February 2010 Newsletter

 
  

If you’re a Mac user, we have some great news this month! See below for details about the Nuance acquisition of MacSpeech, the leading provider of speech recognition solutions for the Macintosh. This month’s newsletter also offers tips for using Dragon with Internet Explorer 7 and provides new commands to make formatting and editing your text easier than ever. “Delete line” is a simple and useful — but often overlooked — command. Find more helpful commands within this month’s “Improving Accuracy and Productivity” section.

Product News

Nuance Acquires MacSpeech

On February 16, Nuance announced that we have acquired MacSpeech, the leader in providing speech recognition solutions for the Macintosh.

Upon its introduction in 2008, MacSpeech Dictate earned the coveted Macworld Best of Show Award, and has since received praise from press and customers alike for its accuracy. As you may already know, Dictate uses the Dragon speech recognition engine at its core.

We look forward to sharing more updates with you in the coming months. In the meantime, visit http://www.nuance.com/macspeech/ for more information on this exciting announcement.

Tips and Tricks

Using Dragon with Internet Explorer 7

If you’ve switched to Internet Explorer 7, you can continue to use existing Dragon voice commands to search the web, as well as some new commands created to take advantage of the new features of Internet Explorer 7.

The following commands allow you to view and control tabs:

“open [new/last/next/previous] tab”
“close tab”
“switch to the [last/next/previous] tab”
“view the [next/last/previous] tab”
“view the [1st-8th] tab”

You can also control RSS feeds by saying “switch to feeds,” and then using commands such as:

“[open/close] feeds”
“[show/view/display] feeds”
“[hide/unhide/toggle] feeds”

The Sample Commands window (launched by saying “What Can I Say” or “View Sample Commands”) lists additional commands. In addition, the Command Browser (found under the Tools menu on the DragonBar) provides a complete list of commands that can be used with Internet Explorer 7.

Improving Accuracy and Productivity

Capitalization Commands

Dragon automatically capitalizes most words that require an initial capital letter (such as proper names, the first word of a sentence, custom words that you have added to your vocabulary, etc.). You can also use commands such as "cap that" or "all caps that” to capitalize select words or phrases. (See the December 2008 issue of this newsletter for more details about capitalization.) But you can also remove traditional capitalization rules for selected text. Simply say “no caps” followed by the word. Or if the word has already been transcribed on the screen, you could always say "no caps that” to remove the capitalization (e.g., “Kleenex” is normally capitalized by Dragon, but you can say "no caps Kleenex" and Dragon will print the word as "kleenex").

Delete Previous/Next Word/Line

Here’s a set of commands that may make it faster and easier to proofread and edit your text. To quickly remove a word or phrase from your document you can say “delete previous word” or “delete next two words” (or any number of words that you want to delete). You can even delete entire lines of text. “Delete line” is a simple and useful — but often overlooked — command. Similar commands are also available, such as "delete next three lines” or “delete previous paragraph.” Just be sure that you know the placement of your cursor before you issue this type of command so that you don't mistakenly cut the wrong text. If this does happen, don't forget you can always use the "undo that" command to undo the last action.

Customer Profiles

Days of Awareness for Persons with Disabilities

Recently the Dragon team had the opportunity to participate in the Days of Awareness for Persons with Disabilities event, sponsored by Scotiabank. With nearly 69,000 employees serving approximately 12.8 million customers around the world, Scotiabank is one of North America's premier financial institutions. This organization is committed to supporting persons with disabilities to become integrated into the workforce. “Equipping employers and employees with the proper tools and training they need to ensure bias-free recruitment and hiring, and establishing a work environment where all employees can achieve their professional potential is something that Scotiabank takes very seriously,” said Sylvia Chrominska, Scotiabank Group Head, Global Human Resources and Communication. In fact, Scotiabank has recruitment activities, flexible work arrangements, assistive technologies and other resources in place to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Each year, Scotiabank hosts a Days of Awareness event to support the United Nations’ International Day for Persons with Disabilities, an occasion to re-affirm and draw attention to the rights of people who live with disabilities worldwide. Scotiabank hosts an exhibition featuring various agencies and assistive technologies for persons with disabilities. This year, Scotiabank invited Dragon to participate in the expo, recognizing the role Dragon can play in making computers and other devices accessible to all members of the community. Adding speech recognition capabilities to a computer enables users to work virtually hands free when creating documents, accessing data, or navigating their desktop.

You Asked, We Answer

Q: I want to change the microphone I use with Dragon. Do I need to buy a new microphone from Nuance?

A. Each edition of Dragon ships with a microphone headset. (Individual headset models may vary.) If you choose to replace your headset, you can purchase a replacement headset from any vendor, such as Staples, Best Buy, Amazon.com, or any other retailer or online establishment. A more important question may be: which microphone should you buy? You can find a list of approved devices using our Hardware Compatibility List available at http://support.nuance.com/compatibility. The Hardware Compatibility List provides a summary of third-party hardware devices that Nuance has evaluated in its compatibility labs. Devices listed as "Nuance certified" have passed all tests with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and meet our highest performance and quality standards. Note that if you’re using the Preferred, Professional or Legal edition of Dragon, you may choose to dictate with a Nuance-certified wireless headset for the same great accuracy without the wires.