Five winning stories will be selected by a panel of judges, and the winning entrants will each receive an Amazon Kindle 2 as well as Dragon NaturallySpeaking upgrades for three years.
I use Dragon every day, at home and at work, for everything from typing documents and updating spreadsheets, to composing e-mails, managing files, and writing short stories (and working on the great American novel!). I've had to use it instead of typing ever since a spinal injury of over a year ago left me with nerve damage in my right arm, but I know that even after I'm completely healed, I will still use Dragon instead of all the typing and mousing I used to do -- after all, why not? It's so much faster and easier! People at work are actually envious of my Dragon software -- so instead of feeling like I'm at a disadvantage, or am being pitied, I actually have people wishing they could do what I do! At home, instead of being stuck in my chair while I'm working at the computer, I can get up and stretch and walk around the room, pet my cat, and even fold laundry at the same time I'm dictating stories and e-mails, which I could never do before. Even if I'm nowhere near my computer, I can still dictate into my little portable recorder, and transcribe the files later. As for the program itself, I'm amazed at how accurate Dragon is, and how large a vocabulary it has -- which you can make even larger by adding words. Dragon is also fun to use, and has been since the very first day. I even enjoyed the few mistakes it made during the training period, when Dragon was still getting used to my voice, since some of them were highly amusing. Mind you, the training period is pretty short, because Dragon learns very quickly, and it learns more each time you use it. That's good, but I do sometimes miss the funny things it used to say. Some favorite gaffes include: - "pork checker" for "torque checker" (that got some laughs at work -- everybody wanted that job!)- "Satan please" for "Saint Louise," the hospital I stayed at (that shed an entirely different light on the subject...)- and my favorite by far, and the one for which this missive is named, which happened when I read the opening lines from Shakespeare's Henry V: "Oh, for a Muse of fire..." and Dragon happily typed out: "oh poor emus on fire." My friends and I love that one -- someone even suggested it would be a great name for a band! All joking aside, Dragon is a great tool without which it would be very awkward, slow, and painful for me to use the computer, extremely difficult to continue with my creative writing, and absolutely impossible for me to do my job. Dragon creators, bravo!