Nuance announced its Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 edition this week. It claims to turn the spoken word into text better than it's ever done before. Needless to say, Information World Review couldn't wait to get its mitts on it. In fact, I rather fancied writing this blog post using it.

So here's the Dragon version of me saying the above:

"Nuance announced its Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 edition this week.  It terms the spoken word into text better than it's ever done before. Needless to sigh information world review couldn't wait to get its mitts on it.  In fact I rather fancied writing this blog post using it."

Good Lord! That's not at all bad. They were the very first words I uttered to it. It heard 'terms' instead of 'turns'. 'Sigh' instead of 'say'. (That's Estuary English for you.)

The only knowledge it had of me prior to the above was that it had scrabbled through some Word documents to divine my writing style.

I later gave it formal training by reading some prepared text and I had to make several attempts to get 'Nuance' right. After training, it seemed to prefer Muons, New arts or New aunts.

I wonder if it's good enough for transcribing telephone and conference calls? Wouldn't that be something? The potential certainly appears to be there.

If it all seems a bit hairy to put together, you'll be pleased to hear about Australia's Voice Perfect. Its Multi-Speak system does exacly that. As a meeting proceeds, each person's statements are colour coded and time-stamped.