Lubetkin.net

CompuSchmooze March 2007: A Potpourri of Web Activities
By Steven L. Lubetkin
Copyright © 2007 Steven L. Lubetkin. All rights reserved.
WORD COUNT: 589

A new version of a familiar product, a new survey about teenagers and social networking web usage, and an interesting but oddly named new add-on for Microsoft Outlook kept us busy this month.

Version 9 of Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) was released recently. It's a voice recognition software package that lets you speak into your computer and have the computer convert the voice into text.

"Speech is one of those technologies whose promise has been great for many years, but the delivery on that promise hasn't always been to expectations," said Chris Stromiello of Nuance , the manufacturer. "We've been able to drive accuracy levels far beyond where they've been before."

And that's actually true. One of the biggest turn-offs of voice recognition software has been the need to "train" the software to recognize a user's voice patterns. You had to read lengthy passages into the computer and then wait for up to an hour while the software created a voice profile. Training still makes recognition accuracy better, but DNS9 works very well, recognizing even odd words like my last name right out of the box.

DNS also works with portable digital recording devices, so you can dictate on the road. You transfer the audio file to the computer, Dragon transcribes it.

The most popular use for Dragon is for long documents, but people are also using it to dictate email messages very quickly, Stromiello said. Since we can speak about 160 words a minute, and most people can only type about 40-60 words a minute accurately, the time savings can be enormous, he said.

If you were wondering about your teenagers and those social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook , it's more like their school lockers than the wild West, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Pew released a new tracking study about teenagers, noting that more than half of all online youths aged 12-17 are using social networking websites, but also indicating that they more likely to use social networking sites to reinforce existing friendships, not to meet new people.

"One of the fascinating things about social networking websites is they are viewed as a very chaotic place where teenagers are changing their profiles, the photos, and so on, but they are also providing a source of stability in their lives, and this gives them a way, particularly in that crossover period between high school and college, to maintain contact with their friends," said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The teenagers in the survey overwhelmingly (88%) said they would not use social networking websites to meet new people or flirt. You can read the study at the Pew Internet website .

Finally, if you are a power networker and use Microsoft Outlook to collect your networking contact information, a new add-on program lets you analyze the value of your network.

It's called Cortege – sort of a strange name, since a cortege is a procession, usually at a funeral. But the program, from Personal Software, builds graphical trees of your network based on the individuals in your Outlook contact folders. You cam record detailed information about each individual, including how you met them, who referred you to them, and link them together to build a visual model of your circle of friends and colleagues. The program also will link people at the same company or in common categories. If you're in sales or consulting and you need to network, it's worth checking out, at www.personal-software.com.

# # # #