Why type when you can speak at myLot?
@lordwarwizard (35747)
Singapore
March 4, 2007 3:26pm CST
Yesterday while I was lying on bed thinking about my heavy-duty commitment at myLot, I realise that I have been making fewer posts of late - partly because my typing speed has dropped (probably due to fatigue :p).
After hitting the keyboard non-stop like a man who has lost his mind, it suddenly occurred to me a possibility. What if I don't need to type so hard? What if I can just SPEAK and have my speech rendered into text automatically?
I know speech recognition is not really a new technology so I quickly tried searching on the web. I came across this really neat program at http://web.telia.com/~u85342902/respondingheads.htm . It's called "Responding Heads" (free) and I almost can't bear to uninstall it - because it was so fun and funny once I figured how to work it.
But I faced some difficulties while trying to implement it at myLot. First off, it performs text to speech conversion well enough. If you don't mind the droning of the voice, it can read your selected text fine. But I don't want text to speech - what I need is speech to text. For this, I have to edit the "brain" of the avatar in the program which I soon realise is impossible.
I can't find any text file in the program directory for me to do quick modification. Instead, I have to rely on their own program window. But even if I want to store the 500 most common English words only, it would still mean that I have to perform the series of steps 500 times. I know it might sound crazy, but I was seriously considering that. (You will understand it if you start playing with this cute program too.)
But if that was the only program, then I probably wouldn't post about it. Another issue was that it wasn't smart enough. E.g. I might command it to type the word "apple". I would say "Sam listen. Type apple". Then it will dutifully type "apple" in the text field. Let's assume I have another command "type orange" stored. If I asked it to type either word, it will do fine.
But let's try this: "Sam listen. Type apple orange". It will only type "apple" because as far as it is concerned, the command "type apple" has been received and executed. The "orange" is just an unrecognised command. So do you see our predicament now? :/
So my question is: does anyone know of any free program for this purpose? Note that I am asking for speech to text conversion - not the other way round. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks! ;-)
10 people like this
28 responses
@paradisesuns (1755)
• United States
5 Mar 07
This is interesting I have heard of it before but never tried it.Does it take up alot of space when you download it? Does it have an uninstall that comes with it, so if you have to uninstall it you can?It sounds like fun! :)
3 people like this
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
6 Mar 07
If you mean the responding head program, it's quite small - only 8 mb if I remember correctly. It has an uninstall and no spyware. I uninstalled mine already. It's fun.. true... but not what I was looking for.
If you have some time to kill, go download and play with it. It's cute! :P
2 people like this
@1grnthmb (2055)
• United States
5 Mar 07
I tried a couple of different speach recognition programs a couple of years ago and was not very happy with them. It took many hours to get the programs to recognize my voice and then it still made a lot of errors. The biggest problem was that there were some words that it never got used to and I always had to correct the same things over and over.
3 people like this
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
6 Mar 07
I don't mind spending some time to train the program. But I need the program to train with first. :P
2 people like this
@hockeygal4ever (10021)
• United States
5 Mar 07
I love keeping my typing skills up to snuff with using the MyLot discussions. I can type over 100 wpm so I generally don't worry about what's "faster". I didn't actually know there were any voice programs for free out there to be honest! Maybe you could find one to purchase cheaply on craigslist.com or something? Or even ebay or half.com?
Good luck!
3 people like this
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
5 Mar 07
Wow, no kidding? 100wpm is like WOW!!
2 people like this
@charms88 (7538)
• Philippines
5 Mar 07
That does sound interesting. But I still prefer typing over those stuff you're saying. When I post a discussion, I need to reread and re-type some words. And I always make sure to analyze what the discussion is all about. Besides, I was born with a serious defect on my right ear. I might give out a response that's totally out of the range of the discussion.
@margieanneart (26423)
• United States
5 Mar 07
I don't know of any free program, or money making program that would do this. Sorry, wish I could help you. Interesting post. I'm rating you a + for it.
3 people like this
@milott (2646)
• India
5 Mar 07
Even though speech recognition is a very useful and good tool for use but it is still in its early stages because of various issues it has to face. It need to recognize a particular voice and accent for some time and for that we need to train it for some days. There are some issues of soundalikes like right/wright , etc which needed to sorted out before it becomes usable. The one software which is very famous in speech recognitin is Dragon software but i don't think it is free.
@kathy77 (7486)
• Australia
4 Mar 07
Oh that would be great but I do think that we get paid by what we have typed here in our responses and for our time, oh what a waste of time this would cause the web site that you found, There was a site but sorry I cannot recall the name right now.
3 people like this
@Denmarkguy (1845)
• United States
5 Mar 07
I have tried voice recognition software once-- that is, I "played around" with it a bit, because a friend of mine with a physical handicap has some, to help him with computer tasks. It is still not very popular because there are lots of problems that haven't been resolved. Most of them have to do with recognizing words that are close to each other in sound-- and then the fact that you will end up having to go back and change all the mistakes. One way is spell out words the computer doesn't recognize or get right-- but then you end up not really saving time. Also, it takes practice to talk the way we write... speech is full of breaks and "changing our mind."
From how I understand it, there are some software packages that work quite well because they "teach themselves" the tone of your voice, and the way you pronounce different words-- they are also VERY expensive. There are also inexpensive programs, but they don't work well-- so you don't really "save" anything.
3 people like this
@HassanKhalid (284)
• Pakistan
5 Mar 07
When i read this discuessions topic i was confused and thats why i am replying this post well its cool but i dont know how to use it ,
@serena_wai (970)
• Malaysia
24 Jun 07
I think the most hardworking part of my body is my 10 fingers. They type diligently for me every day and night. If i switched to speech to text conversion, my whole body was not doing exercise anymore.
To me, typing is my most active exercise. Ha ha.
2 people like this
@annettenasser (2992)
• Kuwait
5 Mar 07
thats sounds nice but i think you will need time to figure it out, any way i will be happy to try it when your are done with it, as of now i will still be happy for what mylot has to give,,,its a nice site what else we could ask..
2 people like this
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
5 Mar 07
I still can't find a suitable software for this... :/
1 person likes this
@trinidadvelasco (11401)
• Philippines
8 Mar 07
I will surely avail of that type of program, speech to text. That will eliminate the hassles of typing. It will surely be a relief ot be rid of those typographical errors and omissions I commonly commit. Nice try, but I am sorry to tell you that neither do I know of any program which operates that way.
@amitksing (1323)
• India
16 Mar 07
I have already tried this software that converts speech into text. It sounds good to be able to do so, but it is too much annoying to be done. One needs to prepare a library of large no of words, each by speaking and recording. This trually is very heteric work and a person like me will hate doing so. Probably this is the reason why voice to text application didn't get too much popularity as it should have got when we think about its usefulness!
2 people like this
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
16 Mar 07
You mean this responding heads thingy I mentioned? Yes it was fun and I had a good laugh that night.. before I uninstalled it. It's just insufficient for my needs.
I need a dictation software that has speech to text capability inbuilt.
1 person likes this
@hora_fugit (5862)
• India
8 Mar 07
Typing makes me feel I'm working hard to earn money here LOL but I was searching for some speech to text programme just for fun, I mean I love having these facilities. We had some good programme (which took long to understand our accent) before our computer crashed. I think my elder brother still knows where to get it, but he is so far away in another city..... busy enough:(
2 people like this
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
8 Mar 07
If you come across any free software that I can use, would be great if you can pm me! ;-)
1 person likes this
@er_saurabhgupta1986 (88)
• Saudi Arabia
5 Mar 07
Thats a great idea but such kinds of software requires great hands at communication skills and a person from asian country is not too good at these. However I was really impressed with the idea and will give it a try may be it will help me a great deal. Lastly I would say that there are great many other such programs on the Internet just give it a search at download.com and you will come across it. Moreover windows also has a speech rocoginition software which you can use.
2 people like this
