For example, notice the interface of Windows Live Writer as seen below. Even though the default interface will click when I say - meaning if I simply say "insert picture" the system will click the Insert Picture user interface element just because it's on the screen - if there's a user interface on it like a toolbar button or something that is difficult to express verbally, I can click it easily using show numbers.
The same feature is used when selecting words that appear multiple times within a chunk of text. For example if a paragraph contained the name 'Hanselman' four times and I said "Select Hanselman," each instance of the word would have been numbered overlaid allowing me to quickly indicate the one I meant. I'm not familiar with the Windows Speech API, but it'll be interesting to see how vendors like the folks at Dragon Naturally Speaking are meant to integrate their speech recognition algorithms to the existing interface experience provided by Vista out of the box.
As the one who fortunately does have the use of both my hands, I find speech to be the most valuable when I can have one hand on the keyboard, one hand on the mouse, and be speaking simultaneously. It's certainly true that I can talk faster than I can type, and it's very very difficult to beat really good speech recognition software by just typing.
It's worth noting that they've removed all of the speech recognition features from Office and there are a number of people who were considerably torqued about that decision.
That said, if you're into speech recognition or you use speech recognition software in your everyday life, the improvements in a speech in Vista are reason enough to upgrade your OS. And sure, it's not perfect, but I'm using a crappy microphone in a noisy room on a slowish machine while speaking quietly so as not to wake the baby. Not too shabby. Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee.
He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way. Sponsored By. About Scott Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee.
About Newsletter. Hosting By. Share on Twitter or Facebook or use the Permalink. November 22, Carpal Tunnel is actually a relatively rare affliction. It's the most publicized form of a more general class of afflictions called Repetitive Stress Injury or RSI for short. I've written about RSI before as I've received treatment via occupational therapy and physical therapy. It's a serious ailment and treatment and education does help. I should add that RSI is much more widespread and takes on many forms such as tendinitis, neuritis, etc This is one of the top reasons I'm excited about upgrading to Vista no, haven't done it yet Microsoft's Voice Command added limited speech recognition to Windows Mobile operating systems.
In any case, you had to buy and install additional software. With Vista, it's not necessary to buy anything extra to start talking to your computer. It's not enabled by default, but it's right there in the Control Panel, ready to be set up, as shown in Figure A. Developers can use the Vista speech APIs to add speech recognition capabilities to any application. However, Vista's speech recognition doesn't currently work with all languages.
It's available in English both U. When you click Start Speech Recognition, the Speech control console will appear at the top of your screen, as shown in Figure D.
If you have speech recognition configured to start when Windows boots up, the console will appear when you start your computer. You can select Speech options by right-clicking the microphone icon, either on the control console or in the system tray. This will display the context menu shown in Figure E. You can set up your microphone from the Speech Recognition Options dialog box or the Speech context menu. The microphone setup wizard will first ask you to identify your microphone type headset, desktop, or other.
The wizard recommends that you use a headset, and I can verify that the microphone type makes a huge difference. The first time I tried to use Vista's speech recognition, I was using a desktop microphone that works fine for such tasks as recording voiceovers for PowerPoint presentations in Camtasia. However, when I tried dictating in Vista, the results were laughable; I was rarely able to dictate a whole sentence without at least one misinterpreted word, regardless of how carefully and clearly I tried to enunciate.
After I switched to a headset which cost about 30 dollars more than the desktop microphone , accuracy improved to the point where mistakes were occurring once every five or six sentences rather than several times per sentence. After you select the microphone type, the next page of the wizard shows you how to position it correctly for best results. Next, you're asked to read a short bit of text aloud into the microphone, as shown in Figure F. The microphone is now set up and ready to use.
However, that doesn't mean the speech engine is ready to work with your voice. If you have a standard, newscaster non-accent and always enunciate very clearly, you might be able to use speech recognition without training it to your voice. If you have a Texas accent as I do, or any other nonstandard way of speaking, you'll get much better results if you go through the training process. Training process involves reading a series of text selections, one screen at a time, as shown in Figure G.
Now you're ready to use voice commands to perform tasks on your computer. The speech engine is typically much more accurate at recognizing commands than dictation, because it's listening for only a limited number of commands. First, be sure the Speech console shows the speech status as Listening. Voice commands are designed to be as intuitive as possible. For example, to open a program from the Start menu:.
Simple commands are easy to use. Navigating around in some programs can be a little more challenging, but you can, for example, tab to the next option by saying "Tab.
What do you do if you want to click a button or link for which you don't know the name, such as the Office logo button at the top-left corner of Word? Here's a nifty trick: just say, "Show numbers," and all interactive elements in the active window will be overlaid with numbers, as shown in Figure H.
Now all you have to do is say the number of the button you want to click. An OK box will appear on that element. Say, "OK," and you've clicked the button. If you don't know how to do something, you can use Help in English only by asking, "How do I" followed by the task you want to perform.
For example, you might ask, "How do I turn on speech recognition? You can dictate text into any speech-enabled application. You are not limited to Microsoft Office applications as you were in the past. For example, you can dictate into Notepad or WordPad. You can also dictate into the Windows Live Writer blogger application. I was not able to dictate into Open Office Writer and other non-Microsoft programs by default, but when I selected Options Enable Dictation Everywhere from the Speech context menu, which is used to dictate text into programs that don't automatically accept dictation, I was able to dictate to the Open Office program.
However, it didn't work as well as with Microsoft programs. Instead of immediately typing the text I spoke, it would pop up a number of alternatives for me to choose from. With the Speech APIs, developers can make their applications speech-enabled and many more probably will in the future. When you're dictating, Vista will type everything you say into the document. It can be a little disconcerting if, while working on a document, you stop to talk to a colleague and then find your end of the conversation transcribed into the document.
After a while, it becomes second nature to tell Vista, "Stop listening" when you want to say something you don't want transcribed. It's likely that Vista will make mistakes when transcribing your dictation. The good news is that they're easy to correct.
For example, if you say, "I need another byte" and Vista types "I need another bite," you can just say, "Correct bite," and you'll be presented with a list of replacement words, as shown in Figure J. If the correct word isn't in the list, just say, "Spell it. You can access several advanced configuration settings by clicking the Advanced Speech Options link in the left pane of the Speech Recognition Options dialog box, as shown in Figure L.
Here, you can create and train speech recognition profiles. This is useful when more than one person shares the computer. You can also choose whether to run speech recognition at startup and whether to allow the computer to review your documents and mail to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition engine.
In addition, you can select the number of spaces to insert after punctuation marks and adjust the microphone level.
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