How to Speak so Your PC Will Listen

At Macworld, a selection of voice-input tools power programs while your
fingers rest. 

by Alexandra Krasne, PC World 
January 6, 2000, 1:54 p.m. PT 

MacSpeech is pairing with Philips to implement versions of the Philips
FreeSpeech 2000 voice-recognition program on the Macintosh. MacSpeech also is
adding support for more than 20 applications for its speech recognition
freeware, ListenDo 1.1. And IBM ventured onto Mac turf, demonstrating its
ViaVoice voice-recognition program for both the Macintosh and Windows
platforms.  

Philips, MacSpeech Converse

Staff at the MacSpeech booth are demonstrating an alpha version of iDictate,
based on the Philips FreeSpeech 2000 engine. With this application, you
simply don a headset and speak into it and, after a five-second pause, your
words appear on the screen. MacSpeech expects to ship iDictate mid-year,
priced between $99 and $149.  

The next-level product using Philips' technology is iListen, which supports
editing, formatting, and simple speech navigation as well as dictation.
You'll be able to dictate text, edit it, and format it by voice, say
MacSpeech officials. The software will even let you use your voice to create
a text macro.  

MacSpeech is adding application support to its own ListenDo software. It
introduced more than 20 new ScriptPacks, which are plug-ins that convert your
spoken words into software commands. The packs are available for a broad
range of applications, including Adobe Acrobat Reader, America Online, Corel
WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and Powerpoint, as well as common browsers and
mail programs.  

A ScriptPack for AppleWorks comes with ListenDo 1.1, which is a free download
from the MacSpeech Web site. Additional packs range in price from $10 to $40
each. You can also create your own text macros that type up to 32,000
characters of text with one spoken command, according to MacSpeech officials.  

http://www.macspeech.com/
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/speech/
http://www.speech.philips.com/