Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 - Digital Voice Recorder Edition from Philips

Philips Dictation recently announced that they have joined forces with Nuance, the people behind Dragon NaturallySpeaking to create the Digital Voice Recorder edition of the software.

This bundles the Philips DVT (Digital Voice Tracer) 660 model with a cut down version of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software for Windows at a very low price of $209 incl. GST.

Philips Dictation Australia expects the bundle to be available any day now.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking : Here is a tip for you - faster transcription

On some machines you may find that Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a little slow to dump out your spoken dictation into Microsoft Word. This could be caused by a few things, maybe an older PC, maybe lack of RAM etc.

One way to speed up your transcribed single speaker dictation a tip is to let Dragon transcribe into Notepad or Wordpad. The overhead of Word trying to spell check as you talk is then taken away giving you faster smoother transcription. When you are done just copy the text and dump it into Word and it will then happily spell check your document for you.

Handy hints from Dictate Australia - www.dictate.com.au

Digital Dictaphone or Digital Notetaker - What Is The Difference?

In the world of digital voice recorders, typically the recorders can be grouped into two seperate types. We have the digital dictaphones and the digital notetakers.

Most people on the look our for a digital voice recorder are often confused by or unsure of what this really means and which type of digital voice recorder they need.

In simple terms, the general functionality of each is listed here:

Digital Notetaker

• Used to record multiple speaker audio: lectures, interviews, meetings etc.
• Audio is recorded in one session with minimal or no interruptions.

Digital Dictaphone

• Used to record one or single speaker audio: letters, notes etc.
• Audio can be recorded in multiple sessions, because of interuptions or stopping and starting dictation.

The digital dictaphones generally try to emulate the older analogue tape dictaphones and usually have a slider switch or rocker switch to initiate what we call the rewind/review functionality. Audio the has been recorded can be rewind for a few seconds and the last few dictated words can be heard. Dictation then continues on from that point untli the user presses a button to indicate the end of the dictation, causing an audio file to be created.

Digital notetakers are very simple and basic to use, press one button to start recording, press another to stop. It is that simple. Most notetakers can pause recording and then resume but it is not possible to rewind and hear what was just said and continue recording in the same audio file. It is possible to listen from the beginning of the file and fast forward through though.

Using Free Software To Help When Typing Up Notes From Digitally Recorded Interviews, Meetings or Focus Groups

You have just spent an hour or so digitally recording an interview, team meeting or focus group now you have to head back to your desk and type up notes from that meeting. How do you do it?

Most people would play back the audio in Windows Media Player of QuickTime and flick from their audio player back and forth to their word processor typing the small snippets of information they hear before they have to head back to stop and rewind the audio for a couple of sentences. Anyone who has done this will know it is very painful and takes forever.

There is a solution and it's free. It is Express Scribe from Australian company NCH Swift Sound. Using Express Scribe the audio playback is totally controlled from within your word processing application like Word. Simply by using any pre-configured keys on the keyboard (or by using a USB foot control) you can easily stop/rewind/play the audio without leaving the document you are writing, saving alot of time.

Just because of free does not mean it is feature poor. Far from it, Express Scribe has an impressive array of features like:

• Auto file loading from email or network drives
  
• Audio file noise suppressing/noice boost for poorly recorded audio
  
• Variable audio playback speed
  

Express Scribe is available for both the Windows and Intel Mac platforms. Give it a try and save yourself a few painful hours at the keyboard.

Record Phone Conversations With The Olympus TP-7 Telephone Pickup Mic

Ever need to record telephone conversations? Maybe you record interviews by phone or hold meetings by phone that you need to record for later transcription or note taking.

Olympus have a nifty microphone compatible with all their digital voice recorders called the TP-7 telephone pickup mic. The microphone end fits in your ear much like an iPod earbud and is held in place by the phone against your ear. The in ear mic records clearly the audio from the phones speaker and your voice.

As it fits in your ear it can be used with any telephone - mobile, desk phone and even pay phones.

LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen - Digital Voice Recorder In A 2Gb Pen

Here at Dictate Australia our attention was recently drawn, thanks to Twitter, to the LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen. This incredible gadget which is both Mac and Windows compatible is basically a computer in a pen.

Using the LiveScribe Dot Paper you hand write your notes while recording the audio from around you, being a lecture, conference or meeting. The audio is linked to the words you are writing so by simply touching on a word in your notes the audio is instantly replayed.

We have just received our first SmartPen in the office and will be working on video demos on both Mac and Windows in the coming weeks.