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Speak Your Notes

Mala Bhargava Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[I don't know about you, but I can't possibly do with just one form of inputting text into my devices. Not when I'm constantly using one or the other gadget through the day. There are times when I need to key in something but just happen to be 98 per cent horizontal with just half an eye open. And others when I feel brisk and industrious and must sit upright to type busily — the latter being the less common occurrence, of course. So while I wait for gesture and thought-controlled speech-to-text to come about, I use a virtual keyboard, wireless keyboard, built-in keyboard, swype, stylus, and finger-handwriting. So you can understand why I jumped with joy when decent, workable voice recognition with speech-to-text appeared for the iPad. The US app store has had Dragon Dictate all along, but well, I'm not in the US. When PaperPort Notes turned up at the India App Store, I grabbed it. It was free. I live in fear of it being pulled off because it may be there by mistake. At last, voice input to write with. Of course, you can get Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the PC and Mac, and Windows has speech recognition built in. And my Samsung Galaxy S II does an interesting, and sometimes startling, job of interpreting what I say.  But I wanted speech-to-text combined with the flexibility of a tablet. PaperPort Notes is actually the app once called Noterize, with Dragon Dictate added to it. Nuance, makers of Dragon, are kings in the area of speech recognition and are behind the iPhone's Siri, too. As you start up the app, you'll see the only listed country is the United States. So select it and keep your American accent ready. But that's if, like me, you're only interested in the speech-to-text. If you want a complete note-taking environment, there is plenty else here to work with. You may as well download the 20-page user guide. It's worth it because of the clear picture guides. This app seems mostly to have been made with students in mind, but of course, anyone can use it. Its aim is to allow the user to capture notes in multiple ways. The speech recognition part is easy enough. What you do is tap to call up the keyboard and the tap to speak button. Speak. Be careful about what you say. Tap again to allow the app to process your words into text. This means you don't carry on continuously, although you can, because the stopping to process gives you time to edit.  It's a matter of getting used to this format, but if you want continuous live conversion, this isn't the app for you. I prefer it this way — it also gives me time to think. If you get impatient, switch to typing. Or handwriting. Or just voice-record, which the app stores page by page, unusually. For better results, you can use the microphone on the headset of an iPhone or iPod. When dictating notes, you can also use a list of voice commands to put in punctuation and move to the next line or paragraph. Text input, whatever method you choose, can be on the main paper (customisable styles) or in boxes that you can size and move around. The boxes are meant to give you flexibility with where to put text, but also to turn a note into a sticky, a picture, or even a ‘websnap'.  When you want to capture a little section of a webpage, you click on a box and touch the button for websnap on the menu. The app opens up to a browser — and shows you Google Scholar. You will need to switch to regular search tab if you don't want that. At the bottom of the page, press to capture a selected section. Then you switch back to your note. You can create notes that are of limitless pages, of course. To get to the page you want in your collection of notes, you can bookmark the page and do an on-page search. PaperPort Notes shares notes with many other apps and clouds — but in the form of pdfs, images, ppt files. You can't import or export a Word or Excel file.  I copy and paste converted text into any other app, but if you want everything together — sketches, notes, and recordings — you have to stick with the formats allowed within PaperPort. You share with others via email or storage services such as Dropbox, Google Docs, Box.net and PaperPort Anywhere, the app's own cloud storage. The idea is to work on annotating team notes. PaperPort is also separately a full-fledged professional documents management system on the PC and Mac and, of course, PaperPort Notes on the iPad syncs with that. Needless to say the notes also sync via iTunes.   Note-taking apps are all over the app stores across platforms. But there's a combination of features that suits each user, which means you often go through several apps before choosing the ones that fit your needs. The Fine Art Of Handwriting If you're not interested in the speech-to-text conversion and are looking for most of the other features of PaperPort, take a look at Notes Plus. Instead of converting speech to text, this one converts handwriting to text — and back. Write clearly, and you're in business.  It is a slick app, using gestures and selection moves that use the tablet to advantage. It doesn't have its own cloud storage and costs $7.99, and another $1.99 for the handwriting recognition capability. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 30-04-2012)

Mala Bhargava

BW Reporters Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.