I’ve been using voice recognition software for about eight years now, and generally I think it is superb technology which is a massive improvement in productivity, and a great saver of fingers. However, there are times when it just gets things badly wrong, and I want to scream.
A few weeks ago, I’m sure I tried to programme it to use the F-word (there is another major irritation, it doesn’t recognise the proper English spelling of the word programme — well, it bloody well should now, I’ve just deleted the American program from the dictionary, so no more I hope — the programme pogrom is complete! Now I really can get with the programme, and continue where I left off, sorry….)
So anyway, where was I? Generally, as I was saying, Dragon voice recognition is an excellent piece of kit, but when it gets it wrong, it has a habit of still getting it wrong even after multiple attempts to correct. This can lead to more and more frustration very quickly. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen too often — if it did, there would be a lot of broken computer parts scattered around this office, and I would never be able to produce the kind of Glorious verbiage that keeps me going — (maybe some would say that’s a good thing).
Naturally, as I run a travel website, I use place names a great deal, and it is often surprising how well it gets them — let’s see — Abuja (spot-on), Windhoek (okay, that was a curveball, it got that as an intro), Trivandrum (no problem), Pago Pago (page okay go) — okay, I’m deliberately picking out difficult places from around the world, my frustration is that popular European cities like Zürich often cause a problem (of course it got its perfectly this time), but particularly this evening, I had to try about five times for it to get Bilbao right, and even though I tried to use it again within pretty much the same sentence, it still got it wrong, and did not offer it in the list of corrections. Maybe you’d have to understand voice recognition software to understand the frustrations it causes — Dragon is supposed to save you from the strains of having to type too much, but when it isn’t getting things right, it ends up being more trouble than it’s worth. So, I wanted to use the F-word to swear at it, but for some reason my last attempt to add said F-word had failed. Anyway, now that I’ve said my piece, I don’t feel such an urgent need to swear any more, but needless to say I have just checked that the F-word is still there in the vocabulary, it no longer comes up as park (nice green imagery, maybe this thing is way cleverer than I ever thought possible) and it is working just fine.
Goodnight!
