hands on 2002
ViaVoice for Mac OS X
Michael Vallance

The Director of the famous MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, informs us that the trend of IT miniaturisation will drive the improvement of speech as the dominant human-computer interface. You can now get a head start on your Mac with IBM’s speech recognition software, ViaVoice for OS X. Using ViaVoice commands, some of which are exemplified in caps below, you simply dictate directly to your Mac. Let’s begin.

“DICTATE TO SPEAKPAD. Setting up ViaVoice was a breeze PERIOD. After testing my microphone connection COMMA, I had to slowly and clearly dictate a selected story PERIOD. I could choose between American or British English COMMA, and ViaVoice consequently analyzed my voice PERIOD. In fact COMMA, there is a researcher in Australia working on variations of English speech recognition for the Mac COMMA, including Singlish EXCLAMATION MARK! BEGIN READING.”



ViaVoice’s additional text-to-speech function reads aloud the dictated sentences. I always select Victoria as the default voice (go to System Preferences and Speech in OS X) as she has been with me since my first Mac Classic in 1993. Only now has Windows XP, and Comfort taxis for that matter, cottoned on to computer-speak, for better or worse. Let’s continue.

“SELECT ALL. COPY THIS. LAUNCH APPLEWORKS. PASTE THIS.” The text now appears in AppleWorks. Alternatively, text can be transferred to Microsoft Word, Apple Mail or Outlook Express where dictating can be continued; although I found this slower than SpeakPad.
The document can also be formatted while dictating: italicise, bold, new paragraph, delete, correct and many more.



“SURF THE WEB”. Internet Explorer opens. “JUMP TO MACTOPIA.” This is Microsoft’s Mac Web site at www.mactopia.com. Any Website can be assigned to be accessible by voice recognition. Simply say GO BACK or GO FORWARD to navigate.
ViaVoice for OSX has made significant improvements over its previous versions with a150,000 word vocabulary, an ability to deal with numbers, dates, money, proper nouns and much more. But don’t trash your keyboard or fire your loyal secretary just yet. ViaVoice is not completely hands-free. Sending mail, previewing print documents and other commands still require a keyboard.



Moreover, to use ViaVoice effectively you will need to enunciate clearly and speak slowly, thereby negating all those prosodic features of natural speech such as linking, intonation and dropping sounds that make English such fun to learn. With practice, however, your Mac will assimilate your voice and you can gradually speed up.

My English-studying Chinese students, for example, are currently using ViaVoice for individual sound and short sentence practice. Like them, if you are ready to invest time in training your Mac for speech-to-text then ViaVoice is an exemplary companion.
“SAVE THIS. QUIT VIAVOICE.” Goodnight, Victoria.

Details
System requirements: Mac OS X version 10.1
300 MHz G3 processor or higher
192 MB RAM (256 RAM recommended)
600 MB of available hard drive space
USB port
Audio output jack or USB speakers
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Price: $409
Available: Funan Centre

Michael Vallance is from the Mac Users Group of Singapore. Its website is at www.macuser.org.sg