Blackberry Voice Recogition
A couple weeks ago, I was heading to Iowa City. A new Blackberry owner, I couldn’t resist Google Chatting on the drive there. Since I don’t typically enjoy putting hundreds of other drivers’ and my lives at risk, the idea of voice-recognition on the Blackberry naturally came to mind.
A quick Google search later (by the way, check out http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/) and I had come across vlingo 2.0, an application for the Blackberry. Essentially, it takes over the already included voice-dialing operation for the phone, but expands it to include voice: text messaging, emailing, googling/yahooing, and a bunch of other commands I haven’t gotten around to learning.
This thing rocks. I say “message Mike Klear message hang on a couple more days and I’ll write that column” and it produces it within seconds. Usually on a message of 
that many words there will be one or two I have to go back to and correct, but the corrections aren’t manual: scroll to the word and it suggests 2-3 other things it may have been. In almost all cases, the correct word was its second guess. And it almost always gets the name of the person perfectly, even complicated stuff like my sister, Anjali Sharma.
It isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely worth a try. The field of voice recognition has made
significant strides since my dad, too lazy to learn how to properly type, bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking 5.0 some 7 years ago. Even through his thick ac cent, even several years ago, the software worked pretty well. Now in its 10 th generation, I tried using it a couple months ago and it’s perfect. It’ll never replace typing for me, but I see voice recognition as possibly the way of the future.
As a radiologist in training (well, in another year or two, anyways), I’ll be reliant on voice-recognition software for the rest of my life to dictate every exam on every patient I see. Almost all radiology departments in all hospitals have transferred over already or are doing so at the moment. Northwestern Memorial Hospital (the richest hospital in the world), just switched over last summer.
Voice recognition will never replace typing, mostly because people don’t speak the way they write. They say one of the most difficult things about becoming a radiologist is forming sentences before you speak and articulating them without pause. And I don’t think talking is necessarily faster than typing, despite what those software programs may say.
But for quick messaging back and forth, especially given the increasing ubiquity of these ridiculously powerful cell phones and foreseeable full-integration with cars, headsets, and computers via Bluetooth, this technology is great. In the interest of full disclosure I will note that vlingo doesn’t work with Gchat, but I can’t see that it won’t in the near future… Give it a whirl.
