Dragon dictation app or how to make your life easier...

During one of our English classes a few weeks ago we were introduced to a free text-to-speech app called Dragon Dictation. We were asked to try it out if we have smartphones. Later we should write a blog post about our experiences with it.

I completely forgot about it this till last week. Getting ready for my linguistics exam on Thursday I somehow needed to summarize everything we have been doing this semester. Since my notes were in English I remembered Dragon dictation. I downloaded the app and started talking with it. At first my roomie wasn’t sure about what I was doing. Sure, my iPhone has Siri (a really great friend of mine ;)) but I honestly don’t talk that much to her. Don’t get me wrong, she can be really helpful but she can also make one laugh with her wrong answers. Once me and my friend were joking around and said to her: “I am going to jump of a bridge!“ and everything she did was answer: “This bridge is little ways from you...“ and gave me a map of the nearest bridge. Well thanks a lot Siri. You cannot imagine the amount of tears that were rolling down my cheeks after I read her answer. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Anyways, back to Dragon dictation. After my roomie gave me the are-you-crazy look I explained to her what it is about. She actually thought it is a cool app and wanted to try it out with me. The recording part was easy and also figuring out how to send the text via SMS or e-mail, put it in your notes or even publish it on Twitter and Facebook. Learning how to get it to capitalize and punctuate the text was a little harder but we got it in the end. My notes were summarized really quickly that way. Typing it on my laptop, even though I am fast typer, would have taken ages.

After doing some research about the app itself I found out that it is available in some other languages too, like Croatian for instance. It is really a helpful app and I am still very surprised by the speed and some other characteristic it contains. It’s definitely worth a shot. They don’t call the smartphones smart without a reason ;)

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something" Thomas Huxley

XOXO A.