Note: This post was transcribed using an Android voice recorder sent via email. Total edit time: 3 minutes.
I was speaking to a friend today who had a very interesting concept that I thought he should share. I asked him if he had a blog and he told me that he did not. When I asked him why he didn’t he told me that he’s okay with speaking about a subject but putting it “on paper” doesn’t work.
My first thought as an old school journalist was to use a tape recorder. Transcribing later is an easy option if you could speak it first and then type it later. Then I remembered that Google and other companies have excellent voice recognition technology that can transcribe with a pretty high level of accuracy. With voice recognition software people who are not able to put their words on paper could easily write there stories and articles by saying them.
I wanted to test that theory out so I decided to write a blog post straight through my Android phone. It was annoying because I could only do one or two sentences at a time. The flow wasn’t what I was used to when typing. But for someone who doesn’t I blog anyway, I could see how this would still be better than not blogging at all.
Imagine if everyone had a blog. In many ways hundreds of millions of people already do through their social networks. There is likely “voice blogging” technology already available that I simply haven’t heard of or tools that allow people to transcribe directly to their blogs, but it’s definitely not mainstream yet. It should be.
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“Voice Recognition” image courtesy of Shutterstock.
Does voice recognition not distinguish between “their” and “there?” I don’t mean it as a snarky remark but as a real concern for those who may rely on it.