EVEN for a confirmed technophobe, it could hardly be easier. No sooner has this app been downloaded but it’s demanding to be used, with the screen of my iPhone asking to be tapped.
And so the dictation begins.
This is the free Dragon Dictation app and it’s available also at least for the iPad.
And when I am done talking and tap the screen to end the recording, there are then several options. Because the words that have just been spoken are now text on a screen.
One is to use the on-screen keyboard to make changes to the copy, there and then.
Another is to forward the raw text as an email, say to myself, to work on, using my laptop.
Twitter, Facebook and SMS also all beckon, as alternatives.
As with all ‘kit’, it is good advice to test it well ahead of having to use it for real.
An interview with my daughter – who spoke quickly and hesitantly – resulted in text that bore little comparison to the original.
But my clear, steady reading of the first two paragraphs of James Naughtie’s ‘Rivals’ proved a good deal more encouraging.
The dictation: No peer of politicians in our modern history has wielded so much power together as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the met when the Labour party was weak and writing an agony and then single-mindedly with the help of the accidents that often shape politics they were able to create a single political personality for the party and themselves that dominated the fears of the country at the end of the century we have seen nothing like it before.
The original: No pair of politicians in our modern history has wielded so much power together as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They met when the Labour Party was weak and writhing in agony and then single-mindedly, with the help of the accidents that often shape politics, they were able to create a single political personality for their party and themselves that dominated the affairs of the country at the end of the century. We have seen nothing like it before.
Conclusion? Probably a risk hoping it might convert a face-to-face interview into several word-perfect pages (though no harm in giving it a go, with another recording device to provide back-up), but certainly good for converting one’s own thoughts into workable text.
I don’t know, does it begin to recognise your accent?
