person talking.
How does it work?
The application design is very nice as well with a marked focus on simplicity and ease of use.
There are two areas in the program, a sidebar on the left, which lists all of your previous sessions, and then the main body to the right where your recorded text appears, in real time, as you speak. To start a new session, one has only to tap the big “record” button in the middle of the main window. And then, just speak.
When you’re done, tap anywhere in the main window to stop recording. Your session is then stored in the left-hand sidebar, with your other sessions. Pretty easy. Tap on the Arrow button on the very right for some options. You can send this session to an email, or you can Cut or Copy the Note in order to Paste it an entirely different application on your iPad, such as Apple’s Pages, Evernote, Notes, etc.
If you choose to Send Email with your Note, the iPad creates a new email message without even leaving the Dragon Dictation Application. As you can see from the image below, the system pastes the body of the Note into an email message, complete with my default signature at the bottom. Pretty slick! I do have a little bit of editing to do, as no voice to text program is perfect, but with it’s minor inaccuracies, Dragon Dictation has released a product that is truly ready for Prime Time!
They also have a great DEMO page set up to give you help getting started.
Thanks for reading!
