Re: wireless mic + voice recognition (+ handheld scanner?)

"otf" wrote ...
> I will be going to college soon and I don't exactly like typing much ;-)

Learn to type. It is now a life skill like reading. You may get away with
doing your work the way you are proposing --- in school. Unless you are
looking for a lower level job or think you will become an executive right
away, you will spend a lot of time typing on the computer. Unless you are
very high up or have special needs (like needing to have your hands free)
there is no way you will be able to use voice recognition in an office.

I was one of 3 guys (out of 25 or so students) in my high school typing
class. The few electric typewriters in the classroom were reserved for
girls who were actually planning to go into secretarial or stenography
careers.
It left me way ahead of other students when it became time to type papers in
college (I bought a portable electric typewriter) and later as everyone
converted to computers for their work in the office. It was common for
engineering departments to have clerical staff which would type their work.
No more. There are a lot of advantages to typing your own information.

> Sometimes you have an idea that is a keeper and some people do stuff like
> calling their own answering machines and "leave the message".

I much prefer prople who leave e-mail instead of voice messages. If I catch
someone out of the office, I just leave a stub message saying that I am
leaving them an e-mail so that they don't need to try to transcribe a
message at talking speed. It is difficult unless you are at the level of a
professional stenographer or secretary.
Since I have Outlook (from Office, not the freebie Outlook Express) at home
and at work, I send myself meeting requests in either direction when I
really want to remind myself about something to be done. For untimed info,
I just send an e-mail.

> I was wondering if I can be somewhat free from the box (working remotely)
> and/or do stuff like lying on bed while I read books and edit my papers
> possibly using both a wireless mic and scanner. I am also trying not
> finish
> college with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

I have known people who used some of the voice recognition programs so that
they could document what they were doing while working on prototype
machinery. They said that it worked reasonably well, once you recognized
the program's limitations and trained youself to speak to it in the style it
required. You need to speak clearly with extra gaps so it can recognize
words and cannot slide words together. (an example is the home town of a
friend, West Concord. The natives tend to say (rapidly) Wesconcrd (with
minimal attack on the d), which outsiders tend to mistake for Wisconsin.

Some of the programs can work with audio files. If you really want to do
this for capturing thoughts, I would recommend getting am MP3 player that
has a good mike and keeping it with you. No attachment or reliance on the
phone is needed. Phone lines are horrid from a recording viewpoint. I
wouldn't expect that any of the programs will work well for random text,
even if you could dump the digital file.

Hand writing recognition is at an even lower level. Forget scanning in
notes and having it automaticaly entered into the computer. There are some
computers that can recognize the strokes you use to make letters, just like
PDAs. It doesn't woek unless you are writing on a pad where it knows the
order and direction of the strokes. Last I saw, they also required you to
learn their letters instead of the other way around.

However, Tiger Direct keeps advertising a digital pad (around $100) that I
have considered for taking notes when I am not near my computer. I don't
think it does character recognition but it effectively dumps a scan of your
notes and drawings to a graphics file.
I frequently misplace paper. I don't do that with my computers.
--
Bill Fuhrmann


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