Speech Recognition Software for Blogging?

I had put DragonSpeak on my to-buy list a long time ago, but never did. Then last week, I discovered the voice recognition software I guess Microsoft put on my Acer Aspire 5100 laptop. Tried it, and OMG, it’s fabulous! I learned it, and it learned to recognize my speech and pronunciations in less than three hours — almost perfectly. I did, however, turn on my Radio Robin best voice for the job, as it suggested.

Now I am totally hands free in everything I do on my computer, including dictating all my articles instead of typing them. I am simply blown away by this!

Since I’m new to this, tell me… How are you using this? Any tips? Best way to get your mind reprogrammed to write out loud, instead of with your fingers?

@atlantarobin is this it?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Use-Speech-Recognition-to-operate-windows-and-programs

When setting up your own voice, it does take a little time and effort, as does anything worthwhile, in the long run. Robin probably had hers working in record time! Good job Robin! Voice recognition can be hard to handle for some folks. I’ve never set mine up though, but have heard plenty, most of which were complaints. It’s good to hear a success story for a change.
A tad off topic — 
From Text to Sound – Readers:The newer software (and there is actually lots of it out there) is really good. You do have to pay for voices, if you’re looking for a reader, though with most programs.

I have an author (client) who has his books and stories put into an MP3 format and sells those along with the books. Pretty nifty actually. He uploads the document and the software reads it into an audio format. A little different than what we are talking about here but cool beans, nevertheless. I suppose I should make this a different thread, eh?

@glengorham That’s it, Glen, but the easiest way to find this on your computer, at least it was for me, was…

Go to Start. In the search box, type in Speech Recognition or Speech Recognition Options. After I set up the wizard under Speech Recognition, I now go to Speech Recognition Options to turn it back on or off, train my computer a little more on my pronunciations, etc.

I left it on and running so it was always on and I was hands-free from the moment I hit the on button on my computer, but after my computer crashed after an Adobe Reader update, I now turn it on after I start. After all, there are some things you just need to do hands-on, especially when you don’t yet know all the voice commands by heart.

I will say this… it’s much easier teaching your computer to understand you than it is remembering the commands. The more you do it, however, the easier it is. And then you get used to telling your computer to open up the voice command center when you need to go find a new command, so I’d say once you start using this, you’re really going to get hooked.

Let me also say that I DID use my best Radio Robin voice and that I have had voice and diction training and radio experience that helps me turn on and turn off my very drawling Southern accent. So I can see that this would be harder for those who have a distinct regional accent. But that would only mean you need to train your computer more, so the time you take “reading to your computer” on their training modules will help speed up the process and improve the computer’s accuracy in dictating your speech, even if you slur and run all your speech together. It will take more time training your computer, but it will still work.

All in all, though, this has been a total win for me!

@glengorham - I actually don’t have recommendations and here’s why. I think most of the programs work pretty good and most of them have either a free version or a free trial version.  Where the money comes in is when you buy “voices.”  One author wanted a voice with an english (UK) accent, and you can buy that type of voice.  French accent or regular American english too.  Lot’s of choices of voices to choose from.  I’ll ask the one client which one he’s using now.  
For awhile I had text to speech on one of the laptops here and we played with it. It worked great but the voice was uh, clipped, like a robotic voice and if you wanted another voice, I think the better (supposedly much better) voices were $49.95 a pop.  Not expensive, but if you wanted a library of voices, it could run into some money pretty fast.  Voices with ‘inflection’ for dramatic flair were available also; for a fee too.
Hope this helps.

@Robin Carlisle

Hiya Robin

At this page link — free fantasy fiction story — you can either listen to or download an MP3 where text to speech software was used. You can also choose the speed of the voice (depending on which software package you use, I think) so it can go read slower or faster.

Does this help?

@ Robin Carlisle

I finally remembered to ask my client (meeting today!) about the software he used for the MP3 output I mentioned before at the Maven the Raven website.  

THIS is the software he used to transcribe the text to voice:http://download.cnet.com/Balabolka/3000-7239_4-75182534.html

The VOICE however, he purchased here >>>  http://www.ivona.com/en/ — Then plugged the voice into the Balabolka software.  I think the download at cNet is free but the voice you choose at Ivona you have to pay for. 

He did tell me it was easy-peasy.  He’s a novice so if he could do it, surely we can too. Heh.

I’ve had a note to find this out, and FINALLY did.