As a wife and mother who also works outside the home I'm always looking for different ways to save me time. Sometimes saving time means sacrificing money. I have about a 30 - 45 minute commute both ways to work every day. While I truly don't mind the commute it is about an hour and a half out of my day that I'm non-productive. As we all know productivity is key to running a successful household/business.
A while ago I got the brainstorm that I could write my posts on my way to and from work (that's when I compose them in my head but I have to wait until I get home to actually write them!) if I had a speech to text program. My initial thought was that I could buy the program and a recording device, biting the cost bullet for a time saving. Instead I decided to do some research to see what other alternatives were available.
Most of what I read on the Internet steered me away from the free downloads, however one writer that I came across talked about Google Voice. Google Voice is a FREE service (at least for now) offered through, are you ready for this, Google. This writer said that he signed up and used their voicemail service to write and that it worked pretty well for him. I figured, hey it's free so what do I have to lose!
I have signed up and done some testing with reasonable success. This most likely will not be my final solution as it doesn't translate 100% perfect but for now it will work. As I get closer to launching my second blog I might still bite the bullet and buy some more sophisticated software to help me write. However, I'm pretty pleased that I was able to find a solution that was successful enough for now for NO CHARGE! How sweet is that.
Moral of the story, sometimes doing some additional research will save you money. The solution isn't what I thought it would look like but it is fine for the time being.
Does anyone use speech to text software? Pros/cons of the different options available would be appreciated.
I'll be linking this up at Life as Mom.
First I want to say I admire you for the travel time that you spend, I hated it when I was doing it! Now luckily I only travel 8 minutes to work.
ReplyDeleteNext I am new here and want to tell you I've done some browsing---WOW what a great blog!
Google voice is an awesome tool for some things like grocery lists, to do list and the like. The problem that I have it that if you do not speak s-l-o-w-l-y and C L E A R L Y it will give you some off the wall sentance that could by no means have been what you said. In my opinion it would be better to bite that bullet.
Penny - I'm glad you stopped by and thank you for the kind words about the blog. We all write and hope someone gets something out of it, I'm glad that you did :) I actually don't mind the commute, it helps me separate home and work. When I had a shorter commute I found that I couldn't separate from work, now that isn't a problem. I just want to use the time wisely!
ReplyDeleteI do realize that Google Voice isn't going to be the final solution, my husband and I had some pretty good laughs over some of the sentences it came up with. But I have found that it is working well enough for the time being to get my thoughts down. I want to make sure when I pay for the software it's 100% what I need so if you've had some experience with speech to text software I'd love to hear about it.