Dragon Express – Dictation Software for the Facebook Generation

Dragon Express – $50 – Mac App Store

The problem with most dictation apps is that they are perceived as rather serious bits of software. It’s the sort of software, that you’d use to write your novel, or perhaps write up some scientific notes or that deposition for your court case. It’s certainly not the first thing you think of when you decide to update your Facebook status.  But it’s precisely for updates on social media sites,and all those other real-world day-to-day tasks that Dragon Express has been created. This is dictation software for ‘everyone else’.

Unlike other dictation software, which you start when you want to dictate some lengthy piece of text, Dragon Express is designed to always be at hand. It’s activated by clicking on its icon in the menu bar or by hitting a preconfigured hotkey. Then all you need to do is dictate your text and direct the output to the application of your choice. By default, Dragon Express can send your dictated text to the clipboard, Spotlight, Google, your e-mail, face book or twitter. When you’ve finished dictating you can hit a hotkey such as Command-2 to capture your text to the clipboard.

In practice I found Dragon Express to be a a competent, but not terrific, dication app. The enrolment procedure only takes about five minutes, but if you decide to use a start using a different microphone then you have to repeat that process. It’s also worth noting that if you switch microphones (from say the internal microphone to a headset) then you lose all the text in the dictation window – found out about that one the hard way. Accuracy of dictation was lousy when using my MacBook Pro’s built-in microphone (in a very quiet office), but improved drastically when I plugged in my Logitech USB headset. Having to wear a headset to dictate text, cramps the spontaneity that this app is supposed to foster.

I can fully understand why Dragon decided to create this application. They want to tap into the home market and create something that has real-world use. However the logic is flawed; who in their right mind would use dictation software to bang out a 140 character tweet? And given issues surrounding the accuracy of the dictation, would you really trust it with your Facebook status updates? I’m not convinced, by the ‘social’ leanings of this application, but I think it’s perfectly good for things like email correspondence. It’s also worth pointing out, that at an (introductory) price of $50, it’s certainly not cheap and you’d have to consider  if you needed the long list of extra features in the full suite which costs $189. An interesting application then, but not the solution to R.S.I. that I was hoping for.