Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

In my work, I do a lot of writing. I always have my trusty voice recorder at my side taking audio notes of important ideas and important work that needs to be completed. You never know when inspiration strikes. Before I discovered Dragon Naturally Speaking, I had to take the time to listen to my notes once every few days to remember the notes that I took. It was unproductive to say the least.

My workload got a lot lighter when I started using Dragon Naturally Speaking. I started off with Version 9. It’s great because I can have it transcribe my notes for me. Instead of me taking time out to listen to my notes, I can just access it in a simple text file. What is even more cool is that I have a little cron job that inserts the text notes into a database automatically. I have search through all of my verbal notes and find little nuggets of information that previously would have been lost somewhere in an audio file.

I have even started writing website content using Dragon Naturally Speaking. I just use my notetaker and “talk my content.” I can easily and quickly generate enough content for a small website. It’s great for getting a great idea off the ground quickly.

Now that the new version of Dragon Naturally 10 is out, I am excited to say the least. It means that the software will get even better and make my day even more productive. Just check out this NY Times Review of Dragon NaturallySpeaking . It gives a good run down of Dragon Naturally Speaking features and benefits. It’s worth your time.

Dragon Naturally Speaking comes in two different versions, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard and Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred. Here is a screencast video that gives you a pretty good rundown of what Dragon Naturally Speaking can do for you and how you can benefit from it. I think it’s easier to see what it can do for you if you see it in action with your own eyes. Take a look:

In a word, I’d describe Dragon Naturally Speaking as amazing. It’s helped me become more productive and it has made it easier for me to manage all of my daily notes.

I love researching the obscure and products that are not everyday household words. It’s rather amazing the products that have come out to solve particular consumer and industrial needs. Take a look at ball lock pins. They are used to help keep products aligned and easily adjustable. They have hundred of uses and are an important safety component. It’s always interesting to find out about products that I have never heard about.

I was just reading about a brand new use for memory cards. We all know that they are great for storing digital photos from our cameras and for accessing pictures and music on our cellphones, but they now have a new use for them. The idea is to sell DRM free music on memory cards. You’ll go to a store and buy a card filled with the music from the album along with album cover art and liner notes. Totally cool, right?

I needed to get a new email address recently and I noticed that things have changed quite a bit in the area of free email providers over the last couple of years. I decided I might as well write about what I experienced so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

First off, let me tell you how I use email. I keep several email addresses. I keep a personal address for family and friends. I keep an public personal email address for people I don’t know as well and for acquaintances. I keep a private business one that is only used for managing business relationships and accounts. Finally I keep a public business address and a spam address. I try to change the spam, public business and public personal addresses from time to time. In terms of a provider, I look for stability and spam prevention as the most important factors.

Well, keeping all of this in mind, I decided to rank 5 email providers in order of meeting my needs. All have benefits and all of them are a good choice, but one has to be better than another for my needs.

1) Yahoo Mail
2) Gmail
3) aim.com webmail
4) Fastmail.fm
5) Hotmail.com

One of the things I hate the most is getting calls from people I don’t know. I especially hate it when I get a message to call so and so back at some number given to me. When it’s a business calling me, I want to know who it is that is calling me so I know whether or not it’s worth my time to actually return the call.

In order to trace a phone number before, I would just put the number into Google. It was usually hit or miss if I could find anything about the number. I would get a little irritated because with all of our advancement in information technology, it should be easy to get information on a phone number, right? Well, now it is easy.

I discovered PhoneInfoTracer.com. It’s awesome, you just visit them and put the phone number into the box and do the reverse number lookup search. It quickly gives you a whole box of details about the number. It’s definitely cool and it’s definitely a site I have bookmarked for the next time someone calls me and just gives me their number.