Technology Is Your Friend

Yesterday, I searched for “technology is your friend” on Google to check if my recent changes to this blogs’ structure had been reflected there. Then, I noticed a resualt for Ubersoft. What caught my attention was Ubersoft’s tagline: “Technology is not your friend”. I expected to find a website that portrays technology as the root (get it?) of all evil. Instead, I found really funny web comics!

The comics are produced by Christopher B. Wright. His first comic series, Help Desk,details the inner-workings of an evil software corporation called Ubersoft. The comic parodies the notorious customer support of many large software companies. Over time, more characters were added to the series, making it more diverse. Then, Kernel panic was created in 2001.

Kernel Panic chronicles the activities of the IT/IS department of NifTech. They all like to use UNIX-like operating systems, but their CEO wants them to switch to NiftyDoorways based on the advice of a Ubersoft consultant. So what do they do? They lie, telling their CEO that they have switched to NiftyDoorways when they have not actually changed a thing. This provides them with a lot of extra money that would have been spent on software licenses, so they buy more servers instead. This is just a summery of the first few comics, it only gets crazier from there.

Click to enlarge. Used with permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

I hope I have dangled a carrot in front of you. Please take the time to read a bit of both the Help Desk series and the Kernel panic series, and consider making a donation to Christopher B. Wright, they honestly are that good. And to Mr. Wright, thanks for making my day a bit brighter!

Hello everyone!

I have recently set up the blog to notifiy ping.fm every time a new post is created, or an old post is updated. The updates then go to my Twitter account, Facebook page, and Geeks profile.

Additionally, when I upload new tutorials to my blip.tv account, the videos will be distributed to this blog (maening an update will be sent to the social networking sties) and my YouTube account (although the videos will be on blip first). And, on top of all this, I am working to add my videos to tivo and roku set-top boxes as well.

Oh, I almost forgot. You wil now see a share/save button at the bottom of every post, making it easy to share this blog with all of your friends!

Isn’t social networking great?

Text-to-speech software is useful in many situations.  Here’s just a small sample of these uses:

• Assist people with dyslexia or other disorders
• Allow a writer to easily proofread his or her work
• Give strained eyes a rest

SayzMe is open source software that is licensed under the BSD license. This means that the software is free (as in speech). The software is free to download, and you can even modify the software under certain conditions if you are a software developer. When SayzMe is running, it watches for changes to your computer’s clipboard. This means that SayzMe can read any text that you can copy. Simply highlight some text, right-click, and click copy. SayzMe will recognize the text and begin to read it.  It will also highlight the words within the SayzMe window as it reads. The pitch and speed at which the voices read is adjustable. By default, only the standard Windows voices can be used. While these voices do not sound natural, you can’t beat the cost. if you would like information on additional voices that SazMe can support (including high-quality commercial voices), click here

F or instructions on how to install and set up SayzMe,  please see the video below:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Overall, SayzMe  is an excellent choice for those who need a  simple text-to-speech program  that won’t break the bank.

technologyisyourfriend.com rating — 5/5

I haven’t posted to my blog for a while now. But, after using android for about a month I thought I’d share a combination of two applications that have made my life easier.

Voice Text ($0.99):

Scan or click this barcode with your android phone to download the application

This application allows the user to use the same speech recognition that is used with Google voice search, and paste the results into any text field. The recognition quality is not that good, but it shows promise. If you have patience, and are willing to work with it, chances are it will produce the correct result. And, if you are like me, you may find this method preferable to the on-screen keyboard when entering quick notes.

After you install voice text, go to the settings application under android device, select locale and text and checkmark the voice text  checkbox. When you want to use voice text, long press on a  text field, select input method, and select voice text. Then, tap the field again (I know, this is annoying and I hope the developer will eliminate the need for this step  in a future release). You will then see a series of buttons in place of your keyboard. Press start, speak slowly, but clearly and wait for the recognition to finish. Tap the field again, and what was once the start button is now the result. If the result is not correct press the undo arrow and try again. If the result is correct, tap the button, and the transcribed text will be pasted into the text field. There are also buttons for punctuation and backspace. This may seem like a lot of extra work for a small amount of text. Give it time, and you may become accustomed to the way voice text operates. Or, you may find that this whole process is still slower than typing on an on-screen keyboard. Use whatever suits you best; either way, it will be an interesting experiment.

Evernote for Android (Beta, free):

If you don’t already know what Evernote is, go to evernote.com and find out. The application is a beta, and is not available on the  android market. Go to the link above to find details on how to download the beta. Fortunately, the application doesn’t even feel like a beta (as of the time of this writing). I use voice text in order to create a quick text note without having to fight the on-screen keyboard and HTC’s sometimes not so helpful word anticipation.

Please let me know what you think of this combination.

I’ve been using MacSpeech Dictate for a few days now,  and I’m starting to get some first impressions.  First, let me give some background. Up until recently, I have been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking by Nuance. I have used Dragon since version 7, so I’m no stranger to speech recognition software. I know how to speak properly, position the microphone, and use the accuracy tools. Because MacSpeech Dictate is built on top of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine, I expected Dictate to work in the same way. I have discovered that the accuracy — for the most part is exactly the same as Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However, there are some annoying differences.

MacSpeech Dictate comes with a USB microphone; however, you have the option of selecting “no microphone”  in the MacSpeech Web store. I had selected the no microphone option because I purchased the noise canceling Bluetooth headset. Dragon NaturallySpeaking supports Bluetooth headsets, so I expected that MacSpeech Dictate would as well.Unfortunately, I learned that dictate only supports noise canceling USB microphones. This means that you can use analog headsets, integrated microphones, or Bluetooth headsets. There is also no dedicated transcription function. My only other main problem was corrected medication errors. For some reason that I still don’t understand, the correction commands for MacSpeech Dictate are different than they are for Dragon NaturallySpeaking which increases the learning curve for those who migrated. When training corrections in the vocabulary, the Senate commands required is cumbersome. Also, the trained words often do not appear when dictating even after training several times. There’ve been reports that upgrading to MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.1 from a previous version results in numerous errors or general instability. Fortunately for me, I purchased 1.5.1 as my first version MacSpeech Dictate, so I don’t experience these problems. Most of these issues should have been fixed many versions ago, as customers  have made many bug reports on the forums.  Hopefully MacSpeech will fix this in future versions. If MacSpeech  does this, they will have a much stronger product.

Another thing that was very annoying to many MacSpeech customers was the fact that to upgrade from 1.3 to 1.5, a customer would have to pay $50. This is an outrageous price tag for a minor version change. As far as I can tell from the 1.5 press release, the only significant changes between those versions is an increase in stability and accuracy; no new features,  no radical changes, just a stability release.

UPDATE: It seems that MacSpeech 1.5 includes a new version of the Dragon engine. This does indeed justify the upgrade price. However, one would think that that fact would be highlighted on the MacSpeech website, or at least noted in the forums, in response to many rants by customers similar to the one above. As for Nuance, they charge for major revisions (i.e 9 to 10) but not for service packs and minor updates. The 1.3 to 1.5 update looked like a non-major release.

Although there are some problems with MacSpeech Dictate, in general, it is an impressive speech recognition application.  It seems to have the same performance and accuracy as Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10. In fact, I had dictated this entire post using the software. I have had to correct only a few mistakes, and those mistakes that I have corrected have been minor. The recognition is accurate and fast. With technologies such as 64-bit support, Grand Central dispatch, and OpenCL  making their debuts in snow leopard, I expect the performance to increase.

Overall, I recommend MacSpeech Dictate if you think that you would use  speech recognition software on a regular basis. However, if you are already a Dragon NaturallySpeaking user, I would not recommend migrating just yet, unless, for some reason, it is imperative that you move to a Mac. There are many things that Dragon does that MacSpeech Dictate does not support, such as transcription, special vocabularies (such as legal and medical), and Bluetooth support. If you use any of these features, I suggest you stick with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Otherwise, Dictate is definitely worth the $200 price tag.

UPDATE 6/18/2009: MacSpeech just released a medical edition!

UPDATE 7/1/2009: MacSpeech just released a legal edition!

Overall rating –4/5.

With many people going off to college around this time of year, I figured one of my first posts  should involve easing the college workload. Here is a list of websites that I use on a regular basis to assist with large projects of any kind:

Google calendar

Google calendar is a must-have for anyone who needs to keep a tight schedule. It can be accessed from a computer Web browser or cell phone. You can even share your calendar with friends or groups to schedule meetings. My favorite feature  is the e-mail notification system; this lets you receive an e-mail  24 hours in advance of an event occurring. This keeps my procrastinating self from turning in assignments late.

Bibme.org

An extremely useful website that generates works cited pages  in many formats like APA and MLA. It can even automatically enter in information from  some websites and newspapers. One cool  feature lets you add the book to your work cited page simply by using the ISBN number. It’s a huge timesaver compared to spending hours looking up formatting rules  in manuals and handbooks.

DimDim

An online meeting website that is free from meetings with up to 20 participants. It features screen sharing, a whiteboard, file sharing, and more. Now, study groups can meet from anywhere.

Google docs

have you ever had to give your paper to multiple people for peer review? If you have, you know how frustrating it can get; you end up with multiple copies of your documents with different or duplicated changes, making it difficult to keep track of what you need to change and who suggested it. If you upload your paper to Google docs on the other hand, it is stores a copy of your paper in a central location so you can share your paper with the group without the hassle.  Say reviewer number one makes an edit, and then reviewer number two looks at the paper. The second reviewer sees the comments and changes made by reviewer one. Then, he or she can make additional edits, or make a comment in the chat room. Google docs also has support for Excel and PowerPoint documents as well.

And what would be a list of web sites for college students without links to some time-wasting websites?

Addictinggames.com

A website full of flash games that are great if you’re bored and have nothing to do.