Voice recognition software has been around for many years, and every year it gets much more impressive. Until now if you were using OSx, your choices have been pretty sparse. MacSpeech Dictate Pro is a port of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 that maintains a native Macintosh application feel. We got our copy and this week and we’ve been playing with it ever since.

While the MacSpeech Pro website has a small list of recommended microphones, but we just use a regular old Logitech USB Microphone and so far it’s been going great!

While in older versions of speech recognition software, users spent hours upon hours training the software to their voice. With MacSpeech Dictate, the training process took about 10 minutes. Of course we were skeptical that 10 minutes of training would be enough, so we put it to the test. To our amazement, the accuracy after just 10 minutes of training is incredibly good. Did I mention that we’re using it to type this very article? So far this article has gotten just 3 words wrong. Fixing mistakes as you speak is very fluid. If as you’re typing you see a phrase that was incorrect, all you have to say is ’scratch that’ and it will undo what it just typed. You can also step back word by word by saying ’scratch word’.

When it comes to accuracy, most programs that do speech-recognition have a bad reputation of making people talk like robots. We felt that we were able to talk fairly naturally, although we do find that against our Will we need to use decent grammar and actually articulate words. The take away is that you want to sound more like a news anchor than a robot. News anchors are of course known for saying every syllable and not slurring their speech too much, as that makes their voice easier to decipher over the microphone.

Application launching with MacSpeech Dictate is as simple as saying ‘open firefox’ or ‘open calculator’. All of the applications in your application folder are already automatically loaded in as shortcuts, so it requires no configuration. Many other shortcuts are already configured such as “Expose all Windows”, “capture screen”, “cut selection”, or “file new”. MacSpeech Dictate also comes with a slew of commands for Finder, iCal, Mail, Safari, and text edit. It works by having commands bound to AppleScript commands, which means you can create macros with custom voice commands to control any application you have that can be controlled with the keyboard. Anyone familiar with how powerful AppleScript is knows what a killer feature this is.

As far as speed is concerned, the dictation process runs very quickly and takes up very little CPU time. We’re using a Mac Pro desktop, with 4 cores, and the overall CPU usage never spikes over 10%. On a typical Macintosh laptop, I wouldn’t be surprised if CPU usage spiked up to 30-40% when speaking; but for a tool that is most useful when dictating e-mails and documents, that’s okay.

The question that we have to answer here at RSSstuff.com is will this program help and how frustrating is it? I believe that if you speak clear English, the MacSpeech Dictate will surprise you. Now we still find that we want to use the keyboard and mouse for certain tasks such as surfing the Internet, document editing, and typing things that we don’t want to say out loud.. But for dictating e-mails and documents, MacSpeech Pro is exactly what we’ve been looking for. For $200, this program packs a very mature engine under the hood. Since MacSpeech Dictate uses the same engine as Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, you can expect the same level of quality from both products.

Although the Logitech g11/g15 keyboard was designed for gamers, we found huge potential for people who use the computer a lot for document editing and web browsing. The key is on the left hand side with 18 additional buttons that are completely programmable. By mapping the keys to common keystrokes you can greatly reduce how many keys you hit. This will not only help you work faster, but reduce how many keystrokes you make overall.

Lets start with the keys. The pressure needed to push a key down on this guy is rated at 50 KOF (grams of force). Most keyboards range between 40-120 KOF which means that the g11/g15 registers a keypress very lightly which is very good for you hands. Why does this matter? The grams of force per key push is very little, but accumulated over time, the difference of how hard your finger has to work to press the key can have a huge affect on your hands’ overall fatigue.

About the layout.. The g11/g15 does not have what we stereotypically consider an ergonomic layout. It’s just a high quality traditional keyboard with extra macro keys. Some people (in particular those with wrist pain) need a slanted/natural keyboard layout, and if that’s you, then perhaps this keyboard isn’t for you. If the pain is in your fingers from making too many keystrokes, then this keyboard presents a way to continue your normal work uninterrupted, and simply automate things to minimize it.

A typical use case and how you might set up your macros. Lets say your day primarily consists of document editing and surfing the internet. If you look at the image above, you’ll see how I mapped my macro’s out.

g1-g6 correspond to ctrl-1 through ctrl-6. This is for switching tabs in firefox. Now you have single buttons to switch b/t the first 6 tabs of firefox without using the mouse.

g9 is a shortcut for save (ctr-s)

g12 is a shortcut for refresh (refresh the page in firefox ctr-r)

g13 is a shortcut for copy (ctr-c)

g14 is a shortcut for cut (ctr-x)

g15 is a shortcut for paste (ctr-v)

g16 is a shortcut for undo (ctr-z)

g17 is a shortcut for select all (ctr-a)

g18 is a shortcut for alt-tab (to switch between applications)

Every time you can cut 2 keystrokes down to one, you’re making progress. There’s infinite variations on how you could map your keys.. This is just an example of how I have mine set up. The bottom line is that setting up macros will make you faster, reduce # of key presses, and reduce mouse movement, all of which are good for your hands. One of my favorite work flows is to use this keyboard for the macros, but set it up as a DVORAK keyboard.

Have you created any good key mappings on your g11/g15? Post below:

Mouseless Browsing With Firefox

For those who surf the web, but find discomfort when using the mouse, here is one alternative to surfing with a mouse. It works by having a shortcut key which when pressed, it shows a number next to every link on the screen. Then by punching in the number for which link you want, it registers a click, and takes you there.

This is a free firefox browser addon. If you don’t already have firefox, download it for free. Once installed, get the firefox mouseless browsing addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/879