iPhone Apps: Dragon Dictation

I like the iPhone, but trying to type long emails, texts, or novels on it is amazingly irritating.  Between the screen not registering your finger, having to hold down a letter to put an accent mark over it, or auto-correct flavoring your text it can be a major pain to use.  Is Dragon Dictation the app that will end having to go back and edit what you are trying to say before you click send?

In a word, No.  

In a short sentence that may seem like an insult: You talk funny.  

In a paragraph:  Dragon Dictation works well once you train yourself to use it.  Everyone says different words differently, and the software is not smart enough to discover your pronunciation oddities.  You must speak slowly and carefully for it to understand you, and even then it will most likely pick up some words incorrectly.  When we first started using the software, it was entertaining to see just how badly it would mangle what you are saying.

Once you get used to talking to it, it is much faster to record lengthy messages using it then by pecking at the touchscreen and hoping for doesn't get auto-corrected to fir again.  (I guess that's useful if you work with certain species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae.  Most of us probably use the word "for" more often.  Anyways)  

The software launches to a large red button which you tap to start recording.  In the screenshot to the right, the app recognized me saying record and printed it.  From here I can click the red button on the bottom to record more, the keyboard button to edit the recording with the keyboard, or the far right button to open up the paste to menu shown.  Clicking one of the destination buttons will open up the associated application, where you can double tap to get the paste dialog.  Pretty simple and easy to use.

One more feature that is not initially obvious is that you can click on words that it recorded to select other words that sound the same.  So if it hears "load" but you said "little", you might be able to swap the word without typing on the keyboard.

Pros:

• This application is free!
• Eventually it can be a big time saver

Cons:

• Most people will have to learn to speak to it differently to get it to work.
• It cannot recognize every word yet.
• It clears anything you record if you exit the application.

Final Thoughts:

This application is free and has a simple and effective interface.  The app saves you time, so according to that time equals money formula, this is free money.  Its actually nowhere near as good as free money, but it is worth trying for free.