December 2009 Newsletter

 
  

You asked for it, and we delivered: the Dragon Dictation for the iPhone app is now available — free for a limited time. You’ll find details about how to download the app in this month’s newsletter. We also include productivity tips below that will help you more easily select text within a document and more quickly access web links by voice. In our customer profile, we introduce you to Youth Villages, a private organization that leverages Dragon to help children with serious emotional and behavioral problems. We answer questions from customers about spelling words and alpha-numeric combinations, and we also explain how to stop any transcription in process (particularly helpful if you tend to forget to turn off your microphone!). Happy Holidays from the Dragon team at Nuance!

Product News: Attention iPhone Users!

Dragon Dictation for the iPhone is here. Earlier this month Nuance announced the availability of the Dragon Dictation App in the Apple App Store. This app allows iPhone users to speak emails and text messages instead of typing them. Dragon Dictation also works with the iPhone clipboard, so transcribed text can be easily pasted into other apps, including Facebook and Twitter. The Dragon Dictation App is available for FREE for a limited time from the App Store on iPhone or at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764?mt=8. To learn more, visit www.dragonmobileapps.com.

And there’s more to come from Nuance Dragon Mobile Apps with Dragon Search, which will revolutionize the way you search for mobile content. More details will be coming soon, so be sure to follow Dragon Mobile Apps on Twitter @DragonTweets and @NuanceMobile, and become a Fan of Dragon Mobile Apps on Facebook.

Product News: Dragon — The New King of All Media?

You may be seeing a lot of Dragon this holiday season. In addition to news articles from major publications such as The New York Times covering the launch of the Dragon Dictation App for the iPhone, we are currently in the midst of a national TV and online advertising campaign. We’re also advertising on the radio in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia. (You can hear the ads on our Facebook page if you haven’t heard the ads live.) You may already have Dragon yourself, but Dragon also makes a great gift! Not only for the “techie” person on your list, but also for students, teachers, writers, your aunt with RSI, or your cousin who tries to type with one finger … As part of this campaign, we’re offering Dragon at a discounted price, making this a great time to purchase a copy of the software for family and friends. Visit www.givedragon.com for details.

Improving Accuracy and Productivity: Selecting Text Within a Document

If you want to make a change to text within a document (either to correct a misrecognition or simply to replace your original text) say “select” followed by the word or phrase you want to edit. To edit a lengthy passage, you can say “select” followed by the first word or two of the passage “through” the last word or two of the passage. For example, to select the previous sentence, say “select to edit through the passage period.” (You could just as easily say, “Select previous sentence.”) Notice that you can dictate punctuation if you want it included in your selection.

If you have trouble selecting a single word within a phrase, try selecting the full phrase — even if you only want to edit the individual word. For example, if Dragon has difficulty when you try to select the word “a” in the previous sentence, you could say, “select ‘a single word’” to highlight the passage. Saying the full phrase helps Dragon pinpoint the exact term in the document you want to edit.

To remove the highlight from the currently selected text, say “unselect that.”

Improving Accuracy and Productivity: Surfing the Web by Voice

With the introduction of Dragon Voice Shortcuts for Web Search in Version 10 (e.g., “Search the Web for top technology gifts”), more people are using Dragon to search the Web and more quickly navigate to the specific web page that includes their desired search criteria. Once you’re on a Web page, you can click on links by saying all or part of the link name. (If a red arrow appears next to the link, say “click that.”) But what do you do if the link is actually an image, not a line of text that can be dictated? No problem! Simply say “click image” to activate the link by voice. You can even say “click check box” to select or unselect a check box when filling out forms online.

Customer Profiles: Youth Villages Increases Counselor Retention by Reducing Documentation Time Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Meet Youth Villages, a private non-profit organization, dedicated to helping children with serious emotional and behavioral problems and their families live successfully. This short customer video illustrates how Youth Villages’ 1,600 counselors and support staff help more than 11,000 children each year from 50 locations across the United States. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional enables counselors to dictate notes into a digital voice recorder while their on the road and then automatically transcribe those notes to their office computer. Voice commands further speed and simplify paperwork. Time studies have shown that Dragon reduced family counselors’ paperwork time by as much as 55% over typing. Since introducing Dragon, Youth Villages has also seen increased counselor retention and improved job satisfaction levels.

Tips and Tricks: Did You Forget to Turn Off the Microphone?

Occasionally while using Dragon, you might start a conversation with someone or answer the phone and completely forget to turn off your microphone. When that happens, Dragon is still trying to recognize sound through the microphone. You may try to turn off the microphone, but at this point Dragon is working to interpret the background noise produced by your conversation. The fastest way to stop the recognition in progress — at any time — is to click on the red button in the top left corner of the "Results Box." This will automatically stop the recognition process and turn off the microphone.

You Asked, We'll Answer:

If you are using a unique word at the point of speaking, can you spell something out for Dragon while you are dictating/speaking?

A. You can insert any unknown word into your document by spelling it. Say "Spell" followed by the letters of the word or phrase you want to insert. Spell the letters naturally and continuously, rather than one letter at a time, for best recognition. When spelling, you can capitalize a letter, by saying "Cap" before you say that letter. You can type two consecutive characters by saying "double" and the character (e.g.,"double Z," "double Zulu" or "double letter Z”).

I use "alpha / numeric" combinations, but Dragon puts a period after the alpha character, or a space. I'm an accountant, and we have goofy cost codes!

A. This is a great situation to leverage the different recognition modes available within Dragon for your dictation. In Spell Mode, Dragon allows you to say any combination of letters, digits, or symbols as you might need to do when dictating parts numbers – or cost codes! You can also say keystrokes such as “space bar” or “backspace key.” To turn on Spell Mode, say "Start Spell Mode" or "Spell Mode On," and "Spell Mode" will appear in the status box of the DragonBar.