Oct 312011
Oct 262011
As a former long-time user of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, I was eager to see if Dragon Dictation would include the same command syntax. Largely, it has. Here are some tips and a quick reference guide to some of the helpful things you can say during your dictation.
FORMATTING:
Cap to capitalize a word: ‘I was shopping at cap Target”
Caps On for titles: “I was reading caps on The Washington Post”
All Caps to capitalize the next word: “Can we go now all caps PLEASE”
All Caps On and All Caps Off are Caps Lock: “This is all caps on NOT A JOKE all caps off so stop playing”
No Caps, No Caps On, and No Caps Off are the exact opposite of the above: “I like Amy and no caps amy”
Space Bar not only inserts a space, but can be used to prevent a hyphen in normally hyphenated words: ‘A long-lasting or long space bar lasting peace. ‘
No Space for words you want together: ‘Surf on the World no space Wide no space Web ‘
No Space On & No Space Off for words you want together: ‘I was running no space on reallyreallyfast no space off the entire time ‘
New Line starts the following text on a new line, and New Paragraph begins a new paragraph (effectively 1 and 2 carriage returns, respectively).
PUNCTUATION, SYMBOLS, OTHER TIPS:
Say punctuation: period comma apostrophe open-parenthesis close-parenthesis asterisk open quote close quote. Note that you do not need to say apostrophe for possessive names such as ‘Joe ‘s ‘.
There is a difference between a hyphen — like this — and a dash-like this. Similarly, point (in numbers) and period have spacing differences.
Special symbols “ note that many of these will automatically be placed in context, such as the dollar, cent, degree, percent, and at signs:
- % – percent sign
- “ copyright sign
- ® – registered sign
- – section sign
- $ – dollar sign
- “ cent sign
- – degree sign
- ^ – caret
- @ – at sign
- “ pound sterling sign
- # “ pound sign
Note: You must use cent sign explicitly. Saying ‘The price is fifty three cents ‘ will yield ‘The price is $.53 ‘. Say ‘The price is fifty three cent sign ‘.
Email addresses should generally be prefaced with no caps on; most common domains (such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc) are recognized, but you may have to spell others.
Saying ‘www ‘ will result in the formatting of a URL: ‘isource.com/ ‘. Oddly, unlike the desktop version, saying ‘http ‘ does not do the same thing in my testing. I got ‘HDTV ‘ instead.
Hopefully this quick reference will help you make the most of Dragon Dictation. Happy dictating!
via isource.com
I’m starting to use Dragon Dictation more and more on the iPad. It is amazingly adept at sending a quick email, but I was starting to get a little frustrated that all of my text was in one big paragraph and I would spend almost as much time making it look like a proper message as it would have taken me to just type it in the first place.
I did a quick search to just find out how to add lines between my text, and found this great quick-reference on the dictation commands that will work with the app. Not only can you make new lines and paragraphs, but you have complete control over the capitalization, adding punctuation, and more.
I happily dictated an email last night, commanding ‘New Paragraph’ where I wanted one. The only change that I needed to make was to the spelling of the name of the recipient, and the message went quickly on its way. 😀
Oct 192011
Oct 142011
Oct 142011
View the presentation here, complete with all of the links!
Oct 142011
How is Google Docs different than Word or whatever else you have used before?
If the above video space is blank, you can watch it here.
or you can view the presentation here.
Oct 132011
Download the PDF of the presentation above – all of the links mentioned in the presentation are active!
Oct 132011
Oct 112011
If you've ever thought about buying the Splashtop Remote app for your iPad, today should be the day!??
The price is normally between $15 and $20, but it is on sale for a limited time for only $1.99! The server program that runs on the computers that you'd like to view/control is and has always been free, so this should be a no-brainer buy.
This is probably the best app that I've used for interacting with my laptop remotely from the iPad. Works great over wireless, and is very responsive.??
You can't go wrong for $1.99 – give it a try!
Oct 112011
A great technology teacher that I work with all of the time asked me a seemingly simple question in an email yesterday…
Well…. It looks like??mobile editing of Google Docs without an app??is coming, but we are certainly not there yet. I've had pretty good luck with??Office2 HD,??GoDocs??is another solution out there, but I have not tried it at all."Best app to use Google docs and presentations on IPad? Am I asking for trouble trying to create presentations on IPad?"
I found a nice simple text editor the other day, called??TextWriter??that will let you email documents to and from the iPad, and there are many other??great writing apps??that will work with Dropbox synching.
The good news is that today is Tuesday, October 11, which makes tomorrow October 12, which makes that the day that iOS 5 comes out – complete??with the iCloud and document syncing. In which case I might not really try to mess with Google Docs or Dropbox and instead try to use the document syncing features that Apple will provide.??
Keynote??is an amazing app on the iPad, and is great for not only viewing and presenting slide shows, but also is great for making them on the device. And??Pages??is probably the best document editor and page layout program on the iPad. I know that the two are a little pricey, but I think that they are worth the price of admission.??
If you don't want to go that route, soon the document syncing will be built in to many apps on the iPad, and the need to keep a document in Google Docs will be alleviated.??
Maybe this is too many options, but that's my job, isn't it??? If I have to choose one today to??recommend??for Google Docs, it'd be??Office2 HD.??
But, who knows what tomorrow will bring? 😉