Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7-19
Siri can transcribe notes you dictate on your iOS device.
If you don't see the Dictate button ( ), go to the Settings app's General pane in your iOS device
and then tap the Siri label to open the Siri pane. Make sure the Siri switch is set to On to enable dicta-
tion (and Siri). If you don't have the Siri label, your iOS device can't do dictation.
OS X Mountain Lion also supports dictation in most apps, if you have a recent-model Mac. By
default, you press the Fn key twice to turn on dictation; you can change this key in the Dictation &
Speech system preference, which is also where you turn dictation on or off.
When dictating, you use common punctuation such as commas, periods, new paragraphs, new
lines, question marks, and exclamation points by simply saying their names aloud, although inflec-
tion is important to ensure that the word “comma” doesn't appear where you wanted to insert a
comma itself (,) as a break in the text.
For quick notes and ideas, the built-in dictation is an easy way to get your thoughts transcribed.
But, if you're after more powerful speech recognition, you should look at third-party apps for iOS and
OS X.
I recommend you try the free Dragon Dictation by Nuance Communications. It's does an im-
pressive job of understanding and transcribing what you speak — and is fast. In addition to dictating
in a text field, Dragon Dictation allows you to submit voice controlled tweets to Twitter (see Figure
7-20) and updates to Facebook. Like Apple's own dictation service, you do need an active Internet
connection so Dragon Dictation can access Nuance's speech-to-text servers. A full-blown version of
this software called Dragon Naturally Speaking is available for Mac and PC; it not only supports dic-
tation but also lets you control your computer with voice commands. The software learns the way you
speak too, so even you mumblers or gabblers should see great results over time.
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