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It's no secret that a major benefit of voice recognition software is the ability to dictate – one that frees you from being tied to the keyboard for any typing task. While the speed and efficiency benefits of dictation shouldn't be underestimated, there is much more to speech to text than that.

These are just some of the many ways that Dragon can help you unlock the full potential of speech recognition and turn time at the computer into a flurry of productivity.

Creating custom commands

Think about how many steps are involved in sending an email; there are quite a few. Starting from the desktop, you need to click on your web browser, click the URL field, type in the right address, click go and click on the compose button. That's not even including entering your login credentials or waiting for web pages to open. All these steps and clicks really add up, especially once you consider that you do them each time you send an email.

Repetitive actions like this are quite common when using a computer; they appear in a number of programs and applications, whether using a computer for study, work or fun. One way to cut down on the repetitiveness, traditionally, has been with macro command.

Some computer users may already be familiar with macros – they let you record a series of actions and assign it to a keyboard shortcut. Once a macro has been recorded, you just type the appropriate shortcut, and the whole series of actions will be carried out automatically. This is particularly useful for tasks that you complete frequently, and it can save countless minutes or hours over time.

With Dragon Dictate, the concept of a macro is taken even further with custom commands. Once a custom command has been set up, you can execute a series of steps just by speaking a simple phrase. Let's go back to the email example. After setting up the command, all you need to do is say "New email", and Dragon will work through all the steps automatically. You can even include wait commands to account for website loading times.

Custom commands are extremely versatile, so the only real limitation is your imagination.

Browsing the web

Many people would think that navigating through different websites is too complex for voice recognition software to handle. After all, there's just too much on a page and too many links to click on. Well, those people are wrong. Dragon 13 makes navigating the internet simple with extensions for Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

With simple commands like "Go to top", "Go to bottom", "Page up" and "Page down", you can scroll through websites with ease. Clicking on links is also a breeze, no matter how many might be on the site. There are two main ways you can do this with Dragon.

The first method is to just say "Click link". That will bring up a number next to each link on the current website. All you have to do is check the number next to the link you want to click – 12, for example – and say "Choose 12".

You can also just say "Click…" followed by the name of the link you want to select. On this page, for example, the link to get in touch with Voice Recognition is below. If you wanted to click that while using Dragon, all you would have to say is "Click contact Voice Recognition". Dragon would take it from there.

Speaking of getting in touch, if you want to learn more about the benefits of Dragon Naturally Speaking for personal and professional use, contact Voice Recognition today.