Dragon NaturallySpeaking – Yes, I’m talking to my computer…

Those of you following this blog may have noticed a lack of entries in recent days. This is in part because I’ve simply been too busy to stop and write anything new. But as of two days ago I installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking on one of my computers, and in those two days, have managed to dictate over 100 pages of my handwritten notes into the computer. Although Dragon NaturallySpeaking requires some training on your part, I have found the product extremely accurate and quite simple to use for most text writing applications. With a little patience and the “Dragon 11 quick reference card” I have found it quite easy to dictate a lot of jargon-filled text for books that I’m writing for my various seminars, workshops, and classes.

As you may have guessed by now, I’m also dictating this particular blog entry. I will make one note here that could be very important to you; It is essential that you buy a good headset microphone for performing this nature of dictation. I happen to be using a Logitech USB headphone set that I purchased for the purpose of teaching Photoshop online seminars. I would also have to admit that I haven’t even tried to use the headphone microphone set that came with Dragon 11 premium. If you have a reason to type a lot of text documents, this product can be worth your time and money to investigate. For myself, I can say that my productivity in the past couple of days has increased exponentially, and besides that, it’s actually easier for me to say words correctly and let Dragon NaturallySpeaking spell them for me than it is for me to spell and type them myself. And all of that being said, I suspect that over the next several months, I may find the opportunity to actually catch up with all of my book writing. That should also give me the opportunity to produce more blog entries here and write my newspaper column with a little more ease. Many thanks to nuance.com for such a cool product, and many thanks to my sister who helped me make the selection.

Another project that has kept me a little busy recently was the renovation of my website, jrcowell.com. I’m rather pleased with the results of that renovation, and I hope that you’ll take a few minutes to surf your way over there and have a look around. You may have also noticed that there is a new and improved logo included in this blog entry. That logo plus the redesign of another logo are some of the other projects that I’ve been involved with lately. I’ve also judged two photography contest in the past two weeks: the East Wichita News Annual Photography Contest and the Portrait of Botanica Annual Photography Contest. Between those two contests. I have looked over several hundred photographs with three other judges in order to pick a small handful of winners. It is gratifying to see over the course of the several years I’ve been involved in judging these contest, that the entries continue to improve each year. My next column for the East Wichita News will discuss some of the things we’ve learned as judges in that contest and provide some hints for contest participants to help them improve their chances of winning.

Thanks.

© Jeff Cowell, jrcowell.com

~ by jrcowell on October 7, 2010.