Nuance Introduces Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10
Nuance Communications today unveiled Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, the latest version of its popular dictation software. The new version allows users to not only dictate documents and emails but also to search the Web, fill in forms, and control their PCs and their many applications, entirely by voice.
The newest version of Dragon is reportedly nearly twice as fast as the previous release, working at up to 160 words per minute, and up to 20 percent more accurate. In fact, Nuance claims that the software "can deliver accuracy up to 99 percent, while never making a spelling mistake."
New features contained in Dragon 10 include:
• Voice control over some of the most popular applications, including the Micrososft Office suite, Microsoft Outlook, Micrososft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Corel WordPerfect, popular instant message clients such as AOL Instant Messenger, and most other Windows-based applications.
• Dragon Voice Shortcuts that collapse common multistep tasks into direct voice commands for sending emails and scheduling meetings, searching the Web, or controlling their desktops. For example, when asking his computer to send an email to a specific person, Dragon opens the user's email program, creates a new email document, and puts the appropriate contact names into the address box. When asking it to search the Web for a specific piece of information, Dragon opens the default search engine and Web browser and enters the spoken words in the search field. This function supports most Web search engines, including Google, and Yahoo, as well as other like eBay, Wikipedia, and YouTube.
• Quick Voice Formatting commands that allow users to issue a single voice command to format text within a document. In Microsoft Word, for example, a user can say make that bigger, and the font size increases instantly.
The Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard, Preferred, and Professional editions are available immediately. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal and the Dragon NaturallySpeaking SDK will be available in the coming weeks. Dragon Medical 10 will be available in September; new customers purchasing Dragon Medical version 9.5 can order version 10 at no charge via a mail-in rebate coupon or as part of their standard Maintenance and Support Agreement.
Within these specialized versions, Nuance has also added some industry-specific features as well. The Professional version, for example, supports sophisticated macros for automating document-intensive business tasks and offers complete enterprise network support, including new security features, a special management guide for IT professionals, and support for Citrix deployments. The Dragon Voice Shortcuts in the Preferred version offer the added ability to create custom commands to insert blocks of texts or bitmaps – such as name, title, and signature – with a single utterance. The Legal version offers a preconfigured legal vocabulary that includes more than 30,000 legal-specific terms and phrases and allows users to create custom voice commands to instantly build and format templates for contracts or other legal documents. Dragon Medical exclusively enables clinicians to dictate directly into any Windows- or Citrix-based electronic medical record (EMR) system, including Allscripts, Epic, Misys, GE Healthcare, NextGen, Siemens, eClinicalWorks, Meditech, McKesson, Cerner and Eclipsys. Dragon Medical includes 75 medical vocabularies and enhanced medical formatting and improved EMR dictation and navigation capabilities.
Nuance is also offering a special Dragon NaturallySpeaking edition bundled with a Plantronics Calisto Bluetooth headset that allows users to dictate and speak to their computers from up to 30 feet away.
"Speech technology has reached a critical turning point where it is now fundamentally changing the way that we interact with the world around us," said Steve Chambers, president of the Mobile and Consumer division at Nuance. "What was once a ‘Star Trek’ dream is now a reality – on our mobile phones, in our cars, on our navigation devices, and now on the desktop with Dragon.
"With its near-perfect accuracy and easy-to-use interface, Dragon has touched millions of people by creating a more productive and natural experience at the desktop," Chambers continued. "There’s no need to take time to train the software or learn arcane steps or commands anymore. People can simply start talking and see their ideas flow directly onto the page. It really is incredible to see."