Less typing speaks volumes
The Age
Thursday March 31, 2011
Dictation tools help to bring the spouse up to speed. WHEN the Bleeding Edge spouse discovered her productivity was being severely undermined by having to write several daily reports rather than do the sorts of things that are key to the survival of a small business like marketing and analysis your humble columnist started seeking solutions.We've always found the threat of possible monetary loss is a huge incentive in these matters and, as always, we looked for answers in technology.Our first initiative was to install a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition on a little red Toshiba Portege notebook, connect a headset and a PureAudio USB soundcard to improve the voice recognition and introduce the spoken commands and dictation that we were sure would dramatically increase "typing" speed.We discovered quickly there are some people who are not temperamentally suited to voice recognition.One can waste an awful lot of time trying to convince these people that voice recognition is wonderful and our experience suggests it's best to accept defeat as gracefully as possible.Our second attempt involved a digital recorder. We knew we had to be particularly careful about how we introduced the machine.We had tried previously to demonstrate how the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder could be used to "tape" lectures.It's a particularly clever device, with high-quality stereo recording heads on both the front and rear of the machine, allowing the recording of a speaker and questions from the audience.Unfortunately, the H2 is driven by a menu and a toggle key, which require the sort of patience and persistence with which the Bleeding Edge spouse is immensely blessed ... but not when dealing with technology.In no time at all, we found ourselves being called on to start the recorder, stop the recorder, transfer the files from the SD memory card to the PC via a USB cable, edit them and burn them to CDs.The workload had been transferred from her to us.We are particularly slow learners but having been caught like this on many more occasions than we like to recall, we were determined this time to find a solution that would leave the monkey firmly on the spouse's back. This time we showed her the Zoom H1, which we wrote about last year. There's something about the sheer size of the H1 easily grasped in one hand and the clever layout of the controls that allow complete control of recording without having to access a menu, which gives it great appeal.While it does have one potentially irritating deficiency when you push the pause button, it starts a new file rather than actually pausing the recording it wasn't a deal breaker for the spouse. Within a matter of minutes she was in love with the H1.That left us with the issue of transcribing the files.Fortunately, the spouse's personal assistant, Emma, is a fine typist who is inspired, rather than defeated, by technology.We invested in a good transcription system, like the one we use to transcribe long interviews. First we bought another licence for Transcription Buddy ($39.95), from highcriteria.com. The same company also offers Dictation Buddy ($49.95), which adds the ability to record dictation.They give you a complete range of playback controls for audio transcription of audio files, including proprietary formats such as Olympus DSS and Truespeech, while allowing your word processor to remain the active program.You can control both programs using hot keys (instructions at bit.ly/eVPcAi) but they are also compatible with the vPedal, developed by Melbourne's Evan Kelly (vpedal.com), which allows you to control the recording with your feet and speeds things up considerably.The vPedal plugs into a games/serial port ($60) or USB socket ($75) and works with PCs and Macs. It has plug-ins for most of the industry-standard media players and can also be used to send keyboard commands to any Windows application.Email feedback to cwright@theage.com.au.
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