After getting my Palm Pre running again today, I had to get caught up on lots of stuff. One of them was an oustanding to do to download and install Evernote on my PC to run in conjunction with the mobile ap on my Palm Pre.
Haven’t heard of Evernote?
Basically its a tool that indexes text in images captured by camera or camera phone and sent into the service. (it does some other cool things too, but that seems to be the main reason why I picked it up.)
You can get a general idea of some of the other functionality from this video.
As some of you may recall, I attempted to create a home made wind screen for my noise cancellation headset. I plug that into my Sony Voice Recorder and then I can walk around outside composing and dictating as I like.
Well, until yesterday, I had not yet had the opportunity to really test the windscreen out on a very windy day. Yesterday, was not only windy, but it was also noisy and so I got some video of one of my sessions where I’m writing a chapter for a novel in the NaNoWrimi contest (national novel writing month).
This particular chapter was not one of my best as this multi tasking thing of trying to shoot a video at the same time I’m trying to compose a chapter was a little much even for my UBER multi-tasking brain. I got the chapter out, but it was not terribly good, and I will have to go back and seriously beef up the dialogue later.
You will not below the video also that the transcription that I ran when I was NOT running screen capture was a great deal more accurate than the transcription used in the actual video. Multi tasking with Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 and the screen capture software that comes with FastStone Capture is not a good combination for accuracy(great programs running alone, but together a bit much even for a new laptop with a fast processor). That screen capture program created a 500 mb video file and with Dragon compiling typically about 300 mb at a time while its running that’s almost 1 gigabyte of data in RAM. Now, I do have 3 gb on the machine that was running this, but doing video and voice recognition is a little much.
In general, the lessons that I learned here are as follows:
Don’t video yourself while writing a book
Focus on your words more when you are transcribing to a pocket recorder, try and envision what you are doing and what you are saying, you can enjoy the surroundings, but focus on your words (see point 1 as a bad distraction)
If you are walking for exercise, consider going a long distance as opposed to back and forth. Mindless physical exercise can be good for writing, but if your brain needs to make decisions while you are writing it can distract you from your words
The equipment will do a great job, focus on your own thoughts and your speech quality.
Note. the sound quality in the video is from the microphone on the camera and not the actual microphone with the windscreen
Here’s the more accurate transcription results of the chapter without the video
Case of this quick test C. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is working
Falsely maligned
Jeremy had found his father and is now looking for the medicine man. He was heading in the direction of where the medicine man’s most be, when he encountered his sister else.
"Jeremy I cannot believe that you hurt Shiloh. Even after everyone in the tribe warned you not to act so stupid around. How could you do that, how could you hurt your own little brother. You’re supposed to be looking out for not shooting arrows at them" also said. "I told you I would make you pay for this, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do." She said all she turned and ran in the other direction.
Jeremy didn’t even have an moment to try to explain himself or defend what happened or explained that it had been him at all. Also was as old as
It also was his older sister, and despite the fact that he was now taller and stronger than she was, he still felt intimidated by her. Plus you can really fool around with someone that was the medicine man’s apprentice. The last thing the germinated was the spirit world after.
He kept on walking down the trail and pursuit of the location where the medicine man supposed to be. This took an up-and-down small hill, washed out goalie basically that it filled in with sand over time and when he came to the top of the hill, he could see the medicine man standing near a tree looking at some plants further up the rich. He walked towards the medicine man, and walked with a step it was a little bit louder than normal as he did not want to surprise the man. He definitely felt intimidated by the medicine man, and for some reason this to
And for some reason didn’t want to call out to the older man in jail and area
So instead he chose a course where he would walk relatively loudly up behind the man so that he could hear them coming. "Jeremy, is that you? The medicine man asked
"Yes, it is I. My little brother Shyla’s been hurt in a terrible accident. We were in the clearing hunting for rabbits, when a large bird attacked him. The bird was almost as large as the clearing, swoop down and picked up Shilo in his clutches with this giant feet. Ice shot an arrow at the bird, instructed but it did very little damage and barely slowed down. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the bird got tangled slightly in a tree, I don’t know what would’ve happened to Shiloh."
The medicine man took all of us in without the slightest bit surprised. Jeremy didn’t think that anything in the world could surprise the medicine and, not even the tale of a giant bird that no one ever seen or heard of before swooping down on attacking someone in the tribe.
"Well, let’s go see her brother, and along the way we will stop my hunt and pick up my pack of medicines." The medicine man said. "Described to me, tell your brother was injured, where he was injured in what type of injuries he received." The medicine man continued.
Jeremy said, "he was picked up by the feet of the bird, which seem to puncture his shoulders with the giant closet the bird had, when the bird got tangled in the tree the bird dropped germ
The bird drop Shiloh, and he fell close to 25 feet. He hit the ground in a relatively soft area, but he did break a leg and lost consciousness. I carried them back to our hut which took Olson our to do. He’s there with my mother now in my father’s on his way." Jeremy said.
The medicine man did not say anymore after that, as they walked very quickly to medicine man’s hut which was a few minutes away. Jerry waited outside while the medicine man went into the hut, and came out with a large deerskin bag full of a number of different things that Jeremy could not make out through the boldest. There were some roots and plants picking up sides, but even these he couldn’t recognize, and Jeremy felt that he knew most of the plants in the forest.
The rapidly left the medicine man’s hut, and crossed the tribal common area heading towards Je
remy’s a. When they arrived son already started to set it was getting dark, they inserted into the hut, which was now lit up with a large fire. The fire was lit more for light than it was for warmth. This was apparent because an opening in the ceiling was open wider than normal to let the heat of the fire escape the hut so as not to roast those inside.
The medicine man went over and converse with Jeremy’s mother, and they spoke together for about five minutes. Jeremy couldn’t quite tell what they were saying, but they did glance at him on several occasions. His father wasn’t in the hut, and Jeremy wasn’t certain what he should do next.
Just as he was thinking this, his mother said, "Jeremy go outside and catch up with her father. He searching the woods to find materials and make an appropriate splint for your brother’s leg. When he gets back, it will take the three of you said the little boy’s leg." She said
Happy to have a new mission, and the opportunity to leave the hut with his mother in the medicine man there, Jeremy quickly left in search of his father."
Here’s the transcription results as shown in the video
Case of this quick test C. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is working
Falsely maligned
Jeremy had found his father was now looking for the medicine man. He was heading in the direction of where the medicine man’s ghost be, when he encountered his sister else.
"Jeremy I cannot believe that you hurt Shiloh. Even after everyone in the drive board you not to act so stupid around. How could you do that, how could you hurt your own little brother. You were supposed to be looking out for not shooting arrows at them" also said. "I told you I would make you pay for this, that’s exactly what I’m going to do." She said all she turned and ran in the other direction.
Jeremy didn’t even have a moment to try to explain himself or defend what happened or explained that it had been him at all. Also was as old as
Also was his older sister, and despite the fact that he was now taller and stronger than she was, he still felt intimidated by her. Plus you can really fool around with someone that was the medicine man’s apprentice. The last thing the germinated was the spirit world after.
He kept on walking down the trail and pursuit of the location where the medicine man supposed to be. This took an up-and-down small hill, washed out goalie basically that it filled in with sand over time and when he came to the top of the hill, he could see the medicine man standing near three looking at some plants further up the rich. He walked towards the medicine man, and walked with a step it was a little bit louder than normal as he did not want to surprise the man. He definitely felt intimidated by the medicine and, and for some reason this to
And for some reason didn’t want to call out to the older man in jail and area
So instead he chose a course where he would walk relatively loudly up behind the man so that he could hear them coming. "Germany, is that you? Medicine Anas
"Yes, it is I. My little brother Shiloh’s been hurt in a terrible accident. We were in the clearing hundred for rabbits, when a large bird attacked him. The bird was almost as large as the clearing, slid down and picked up Shilo in his clutches with this giant feet. Ice shot an arrow at the bird, instructed but it did very little damage and barely slowed down. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the bird got tangled slightly in a tree, I don’t know what would’ve happened to Shiloh."
The medicine man took all of us in without the slightest bit surprised. Jeremy didn’t think that anything in the world could surprise the medicine and, not even the tale of a giant bird that no one ever seen or heard of before swooping down on attacking someone in the drive.
"Well, let’s go see her brother, and along the way we will stop my constant pick up my pack of medicines." The medicine man said. "Described to me, tell your brother was injured, where he was injured in what type of injuries he received." The medicine man continued.
Jeremy said, "he was picked up by the feet of the bird, which seem to puncture his shoulders with the giant closet the bird had, when the bird got tangled in the tree the bird dropped germ
The bird drop Shiloh, and he fell close to 25 feet. He hit the ground in a relatively soft area, but he did break a leg and lost consciousness. I carried him back to our hut which took Olson our to do. He’s there with my mother now in my father’s on his way." Jeremy said.
The medicine man did not say anymore after that, as they walked very quickly to medicine man’s hut which was a few minutes away. Jerry waited outside while the medicine man went into that, and came out with a large deerskin bag full of a number of different things that Jeremy could not make out through the boldest. There were some roots and plants picking up sides, but even these he couldn’t recognize, and Jeremy felt that he knew most of the plants in the forest.
The rapidly left the medicine man’s hut, and crossed the tribal common area heading towards Jeremy Scott. When they arrived the sun already started to set it was getting dark, they inserted into the hut, which was now lit up with a large fire. The fire was lit more for light than it was for warmth. This was apparent because an opening in the ceiling was open wider than normal to let the heat of the fire escape the hut so as not to roast those inside.
The medicine man went over and converse with Jeremy’s mother, and they spoke together for about five minutes. Jeremy couldn’t quite tell what they were saying, but they did glanced at him on several occasions. His father wasn’t in the hut, and Jeremy wasn’t certain what he should do next.
Just as he was thinking this, his mother said, "Jeremy go outside and catch up with her father. He searching the woods to find materials and make appropriate splint for your brothers leg. When he gets back, it will take the three of you said the little boy’s leg." She said
Have you have a new mission, and the opportunity to leave the hut with his mother in the medicine man there, Jeremy quickly left in search of his father."
I have a Sony IC Recorder ICD-UX70. It is not sold to work with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, but works just fine. It cost me $100. For $200 you can buy a Sony Recorder that comes with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 software, and I consider that a great bargain.
I bought my software, Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred, over a year ago and bought the recorder later. In total I spent $150 for the software and $100 for the recorder. Total $250.
Since the Sony IC recorder doesn’t come made for DNS 9, I had to do some trial and error testing to figure out the best settings on my recorder for Automatic computer transcription. (I recorded something on my sony recorder by speaking into it. Then ran the mp3 file it generated through Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, which transcribed my voice into text. You can see the results below for each of the recording quality settings on my Sony IC Recorder.
This is the original Text that I read aloud:
Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 is the most accurate speech recognition product Nuance has ever developed – delivering up to 99% accuracy! Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 9 is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on the job.
Here are 4 quick tips to duplicate my results or just get good results for every day voice transcription.
If you run a file through transcription and it seems to get it dead wrong, or if the first few words are incorrect, try running the file from the beginning all over again. Sometimes your machine just needs a fresh start at a transcription.
Hold your MP3 recorder a couple inches to the side of your mouth. I hold mine with my right hand to the right side of my mouth so that it doesn’t pick up my breathing too much.
Plus, when creating a voice file that should be transcribed, I try to allow 5 seconds of silence at the beginning of the recording to give my computer time to start the transcription process.
Set your microphone sensitivity to low
This is the Transcription results at 5 different quality settings.
Note. I have not trained the software to work with my digital recorder. I did not make any effort to correct the transcription. If I had subsequent transcriptions would have substituted the word ‘nine’ for the number 9 for example.
ST – 192 kbps – Very Accurate, bit rate might consume too much memory, but fine if you will sync up file on rapid basis (37 seconds 887 kilobyte file size)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate speech recognition product nuances ever developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy! Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on-the-job.
STSP – 128 kbps – Very Accurate, Recommended, also good for Podcast quality (37 seconds 589 kb)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate speech recognition product nuance has ever developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy! Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on the job.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate recognition product new one is ever developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy! Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals who once worked faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome on the job.
SP – 32 kbps – Not Optimal, but could be better (35 seconds 141 kb)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the most accurate beach recognition product and once is never developed-delivering up to 99% accuracy! Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional nine is the ideal solution for busy corporate professionals want to work faster or organizations looking to keep people with disabilities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, on-the-job.
Here to for, I’ve generally built videos and tutorials with the unorganized approach of recording some video while I do something and then going back and editing it into something useful.
Today, I was working on a viral video for a client and actually built a story board of the video before I put it together attempting to plan out how I would present the video.
This actually worked pretty well for me, even though the story board turned out to be very rough.
Here’s a quick video showing the MindManager map I used for this situation.
Plus, here is the resulting viral video that I created from the story board draft.
Note. there’s a technical sound glitch in the final product that is the result of a problem with Camtasia’s ability to render 2 tracks of sound and a slow motion video clip at the same time. I’m hoping to resolve this by reworking the clips in Pinacle. If that succeeds I’ll add a third movie with the corrected result. For now, there are a couple sections where the volume level is a little buggy.
So now, I have to crack open this new software, get it installed and start learning some advanced techniques. Coming soon, I will have my office on the fishing dock converted into a green room studio, you won’t even be able to see the patio furniture when I’m done, but I’m not sure what I’ll do when the occasional duck flies through my office.
You can use almost any voice recorder that is capable of recording a wave file to transcribe your words into text using Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred or a higher version. Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Mobile actually comes with a voice recorder with the software and will yield some of the best results in regards to accuracy.
I am using my Treo which has a voice recorder program (MVoice – cost $15 – download – $25 for newer Treos). I record short notes, comments and emails into my Treo and then have the Transcribe tool in Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred convert my voice to text.
Accuracy of DNS9 Preferred is typically about 98-99% (advertised 99%). Using a tested mobile recorder, Dragon says you will see about 95-96% accuracy. I’d guess that I see somewhere between 93-95% accuracy using a cheap recorder and my treo.
I don’t have a noise cancellation microphone on my treo and that is one of the largest reasons for the reduction in quality I suspect.
Here’s the video I put together to show you the process.
Here’s the final note that I transcribed and then edited.
That I am going to play through Dragon Naturally Speaking software which will transcribe my words into text. I’m going to use punctuation like I just did on occasion so the program will know to insert that punctuation.
I’m speaking into my Palm Treo 600 it will record the information on any SD memory card which I will then put into my computer and pull that wave file that’s generated from program onto my computer where it will be transcribed. Then I will show you the transcription process.
Technical Specifications
I’m running a laptop with 1 gb of memory. (I will probably upgrade my memory to 2-3GB soon maybe through Dell Memory, mostly due to the videos that I create and to the leaky memory issues with Firefox. I’m hopeful that this might also improve my performance with DNS9. My Treo is a 1960’s finned cadillac of treos with the model number of 600. The damned thing won’t stop working and T-mobile doesn’t carry any upgrade Treos yet. My computer is running Windows XP with a Centrino Duo processor.
Here’s a quick little video tutorial on how to export an e-mail from Outlook into MindManager Pro 7. I originally started making this video attempting to re-create a potential bug that was identified in the MindManager Yahoo group.
I never had any problems with either Outlook nor with MindManager, the book just wasn’t apparent to me and based on other feedback in the form it may not be a MindManager bug at all. Or maybe I just don’t have the right configuration to trigger the bug.
The Following video walks you through the multiple methods required or available to insert an image or a picture into a MindManager Pro 7 Topic.
As you could see in the video there are multiple ways to insert a picture into a topic. There is one method that I did not cover. You could add the image to your image library and then open up the library and insert the image into a topic from the library. This is usually only practical in circumstances where you plan to utilize that same image many many times.
If you would like to see a video of the steps required for adding an image to the library, drop me a comment and I will add it to the rotation very soon. In fact you can leave a comment for any video requests and I will do my best to cover them in short order.
After using Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 for several months now I have come to learn that DNS9, requirs a tune up about every 3-4 weeks. I use the speach recognition system extensively and probably dictate close to 50,000 words per month.
Instead of getting more accurate, however the software seems to get confused and loses its way over time. So I run through a simple process to give it a tune up. I simply perform a single training session and it seems to reset the system. Keep in mind that I am not deleting my DNS9 user, I’m not dumping my library or anything like that. In fact I train and add words as I go religiously. It just seems that the program gets buggier as time goes by.
Here’s a demonstration of what I go through to train the software and give it a tune up. This video is edited down and doesn’t show the full process that takes about an hour. This is just a few minutes long and you may want to fast forward through certain sections if you are looking for specific how to answers.
I came across a business supply site that offers discount office supplies. I’ve been bookmarking a number of different sites like this for the last couple weeks and I’m developing a backlog of topics and items that I need to catch up on as we bring May to a close.
I’ve been writing a number of feature articles here lately and haven’t balanced these out well with some of the general news and offers of the day type of items. We’ll definitely get back on track soon.
I wanted to internalize the information in a way that I could rapidly work with in multiple settings in the future if I ever needed to find the right tool for the job. So of course I mindmapped out the tools listed, plus I added in the tools suggested in the comments and I added a bunch of my own.
Now I have a great starting point for the future whenever I need to build up the list or find something I need quickly. I linked back to the original article from my MindMap Central topic and I created sub maps for each of the categories identified. This kept each category of items viewable at a single glance.
I’ve provided snapshots of these maps below. For more details about each of the tools I suggest a quick visit over to the site yourself as it really does have a great deal of information.
In the meantime, I did this experiment in part to internalize the info as I mentioned, but also in part to find a more rapid way of mindmapping this type of information from primary sources on the web. I hope to find more efficient ways to achieve this goal in the future.
