Machine Transcription

This is an interesting subject for me, I have always heard the ads on TV about get trained to enter the field of medical transcription, but I really did not understand what that was about. Have transcribed a few letter and had some of the ins and outs of it explained to me I understand the value of machine transcription.
Machine transcription requires a few basic materials:

• A Recording device
• A Playback device
• A means of controlling the play back (ie. a pedal)
• A device to enter the data on

Machine transcription works like this:

1. A person dictates what they want to have transcribed into the recording device
   
• They use keywords to indicate where new paragraphs begin such as "new paragraph" also names are spelled out so there is no confusion.
2. A person sits at a computer or typewriter and listens to the recorded dictation with a means of easily rewinding and fast-forwarding the recorded dictation. Then they type the letter (or other materials), fix grammar errors and other suitable changes to the material transcription is not verbatim.

After doing a few letters myself I was in the groove and ready to transcribe volumes.

Here is a link to a youtube video of an old transcription machine

I don't know that I am looking for a career in transcription but I am very glad to have this skill.
I think it is worth know, and not yet out-dated by technologies like speech recognition, maybe next year?

Zire Handheld

This picture was taken with the Zire handheld. I think it is useful to have a camera attached to a handheld. You can use the camera for many business and personal tasks. I enjoyed using the Zire handheld very much, but the image clarity leaves something to be desired. The main feature that sets it apart from a smart phone is that you can view and edit MS Word documents. I liked the keyboard to, it allow a much greater degree of productivity. It was like a tiny computer. However even if I ice the budget I would not buy one, at this time if I can't do something on my phone I will use my laptop. The main reason is that I don't want to carry a bunch of devices on my person, I want one device that does everything, the Zire handheld is not that device. It does not allow me to make calls or send e-mail.

Where clouds come from

This is the source of most of the clouds you see around Maryville and it's surrounding areas.

Dragon Naturally Speaking

I began using Speech recognition software in 1999, at that time I was only somewhat impressed with its capabilities, each command and word had to be entered and trained. Today Dragon Naturally speeking recognizes thousands of words after a few show training sessions where you read preselected text. Also you can export your user file to a USB dribe or a network drive and use it on any computer that has Dragon Naturally speeking.

I very much enjoy this software, I use it to write papers for school and prepare other personal documents. Now when I create a document the only thing that is only limit is how fast I can think. This has dramatically changed the way I use computers, even if I am not preparing a document I still use DNS to launch programs, click buttons on web pages, and close windows. I am amazed by how far speech recognition software has come and look forward to the future to see what improvements on input methods that will be made.

#1 Dragon Fan

Jared