Speaking About Dragon

New Year, New Blog

2010-12-30T16:40:00Z

It's almost time to turn the calendar page to 2011! With the New Year come many new changes and resolutions...so why not a new blog as well?

Starting today, we'll be continuing the Dragon conversation over at our brand-new space - http://voicesofdragon.com. Come by and see what's new from Dragon, and tell us what you think too!

Happy New Year!

Dragon Dictate for Mac is here!

2010-09-20T11:22:00Z

We're heading into Fall this year with an exciting announcement for Mac users - Dragon Dictate for Mac is here!

A little history: For a number of years, MacSpeech leveraged the Dragon speech recognition engine to power the popular MacSpeech Dictate application. Earlier this year, Nuance acquired MacSpeech and welcomed Dictate as an official member of the Dragon family. Since that time, we've been working hard to bring our PC and Mac products closer together, so that we can offer the accuracy and feature set that our Dragon NaturallySpeaking customers have come to rely on for the PC, and still maintain the important, native Mac elements of Dictate that Mac users expect.

Dragon Dictate for Mac is the first major Mac product release from the new Dragon family and, perhaps most exciting, the first to leverage the new Dragon 11 engine (just released at the end of July), resulting in a big accuracy and performance boost over MacSpeech Dictate 1.5. Dragon Dictate for Mac offers a more streamlined set-up, revamped Mac user interface, and dynamic new voice commands for dictation, editing, navigation and proofreading. Dragon Dictate for Mac also “learns” better than any previous version of Dictate, responds faster to spoken commands and supports Dragon Voice Shortcuts for searching the web, email and Mac desktop by voice.

You’ll find more information about Dragon Dictate for Mac, including promotional pricing, at www.nuance.com/dragon/mac.

And the full press release announcing our new family member is right here - http://www.nuance.com/company/news-room/press-releases/NC_007231.

Happy Monday!

Thanks,

Erica Hill, Corporate Communications, Dragon

I Speak Dragon! Contest Winners Announced

2010-09-02T11:34:00Z

This year, we hosted our fourth annual "I Speak Dragon!" story contest, and we asked YOU to tell us how you use Dragon NaturallySpeaking or MacSpeech Dictate. We were inundated with responses from hundreds upon hundreds of people - students, lawyers, teachers, bloggers, pastors, moms, dads, grandparents and more - and all of them had unique stories to share. If you haven't had a chance to see any of this year's stories, I would encourage you to check out http://ispeakdragon.nuance.com and read through some of the amazing tales from folks who use Dragon.

It was extremely difficult for our panel of judges to choose just three winners from all of the wonderful stories that you shared. But here they are...the winners of the 2010 "I Speak Dragon!" contest:

Most Creative

“Dragon NaturallySpeaking: a matchmaker?”

After a few strange experiences with blurred vision and numbness, Evan Upchurch was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Evan was concerned with how the diagnosis would affect his productivity at work, and he was also somewhat isolated, unaware of anyone else with MS with whom he could talk.

As time passed, Evan’s hands developed a severe tremor, and his group administrator at work suggested that he try Dragon NaturallySpeaking. When he asked why she recommended Dragon, she told him that a co-worker had been using Dragon and was extremely pleased with its performance. Evan connected with this mystery co-worker and was surprised to learn that she too had been diagnosed with MS and that she had turned to Dragon to save her career.

The two forged a friendship starting that day that ultimately blossomed into a relationship. In fact, May marked the couple’s five-year wedding anniversary. “Dragon NaturallySpeaking and multiple sclerosis served as our extremely unlikely matchmakers, and the luckiest break I’ve ever had,” said Evan.

To read Evan’s full story, please visit: http://community.nuance.com/groups/i-speak-dragon/forum/t/1565.aspx

Most Productive

“Three Million Words and Counting”

This past June, Time Magazine named Joe Romm’s website, ClimateProgress.org, one of the 25 “best blogs of 2010” and one of the “top five blogs Time writers read daily.” “That would never have happened without Dragon NaturallySpeaking,” says Joe.

Over a decade ago, Joe injured his right hand, which made typing for any length of time painful. To allow him to continue writing, Joe quickly found Dragon. Joe has since dictated a number of books – The Hype about Hydrogen and Hell and High Water – and he has even credited Dragon in his books, noting: “…it’s the best product yet…Dragon NaturallySpeaking arrived just in time to enable me to double my productivity on this book.”

When Joe started the ClimateProgress.org blog for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, his writing became much more frequent. Dragon came to the rescue again, supporting Joe through a few thousand blog posts over the past four years. All together, Joe figures that he has dictated at least three million words with Dragon.

Joe now uses Dragon on his home PC and MacSpeech Dictate on his Mac laptop to allow for fast and easy on-the-road blogging. Using speech recognition has changed Joe’s writing style and has even made his blog posts more conversational, a quality which he says contributes to his blog’s immense popularity.

“For me, Dragon NaturallySpeaking is an indispensable product.” says Joe.

To read Joe’s full story, please visit: http://community.nuance.com/groups/i-speak-dragon/forum/t/4223.aspx

Most Life-Changing

“Disabled but still able to”

An event took place in 1997 that changed Nancy Blose’s life. A 34-year old mother of two young children, Nancy was involved in a catastrophic car accident that left her instantly paralyzed and unable to do so many of the activities that she had previously taken for granted. Shortly after the accident, Nancy found Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and she set out to capture her thoughts and her words as quickly and as openly as possible.

“There is permanency with written words and I had many thoughts that I wanted preserved,” said Nancy. “My first priority was to write letters to my children, then ages six and eight, to be opened on their 16^th birthdays. The letters were my assurance in case of my early demise to once again tell my children how much I love them and to pass on motherly pearls of wisdom.”

As Nancy continued to use Dragon over the years, she also dictated a book about her accident and her survival, and even communicated with her children’s teachers via emails as they progressed through school. Today she is able to send personalized greeting cards – created online by voice with Dragon – and also keep in touch with her children who are now in college.

To read Nancy’s full story, please visit: http://community.nuance.com/groups/i-speak-dragon/forum/t/1635.aspx

The full press release announcing the winners is included below.

Congratulations to all of our winners! And to those of you who entered but who did not win this year, THANK YOU for sharing your stories with us. Get your voices ready for next year's contest!

Thank you,

Erica Hill

******

Nuance Announces Winners of Fourth Annual “I Speak Dragon!” Story Contest

Hundreds of People Share Their Success Stories; Winning Entries Submitted by Author, Software Company Employee and Mom of Two Detail Their Experiences of Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking and MacSpeech Dictate

BURLINGTON, Mass., – September 2, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc., today announced the winners of its “I Speak Dragon!” contest, which encouraged users of Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking and MacSpeech Dictate software to come forward and share their personal stories about how Dragon has enhanced and transformed their lives.

Proof positive of Dragon’s popularity and impact, hundreds of stories were submitted this summer, including a record breaking number of video entries. People from all walks of life, including students, authors, teachers, comedians, grandparents, doctors, lawyers, and police officers, among many others, submitted incredible stories of improved productivity, creativity, and innovation made possible by Dragon NaturallySpeaking and MacSpeech Dictate.

Three winning entries were selected by a panel of judges from the hundreds of exceptional stories received across all three different categories, and Nuance is pleased to announce the following winners:

Most Creative

“Dragon NaturallySpeaking: a matchmaker?”

After a few strange experiences with blurred vision and numbness, Evan Upchurch was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Evan was concerned with how the diagnosis would affect his productivity at work, and he was also somewhat isolated, unaware of anyone else with MS with whom he could talk.

To read Evan’s full story, please visit: http://community.nuance.com/groups/i-speak-dragon/forum/t/1565.aspx

Most Productive

“Three Million Words and Counting”

This past June, Time Magazine named Joe Romm’s website, ClimateProgress.org, one of the 25 “best blogs of 2010” and one of the “top five blogs Time writers read daily.” “That would never have happened without Dragon NaturallySpeaking,” says Joe.

“For me, Dragon NaturallySpeaking is an indispensable product.” says Joe.

To read Joe’s full story, please visit: http://community.nuance.com/groups/i-speak-dragon/forum/t/4223.aspx

Most Life-Changing

“Disabled but still able to”

An event took place in 1997 that changed Nancy Blose’s life. A 34-year old mother of two young children, Nancy was involved in a catastrophic car accident that left her instantly paralyzed and unable to do so many of the activities that she had previously taken for granted. Shortly after the accident, Nancy found Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and she set out to capture her thoughts and her words as quickly and as openly as possible.

To read Nancy’s full story, please visit: http://community.nuance.com/groups/i-speak-dragon/forum/t/1635.aspx

The above winners will each receive an Apple iPad and choice of either one copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional or one copy of MacSpeech Dictate as well as the right to receive any upgrade to the Software specified by the winner that Nuance creates, in its discretion, in the ordinary course of its business during the three year period running from the end of the Promotion Period.

To read other exciting contest entries that demonstrate some of the unique ways that people everywhere are using Dragon NaturallySpeaking and MacSpeech Dictate, please visit: http://ispeakdragon.nuance.com/

About Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is a leading provider of speech, imaging and customer interaction solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: www.nuance.com.

Trademark reference: Nuance, Dragon, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the property of their respective owners.

Apple, Inc. was in no way affiliated with or a sponsor of this Contest.

Nuance Medical Search Application Now Available

2010-08-19T13:32:00Z

Exciting news from our Healthcare team today! See the blog post below from Nick van Terheyden, MD.

Nuance released its latest offering for the iPhone today (as previewed at HIMSS 2010), Dragon Medical Mobile Search, the first of four iPhone solutions for clinicians, bringing the power of medical speech recognition to the smartphone.

The new medical search app gives clinicians a smarter way to search for medical information.　 It’s a tool for clinicians to dictate a search query and within seconds receive results from a variety of sources such as Drugs.mobi, IMO®, MedLine, MedScape and Google.

The AppAdvice blog reviewed it and shared the following favorable review:

AppAdvice: Dragon Search Goes Medical

"Once again, Nuance Communications has another excellent app on their hands, although this one is much more narrowly tailored. But if you’re working in the medicinal field and want something to aid you on-the-fly with great speech recognition, then this is definitely a great choice. It’s simply a great pocket companion for you while on the job in case you need to reference something or get a refresher on a condition."

You can download the App in iTunes here; it's free.　The principle and idea is simple - tap to dictate, speak the search term and automatically you’ll receive relevant information from several popular medical sources:

Google
Medscape
Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO)
Drugs.mobi
Medline

Each of these search tabs appears in a slider across the top and offers a quick look at the search results for each of the medical sources.

You can also watch a video demo here.

Nick van Terheyden, MD

http://drvoice.blogspot.com/

Dragon Goes Back to School

2010-08-05T12:59:00Z

It seems like we just finished singing: "No more paper! No more books!" and kicked off the summer. It's hard to believe, but it's time to start thinking about getting those books together and heading back to school already!

*Cue collective groan from students*

Dragon has always been a helpful resource for students and teachers in terms of not only getting their work done more quickly, but providing a more natural way to get thoughts on paper (err, PC). In Dragon 11, we focused on making it even easier for students and teachers to use Dragon by adding things like a new user interface, a special accent model tuned for younger speakers, and even a Sidebar to help navigate Dragon more quickly and easily. In addition, we've added new licensing programs to make it simple for schools to offer Dragon to more students and teachers than ever before. Hop over to our news page to see what else is new for students and teachers in Dragon 11.

To see how Dragon can help students going back to school, check out what student Gregory has to say about his experience with Dragon in this video.

And drop by our education page to learn more about how to get Dragon 11 in your favorite student's backpack this year!

Erica Hill

Corporate Communications, Dragon NaturallySpeaking

The Motivation Behind Dragon 11

2010-07-29T02:36:00Z

I'm extremely excited about the new release of Dragon – Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11. We have been eagerly working on this innovative new release of Dragon ever since we launched Dragon 10 just about two years ago. With Dragon 10, we set a new standard for speech recognition performance on the desktop and added exciting new features like Dragon Voice Shortcuts. How in the world could we top that?

To answer that question, we went to the top-secret source for all Dragon product direction: you.

We've always relied heavily on customer feedback in our product development process – but the amount and quality of customer feedback that we have received during the lifetime of Dragon 10 was unprecedented. There were two major initiatives that drove significantly enhanced customer feedback over the past two years. The first is a feature that is built into the Dragon 10 product – an anonymous, opt-in data collection feature that allows us to analyze how our customers, in aggregate, use Dragon. The second initiative was our broad use of social media vehicles to communicate to our customer base. Through our blog, our Twitter feed, our Facebook page and our Web feedback form, we received an incredible amount of highly valuable customer feedback.

These two feedback mechanisms are far more powerful in combination than as standalone items. The data collection feature by itself could only tell us what was happening – but not why. The feedback from our social media channels provided a rich understanding of some of the requests, desires and concerns – but it is difficult to tell whether this feedback is unique to a vocal minority or something that represents a larger opportunity unless you pair this feedback with data.

One thing was clear – Dragon is an extremely powerful application, but many of the features and capabilities weren’t immediately obvious to some of our customers. We needed to think about the way we present information and capabilities to our customers so that it would be easier for them to discover the full power of Dragon. We also learned that not everybody was getting equally high accuracy using Dragon. When you look at the data, you realize that there are a few common things that contribute to lower accuracy in Dragon:

First of all, the quality of the audio that Dragon hears is a significant contributor to accuracy. We knew we needed to provide better tools to help identify and diagnose problematic audio on computers.

We also found that some people were speaking to Dragon in a very choppy manner – instead of speaking fluidly with longer utterances. Because of the way Dragon works, the more fluidly and consistently you speak, the more information Dragon has to determine the appropriate transcription for your voice.

When we watched people interacting with Dragon, we saw that some folks were distracted by the "results box" that showed the intermediate transcription results. So in Dragon 11, we have removed that results box and introduced a new user interface element designed to help people continue to focus on their work, versus constantly checking those intermediate results. That was an example of making part of the user interface "less visible" because we believe it was distracting (if you disagree, we left you the option to turn it back on).

Another major innovation in Dragon 11, known as the Dragon Sidebar, is designed to make the user interface "more visible" when you really need it. We created this element because we found that many of our customers did not know about the commands that Dragon understood – and they could not easily find those commands, or remember their own custom commands. A lot of people were actually taking their list of custom commands and attaching them to the side of their screen with a little sticky note. The new Dragon Sidebar is designed to provide intelligent user feedback when you need it – and get out of the way when you don't need it.

Of all the new features in Dragon 11, I think my favorite is the ability for Dragon to format or correct multiple instances of text in the same document. When I say "underline Dragon," all the instances of the word Dragon are highlighted and numbered on my screen. I can either select the instance that I want to change, or say "choose all" to make the change in every instance.

Perhaps the most exciting opportunity for us to involve our customers in the product development process happens during our beta test program. This is when we send pre-release versions of the software to some of our customers to get feedback on the product and its features. For Dragon 11, we had our most extensive beta program ever. We also focused not only on our "expert users," but we invited novice users to participate in the program. We also invited several of our customers who indicated that they were dissatisfied with previous versions of Dragon to participate in our beta program. This provided us with fantastic feedback about whether our efforts in the Dragon 11 program addressed the concerns of those users.

I hope you get the opportunity to learn more about Dragon 11 by visiting our website. For those of you who are not Dragon users, I would encourage you to give Dragon 11 a try – now is perhaps the best time ever for people to start using speech recognition. For those of you who are using Dragon 10 or earlier versions of Dragon, I encourage you to upgrade to take full advantage of these exciting new capabilities.

Finally, I would like to thank you all for your feedback and your participation in our product development process. I believe you all have helped us make the best Dragon ever.

Peter

Do You Speak Dragon?

2010-06-02T14:41:00Z

It's that time of year again - cookouts, swimming pools, the smell of fresh cut grass, and the I Speak Dragon contest! (Ok, maybe this is reaching a bit...)

Starting today, and continuing through the month of June, we invite you to share with us your stories about how and why you use Dragon NaturallySpeaking or MacSpeech Dictate. Have you used Dragon at work to speed through your emails and reports? Does MacSpeech Dictate help you keep up with school papers? Do you use Dragon with a voice recorder to capture your thoughts on the go? Tell us! We want to hear from you!

Three lucky winners will get a brand new Apple iPad and Dragon or MacSpeech Dictate upgrades for three years!

Drop over to the I Speak Dragon contest page to share your story today!

-Erica Hill, Corporate Communications, Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Dragon gives designers a third hand

2010-06-01T13:04:00Z

We decided to kick off June with some Dragon news! Just this morning, we introduced Dragon SpeechPack for Designers. It's a new Dragon suite that lets you do all of things that you’re used to with Dragon – create documents, manage email, and surf the Web – but also adds a set of voice commands for a bunch of design applications to make things faster and easier. In some ways, Dragon kind of gives you a third hand* by letting you just speak your commands and buzz through a lot of the repetitive stuff. And you get to keep your other two hands free to focus on design!

You can find out more about the new suite here:

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/products/bundles/speech-pack-for-designers.asp

Check it out!

*Not an actual appendage.

-Erica Hill, Corporate Communications, Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Where will we find Dragon next?

2010-05-14T20:15:00Z

Dragon NaturallySpeaking has long been synonymous with speech recognition. It’s hard to believe that Version 1.0 was introduced in April 1997:

Dragon 1 Launch video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7NqeVYQU70

As the first general-purpose continuous-speech recognition solution for the PC, Dragon’s revolutionary feature was to enable users to, literally, speak naturally – eliminating the tedious word-at-a-time approach that was then state-of-the-art.

When Dragon was first introduced, its primary use was as an assistive technology, helping folks with physical challenges to access the PC. But over the years, Dragon has shown its worth to millions of people the world over in all walks of life, helping them to do more with the PC, faster and more easily.

Who really uses Dragon? To name just a few, we’ve heard from writers, teachers, students, moms and dads, grandmothers and grandfathers, insurance professionals, genealogists, pastors, lawyers and doctors who are using Dragon, and the list goes on. Despite their different circumstances and reasons for using Dragon, each has an amazing story to share about how it has fundamentally changed how they work with their PC.

Today, however, we are no longer connected just to the PC. The world is more mobile than ever before, and we’re all capable of connecting, working, and creating content 24-7 from our mobile devices. That’s why, starting last year, Dragon spread its wings and landed on the iPhone and iPod Touch as Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search, and why this year Dragon Dictation was also one of the first apps available for the iPad, and why Dragon for Email was introduced for the BlackBerry!

In much the same way that Dragon can make working with a PC easier and more effective, so can it create a much more natural interface to these mobile devices. The emails, tweets and comments that we’ve received from folks using Dragon Dictation have been overwhelming, and it’s great to hear how people are changing how they work and play with Dragon right in the palm of their hand.

What lies ahead for Dragon? I think it’s safe to say that the possibilities are truly endless. Where do you want to see Dragon? Drop us a line and let us know!

Mother Knows Best

2010-05-06T15:44:00Z

As Mr. T used to say: "Always listen to your parents!" I'm pretty sure that he meant Mom specifically.

With Mother's Day quickly approaching, we dusted off a video featuring Dragon customer Dr. John Ungerleider. Dr. Ungerleider is a college professor who uses Dragon primarily to provide comprehensive, thoughtful feedback on his students' papers. For creating *his* content, there is nothing faster.

How did he hear about Dragon? From his mother, of course!

(Please visit the site to view this media)

How to customize your Dragon vocabulary for your 13-year-old who has a book report due tomorrow that uses lots of cryptic names

2010-04-26T21:51:00Z

Okay, so I guess this is probably a pretty specific use case that may not be germane to 100% of the readers of this blog, but it highlighted an important tactic that can be used to make Dragon as accurate as possible.

My 13-year-old son is a big Dragon user. As a seventh grader, he has lots of writing assignments. While he is a voracious reader, it is often a challenge to get him to do his writing assignments. It turns out that one of the biggest issues he had with these assignments was the physical part of writing his thoughts out on paper or typing it up on the computer. After using Dragon, it was much less of a struggle to get him to complete his assignments.

That being said, he is still 13 years old, and he is still a procrastinator. He was given the assignment to contrast one of his favorite books with its Hollywood implementation. He chose The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers. He had written up several pages of notes during his April vacation, but he had not gotten around to committing it to his final formatted report until the Sunday before school started again. (I hope his English teacher is not reading this…)

When I looked through his notes, I realized that his report would include many names of characters and places that are not in the standard Dragon vocabulary. I took the opportunity to show him how to adapt his vocabulary by analyzing documents. So I searched for the title of the movie on the Internet and found the Wikipedia entry for the movie. This was quite dangerous, because I realized that it included a plot summary as well as a comparison between the movie and the book. If his teacher is reading this, I promise I did not point out the fact that his entire assignment could have been lifted from this Wikipedia entry.

To adapt his vocabulary, I simply copied the text and pasted it into a text file that I saved on his desktop. Using the tools in the Accuracy Center, I located the file and had Dragon analyze the file for new words that were not currently in its vocabulary. Dragon identified a couple dozen new words and gave me the opportunity to select the ones I wanted to add to its vocabulary. It also allowed my son to train some of the pronunciations (this step is particularly important in this case, since I had no idea how some of these names were pronounced.)

When he started dictating his report, he was amazed that Dragon understood names like Gandalf and Hobbit (that were already in the Dragon vocabulary), and also understood less common terms like Aragorn, Legolas, Ents and Gimli.

Needless to say, he completed his assignment on time. He was able to quickly put all his research into its final formatted report.

It was a good reminder for me that not everybody understands how to use some of the more powerful features that are built into Dragon. He was impressed that with about two minutes of work upfront, he was able to significantly streamline the process of dictating a report with lots of new words in it.

Introducing...Speak & See!

2010-04-20T14:04:00Z

This morning, we introduced a new suite of tools called the Nuance Speak & See suite. Speak & See includes Dragon and a number of other powerful tools to make reading, writing, language learning and working with the PC easier than ever! Check out the full press release and demo video below!

Erica Hill, Corporate Communications

Nuance Introduces Speak & See Accessibility Suite With Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Powerful Accessibility Tools Combine with Dragon to Allow Students to Reach their Full Potential; Reading, Writing, Language Learning and General Interaction with the PC Now Easier Than Ever

BURLINGTON, MA – April 20, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc. today introduced Nuance Speak & See, a suite of powerful tools designed to provide unparalleled support for reading, writing and accessibility on the PC. The Nuance Speak & See suite combines speech recognition, a screen reader and magnifier, a reading and writing toolbar, and a language learning assistant to make it easier than ever for students with physical disabilities and learning challenges to work with a PC.

Speak & See in action- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIOUG413zBs

Nuance’s Speak & See suite allows students with learning challenges to see the relationship between the spoken and written word through a combination of speech recognition and text-to-speech. Students who have other physical challenges or who generally struggle with using a keyboard and mouse can take advantage of Speak & See to more clearly view their screen and navigate their PC quickly and easily. Speak & See is also a useful solution for students who are learning English as a second language. Through its text-to-speech capability and bilingual dictionaries, Speak & See allows people to hear spoken words, helping to distinguish between different pronunciations and meanings, depending on context, making it even easier to learn English.

A suite of powerful accessibility tools in one software package, Nuance Speak & See makes it easier to use a PC, with greater independence:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking – Create notes, e-mail or documents, launch applications, manage files and work on the Web – all by voice. Dragon NaturallySpeaking eliminates the manual task of typing so that people can quickly and easily capture thoughts and work with the PC with greater independence.
Reading and Writing Support Toolbar – Nearly any on-screen text can be spoken aloud by the computer in a natural-sounding voice. The toolbar also combines a homophone dictionary, thesaurus, reference dictionary and spellchecker. It’s like having a built-in proof-reader to ensure the quality and accuracy of your documents.
Screen Magnifier – Magnify all or part of the computer screen up to six times for easier viewing; smooth fonts to make them clearer at higher magnification.
Reading Ruler – The horizontal highlighting and magnifying band of the Reading Ruler makes it easier to see and concentrate on text or objects on the computer screen. Viewing is further enhanced as the screen above and below the strip is dimmed out.
Color Overlay – Change the color and tint of the computer screen to deliver a better view of the screen, with the potential to make browsing and reading easier.
Language Learning Assistant – Ideal for English language learners, or those studying a foreign language, this tool speaks text aloud to demonstrate proper pronunciation and includes bilingual dictionaries in many languages.

“We’ve known for some time that technology solutions such as Dragon level the playing field for students with physical and learning challenges by making the PC more accessible,” said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager for Dragon, Nuance Communications. “Dragon has proven to be invaluable on its own to so many people, and we hope that by folding in additional accessibility tools in our new suite, we can open the door for even more people to experience the freedom that Dragon can offer.”

Availability and Pricing

Nuance’s Speak & See suite is available immediately in the US and Canada through Nuance’s Web site as well as its global network of reseller partners, software retailers and professional sales organizations. Speak & See is priced at $249.99, and educational discounts are available for students and schools. For additional information on features and pricing, or to purchase Speak & See, please visit http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/products/bundles/speak-and-see.asp

Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Dragon has long been a leading speech recognition application on the desktop, used by millions of people around the world. As demand for speech has grown, Nuance has sought to make speech recognition accessible to more people, from more places and devices. Nuance recently launched the popular Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search Apps for iPhone, and the applications quickly climbed to the top of the charts on the App Store. (Dragon Dictation is now also available for iPad). And now automotive manufacturers can harness the power of Dragon to allow drivers to access dynamic real-time information and services by voice – right in their cars.

Dragon Dictation for the iPad!

2010-04-02T13:27:00Z

I’m excited to share the latest news with you this morning that the Dragon Dictation app – which millions of people have come to love on their iPhone – is now available for Apple’s latest innovation, the iPad! In case you missed it, the iPad was announced earlier this year and is officially available tomorrow.

Perhaps the coolest news? Just like its iPhone app cousin, Dragon Dictation for iPad is free (for now). That’s right. For a limited time, you can download the app to your iPad for free, and enjoy the remarkable accuracy of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognition engine to speak and save drafts of documents, emails, to-do lists, social media status updates, and more. Oh, and you can do all of this about five times faster than typing.

Dragon Dictation for iPad goes a step further, capitalizing on the larger screen size to include the new Dragon Dictation Notes feature, where dictated text can be easily saved, viewed and managed. Dragon Dictation for iPad can also be used in either portrait or landscape mode on the iPad.

So, to recap: Dragon Dictation for iPad. Free.

For more detail on the application along with a link to the App Store, please visit the Dragon Mobile Apps page. Also be sure to follow Dragon on Twitter @DragonTweets or drop by the Dragon Mobile Apps Facebook page. Let us know what you think – we love to hear from you!

Peter

What Did You Say?

2010-04-01T16:25:00Z

More exciting news from Nuance today as we roll out the latest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking - Dragon Mumble Edition!

-Erica Hill

Corporate Communications, Dragon

Nuance Announces Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mumble Edition for Unintelligible Voices

From the Desktop to the iPhone, Millions of Mumblers Can Now Harness the Power of Dragon to Get their *$%# Point Across

BURLINGTON, MA – April 1, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced Dragon Mumble Edition, a new add-on vocabulary pack for its popular Dragon family of products for Windows PCs, Macintosh computers and Apple iPhone platforms. Based on years of advanced research and large volumes of data collected from difficult to understand speakers, Nuance is now making its world-renowned speech recognition products available to a whole new class of users.

“Monkey hubcap tissue paper Burger King,” said legendary rocker Ozzy Osbourne via an e-mail dictated through Dragon Mumble Edition. “I plant regular buffalo waffle iron,” he added.

“We are thrilled to offer this exciting new technology that benefits some notable members of our society," said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager of the Dragon business at Nuance Communications, “I never realized just how much Mr. Osbourne had to offer. He is truly fascinating.”

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is incredibly accurate, with most users achieving upwards of 99% accuracy at the desktop. Fueled by years of data collection and extensive research, as well as customer feedback and demand, Dragon has evolved to the point where it no longer requires intelligible input from the user. Dragon Mumble Edition is a true breakthrough in speech recognition technology.

Dragon Mumble Edition is available in limited quantities as a free upgrade for any existing Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Dragon Dictation for iPhone users who are also members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com/sdfhjfasiio.

Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Taking recognition to the next level

2010-04-01T15:28:00Z

I'm excited to share with you the latest news from the Dragon team on this first day of April!

-Erica Hill

Corporate Communications, Dragon

Nuance Introduces Dragon Telepathy 1.0, Brings Mind Reading Recognition to Mobile Devices

New Dragon Mobile App Boasts Telepathic Capability, Taking Recognition to the Next Level

BURLINGTON, MA – April 1, 2010 — Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced Dragon Telepathy, 1.0, the first mind recognition app for mobile devices. Powered by the amazingly accurate recognition engine within Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Dragon Telepathy is the third addition to the family of Dragon Mobile Apps from Nuance that will not only read your mind, but put your telepathic commands into action.

After years of work perfecting speech recognition technology, and amidst the excitement of the recently-launched Dragon Dictation, scientists at Nuance turned their focus to telepathic recognition, a new technology that goes beyond dictation and transcription. With the Dragon Telepathy app, users simply think and Dragon does the rest.

“Whether it’s sending a text message to tell your boss that you’ll be late, or putting a self-important colleague in his or her place, Dragon’s got your back,” said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Nuance. “We’ve heard over and over from our customers that they want more out of Dragon, and I think this latest offering answers that demand, and then some. It’s TELEPATHIC; did I mention that…or just think it?”

Customers interested in learning more about Dragon Telepathy are encouraged to check out this amazing introductory video to witness first-hand the power of the Dragon.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

About Dragon
Dragon has long been the leading speech recognition application on the desktop, used by millions of people around the world. As demand for speech has grown, Nuance has sought to make speech recognition accessible to more people, from more places and devices. Nuance recently launched the popular Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search Apps for iPhone, and both applications quickly climbed to the top of the charts on the App Store. And now automotive manufacturers can harness the power of Dragon to allow drivers to access dynamic real-time information and services by voice – right in their cars.

*Happy April Fool's Day!