Siri Here I Come!

I know this will probably bring on a big fat yawn for most people but I've only recently bought an iPad after a great deal of thought and I'm therefore new to the use of Siri the personal assistant.

In the past I've used voice recognition software quite a lot, and because of my work I've always had to do a lot of dictation, in the past I've used predominantly Nuance software and have found it to be pretty good.

I recently decided to abandon Nuance software because of the exorbitant cost of the upgrades. I found it incredibly annoying that whenever a new operating system upgrade came out it always seemed to be necessary to buy another expensive package to upgrade the dictation software and I've eventually just had enough of it.

With the fairly recent release of the Mavericks operating system for the Mac I started to use the built-in dictation system which also allows off-line dictation and I found it perfectly adequate for my needs and this simply reaffirmed my decision to ditch the Dragon software.

Anyhow with the recent purchase of the iPad it was only a matter of time before I started to experiment with Siri and I have to be honest, I find the accuracy of it completely amazing. My understanding is that the voice file is uploaded to the Apple servers and the converted text is then fired back down the wires where it is displayed and the speed and efficiency that this happens is just mind-boggling, for me at any rate.

It is a little bit limiting that Siri can only really be used for dictation whilst online but for the most part I am likely to have available a wireless connection when I want to do any dictation because one really does need a quiet environment to use these tools properly. So, for the moment at least I am very very impressed with the Siri package. I have no intention of using it as a personal assistant but as a transcription tool I think it is going to be absolutely fantastic, if you haven't tried it for this purpose I strongly recommend that you do so.