Software Tip: Dragon turns your talk into text and can make virtually any computer task easier and faster

Dragon is the world’s best-selling speech recognition software. It turns your talk into text and can make virtually any computer task easier and faster. From capturing ideas and creating documents, to email and searching the web, to using simple voice commands to control many of the popular programs you use every day at home, work – and beyond.

Workplace technology Tip:
Moving the mouse pointer with MouseGrid 

You can position the mouse pointer anywhere on the screen by using MouseGrid. You can move the pointer relative to the full screen or the active window.

To use MouseGrid: Say "MouseGrid" to place the MouseGrid over the full screen or say "MouseGrid Window" to place it over the active window.

For example: Mouse Grid Say a grid number from 1 to 9 to position the pointer in that numbered area. In this example, to position the pointer over the Recycle Bin, say "4." A smaller M ouseGrid will appear in the chosen grid square. Small mouse grid To zoom in over the desired area, say another grid number. In this example, say "4" to place the pointer over the Recycle Bin icon. Continue to say the respective grid number to zoom in until the mouse pointer is over an icon or other object.

You can use voice commands to click the mouse or mark and drag the object.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking (also known as Dragon for PC, or DNS),  is a speech recognition software package developed by Dragon Systems of Newton, Massachusetts, and later acquired by Nuance Communications. It runs on Windows personal computers. The most recent package is version 12.0, which supports 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. The Mac OS version is called DragonDictate or Dragon for Mac.

NaturallySpeaking uses a minimal user interface. As an example, dictated words appear in a floating tooltip as they are spoken (though there is an option to set this feature so it is not displayed to increase speed), and when the speaker pauses, the program transcribes the words into the active window at the location of the cursor (Dragon does not support dictating to background windows). The software has three primary areas of functionality: dictation, text-to-speech and command input.

The user is able to dictate and have speech transcribed as written text, have a document synthesized as an audio stream, or issue commands that are recognized as such by the program. In addition, voice profiles can be accessed through different computers in a networked environment, although the audio hardware and configuration must be identical on both machines. The Professional version allows creation of custom commands to control programs or functions not built into NaturallySpeaking.