They say memory is the second thing to go, as you get older … but I forget the first.
However, based on how hard it is getting for me to see at night (and the fact that I now have little flashlights stashed all over the place), my guess is that eyesight is the first thing to go.
It turns out that my vision wasn't as bad as I thought it was; but my choice of lighting was worse than I realized.
In an attempt to be environmentally conscious and have light bulbs that supposedly last longer, I started purchasing these strange curly fluorescent bulbs. My mind told me that they were fine, but my experience proved otherwise.
Recently, I switched to the natural spectrum bulbs from Verilux, and it's like somebody finally turned the light on. Externally, they may look the same, but they make a big difference. I can read again, my eyes don't hurt at the end of the day, and that strange tint on photos or web-cam videos is replaced with a much more natural palette of colors.
Coincidentally, I'm reading a book by Temple Grandin, an autistic woman with insights into how natural surroundings either calm or disturb animals and humans. According to her book, it turns out that one of the primary anxiety triggers is fluorescent lighting and its incessant flickering.
We spend so much time thinking about what we put in our bodies (like organic foods or vitamins), but to feel healthy we also should think about what we surround our body with … and a full natural spectrum of light is a good start.
Another barrier between person and machine is fading … and your voice is the key.
Here is a demo I made showing how Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 turns your talk into typing (or helps you send an e-mail without touching the keyboard). It really is as accurate and easy to use as it looks in this video.
Communicate More Naturally With Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Can you type is quickly as you think? I certainly can't.
How do you think that affects your writing?
Humans can only focus on a few things at a time, and if you're focused on where your fingers are going or whether you've made a mistake, you are using cognitive resources that could have gone into thinking better or communicating more clearly.
It shouldn't come as a big surprise to you that talking is so much more natural than typing. Think how much more practice you get doing it. So, it follows that it's easier to create natural sounding content by transcribing what you say, rather than typing what you think.
With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you get the best of both worlds. It transcribes your voice, and then you have an opportunity to edit it using your voice or the keyboard.
The Whole Process Is Faster … Not Just the Typing.
Because the process is more natural (and less error-prone), something that might take hours to compose on a keyboard can be dictated in a few minutes. More importantly, it will probably sound better and be easier to understand.
How Fast Do You Type? You can check your speed here or here.
I was surprised to learn that my average typing speed is between 40 and 50 words per minute. Dragon NaturallySpeaking clocks in about three times faster than that.
Speech Recognition Is Getting Better All the Time.
The first time I saw someone use speech recognition was in the mid-1990s. As you might suspect, the technology was much cruder than it is today. However, the user had Parkinson's disease. So the hassle of learning to use a pre-cursor to this technology made sense. As an early adopter, I tried it too. But back then, it didn't make sense for me to use it regularly. Fast forward to today, and I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking almost every day. Why? Because it's easier for me than typing.
Nuance has become a leader in this field. In addition to DNS, they've got great applications that work on smart phones, and they also bought the popular service called Jott. I mention it because their massive user-base across these products and services allow Nuance to collect millions of voice samples and customer feedback from around the world. The samples show not only different ways that people pronounce words, but which words are more likely to be spoken, and in what context. Add that to the improvements in microphones, sound cards, processing power, etc. — and the result is a faster and more accurate recognition engine.
Earlier versions of the technology were very dependent on how well you trained it. Now, it works decently out-of-the-box, with virtually no setup or specialized training. As good as it is, I appreciate that Nuance makes it easy for the program to learn my writing style and particular vocabulary. To do this, for example, you can let it look at your sent mail folder or a folder of word processing documents.
Try It Yourself.
If you're a fumble-fingered typist, I highly recommend that you go out and find a copy of this program. However, even if you're a good typist, I recommend that you get a copy because you'll find that you write better and spend more time focusing on what you're going to say … rather than worrying whether you got it down on paper the right way.
Bottom-Line: It's time to give this technology a fresh look. It's ready for prime time, and I think Nuance has a hit.
Another barrier between person and machine is fading … and your voice is the key.
Here is a demo I made showing how Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 turns your talk into typing (or helps you send an e-mail without touching the keyboard). It really is as accurate and easy to use as it looks in this video.
Communicate More Naturally With Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Can you type is quickly as you think? I certainly can't.
How do you think that affects your writing?
Humans can only focus on a few things at a time, and if you're focused on where your fingers are going or whether you've made a mistake, you are using cognitive resources that could have gone into thinking better or communicating more clearly.
It shouldn't come as a big surprise to you that talking is so much more natural than typing. Think how much more practice you get doing it. So, it follows that it's easier to create natural sounding content by transcribing what you say, rather than typing what you think.
With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you get the best of both worlds. It transcribes your voice, and then you have an opportunity to edit it using your voice or the keyboard.
The Whole Process Is Faster … Not Just the Typing.
Because the process is more natural (and less error-prone), something that might take hours to compose on a keyboard can be dictated in a few minutes. More importantly, it will probably sound better and be easier to understand.
How Fast Do You Type? You can check your speed here or here.
I was surprised to learn that my average typing speed is between 40 and 50 words per minute. Dragon NaturallySpeaking clocks in about three times faster than that.
Speech Recognition Is Getting Better All the Time.
The first time I saw someone use speech recognition was in the mid-1990s. As you might suspect, the technology was much cruder than it is today. However, the user had Parkinson's disease. So the hassle of learning to use a pre-cursor to this technology made sense. As an early adopter, I tried it too. But back then, it didn't make sense for me to use it regularly. Fast forward to today, and I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking almost every day. Why? Because it's easier for me than typing.
Nuance has become a leader in this field. In addition to DNS, they've got great applications that work on smart phones, and they also bought the popular service called Jott. I mention it because their massive user-base across these products and services allow Nuance to collect millions of voice samples and customer feedback from around the world. The samples show not only different ways that people pronounce words, but which words are more likely to be spoken, and in what context. Add that to the improvements in microphones, sound cards, processing power, etc. — and the result is a faster and more accurate recognition engine.
Earlier versions of the technology were very dependent on how well you trained it. Now, it works decently out-of-the-box, with virtually no setup or specialized training. As good as it is, I appreciate that Nuance makes it easy for the program to learn my writing style and particular vocabulary. To do this, for example, you can let it look at your sent mail folder or a folder of word processing documents.
Try It Yourself.
If you're a fumble-fingered typist, I highly recommend that you go out and find a copy of this program. However, even if you're a good typist, I recommend that you get a copy because you'll find that you write better and spend more time focusing on what you're going to say … rather than worrying whether you got it down on paper the right way.
Bottom-Line: It's time to give this technology a fresh look. It's ready for prime time, and I think Nuance has a hit.
Your contact database is becoming an increasingly important hub linking your personal, professional, and social life. So it's not fun when that data gets messed-up.
If you are like me, over time, I combined contact records from different sources (e.g., cell phone, Microsoft Outlook, and web-mail accounts). At some point, I ended up with more duplicate records than I wanted to handle manually.
The real issue was that not all the duplicate records were really "duplicates". Some of the information was the same, but other information was different. I wanted something that let me pick and choose what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to merge.
It's not just duplicate records; lots of other things can go wrong too. For example, somehow many of the birthdays in my contacts database got shifted by one day. That meant someone whose birthday was July 27th, didn't show up on my calendar until July 28th. That defeats the purpose of setting birthday reminders, doesn't it? I had an older backup saved on the hard disk; but what about all the additions and changes I made since then?
I have used several versions of this software over time. Contacts Scrubber was already a fine solution to a messy problem; yet it keeps getting better. It handles most things automatically, while still giving you control (when you want it).
I'm happy to say that it worked beautifully. If you ever run into this problem, I suggest you give Contacts Scrubber a try. It might save you a lot of time. Bottom-Line: it is the easiest way I've found to merge & purge and end-up with accurate Outlook 2010 contact records.
Your contact database is becoming an increasingly important hub linking your personal, professional, and social life. So it's not fun when that data gets messed-up.
If you are like me, over time, I combined contact records from different sources (e.g., cell phone, Microsoft Outlook, and web-mail accounts). At some point, I ended up with more duplicate records than I wanted to handle manually.
The real issue was that not all the duplicate records were really "duplicates". Some of the information was the same, but other information was different. I wanted something that let me pick and choose what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to merge.
It's not just duplicate records; lots of other things can go wrong too. For example, somehow many of the birthdays in my contacts database got shifted by one day. That meant someone whose birthday was July 27th, didn't show up on my calendar until July 28th. That defeats the purpose of setting birthday reminders, doesn't it? I had an older backup saved on the hard disk; but what about all the additions and changes I made since then?
I have used several versions of this software over time. Contacts Scrubber was already a fine solution to a messy problem; yet it keeps getting better. It handles most things automatically, while still giving you control (when you want it).
I'm happy to say that it worked beautifully. If you ever run into this problem, I suggest you give Contacts Scrubber a try. It might save you a lot of time. Bottom-Line: it is the easiest way I've found to merge & purge and end-up with accurate Outlook 2010 contact records.
Here is a video that condenses Steve Jobs keynote address at Apple Developer’s Conference from two hours to less than five minutes. All the data, but perhaps not all the magic you’d expect.
Strangely, that sums up the response to the new iPhone 4 product
announcement. Here is a link to a live blog feed from the event. And here is a WSJ video questioning whether the iPhone is becoming a commodity product, rather than a consumer product.
However, based on how hard it is getting for me to see at night (and the fact that I now have little flashlights stashed all over the place), my guess is that eyesight is the first thing to go.
We spend so much time thinking about what we put in our bodies (like organic foods or vitamins), but to feel healthy we also should think about what we surround our body with … and a full natural spectrum of light is a good start.
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