Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone Rocks!

Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
CTO
| VoIP & Gadgets blog - Latest news in VoIP & gadgets, wireless, mobile phones, reviews, & opinions

Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone Rocks!

nuance-dragon-iphone.jpgNuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone is the most amazing text-to-speech application you will find on the iPhone. Employing a client-server architecture along with the iPhone's superb high-quality microphone means near dead-on accuracy. When you click the record button your voice is temporarily stored locally on the iPhone. When you are finished recording or reach the 30s maximum time, the recording is uploaded to Nuance's servers. In just a 1-5 seconds text is returned back to the iPhone. I've used Dragon Naturally Speaking on my PC for years and have always been impressed with its accuracy. Though it does require a bit of training. No such training required with this iPhone app.

What's cool is that you can click a word and it will auto-highlight and show suggested alternative words, as seen here:
nuance-dragon-iphone2.jpg

After you dictate, you can send the text to the Clipboard, Text Message, or email, as seen here:
nuance-dragon-iphone3.jpg

Now you can text message someone while driving and not look down at the iPhone keyboard a billion times while typing. Ok, bad idea. Still, I can see this being very useful to draft lengthy emails very quickly. Oh and the 30s limit isn't really a limit. You can click the record button again, continue and the text will be appended.

Now there is some controversy about this app sending all your iPhone Contacts to Nuance. I'm told this is to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition. Only the names of your contacts are sent and none of their contact details such as phone number, email address, etc. Still some privacy zealots might not like that this app uploads their contact names.

Below is my reading of the Declaration of Independence. I marked the sections with a strike-through where it made a mistake. I did not read any punctuation such as comma, period, exclamation, hyphen, etc.during this reading. However, it is worth pointing out that Dragon DOES support punctuation. In fact, you can even say "new paragraph" and it will insert a line-feed.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of Europe the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which and tell impel them to the separation

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unbelievable unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these and ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem likely to effect their safety and happiness

Some thoughts on the accuracy:
1) It only made 4 mistakes
2) I bolded the word "Government" because somehow Dragon knew to capitalize it, when normally government is lower-case. When I later tested "I want to work for the government", Dragon made it lower-case. Thus, it appears Dragon has some grammar rules.
3) I find it ironic that considering we were rebelling against Britain and by proxy Europe, that it came back with "among the powers of Europe" instead of "among the powers of the earth".
4) Dragon seems to be prophetic. Instead of the 200+ year Declaration granting Americans specific "unalienable" rights, we are instead granted "unbelievable" rights. You know, like national healthcare for everyone for just $15,000/year, the right to go to jail if you don't pay the $15,000/year, the right to be taxed & enslaved to the government for one-third of your labor, the right for the government to steal your land to give it to a a developer for more tax revenue (not public use), the right for your tax revenue to go towards bailing out institutions like Goldman Sachs, who then turn around and give billions in bonuses, the right for the government to become the largest employer, debtor, and lender, the right of the government to take over private companies such as General Motors.

Yep, I'm pretty sure the singnatories to the Declaration of Independence like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would classify the rights given to the government (not the people) as "unbelievable". Well done Dragon! You are the new Nostradamus for the 21st century!

[download it here]


Related Articles to 'Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone Rocks!'
nuance-dragon-iphone.jpg
winter-wake-up-app.jpg
localphone-logo.jpg
netflix-ipad-app-itunes.jpg
Feedback for Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone Rocks!

1 Comment

Its a good one to make convert the speech into text. I am not aware of any other good application for this purpose. If I am not wrong than it is first application that brings nearly exact perfection in converting the speech.

Featured Events