Windows 10 Speech recognition and Cortana tips

Cortana virtual assistant 

As powerful and smart as Cortana is, there are certain things she can’t yet do, such as managing, and switching between desktop windows, or navigate within certain applications. Windows 10’s Speech Recognition application has initially introduced in Windows Vista, and has since matured into a pretty decent enhancement to Cortana, with abilities that go beyond text input and weather information.
Windows Speech Recognition is capable of many system tasks, such as managing and switching between desktop windows, summoning certain system applications, and even shutting down Windows.
It’s also important to understand that the reliability of both Cortana and Windows Speech Recognition is heavily dependent on the quality of the microphone available, as well as environmental noise affecting the ability of the service to understand human speech.
The first step to go completely, or almost completely hands-free on Windows 10, is to enable Cortana to constantly listen. This can be accomplished by clicking on Cortana search box and then clicking on the gear icon, which will bring up the settings for Cortana. Once in the settings page, we’ll simply set “Let Cortana respond to “Hey Cortana”, and for extra security, and to avoid accidental triggering of Cortana by other people in the vicinity, we’ll set “Try to respond only to me” to On.
From this point on, Cortana will respond anytime it hears “Hey Cortana” from the owner of the PC.

Going hands-free

The next step is to summon Windows Speech Recognition, by saying “Hey Cortana, open Speech Recognition”. The Speech recognition app will open, and will be ready to accept commands.
The difference between Cortana and Windows Speech Recognition, is that while Cortana is always on, Speech Recognition will enter a sleep mode after a short period of inactivity. This is because Windows Speech Recognition is an older software, which still isn’t as accurate as Cortana, and which allows for a higher rate of error, even after extensive training.
Surprisingly, system commands seem to work pretty accurately, when trying to summon Task Manager, Settings, or when switching from one active window to another. Telling Windows to “open...” a certain application will trigger that application immediately, or spawn a list box offering choices of different applications with the same name. The same occurs when switching between existing application windows already open.
For example, saying “Switch to Google Chrome” will trigger a dialog letting us choose which one of the open Chrome windows we want to switch to. Each instance of the same application will be listed with a number. Saying a certain number will cause the corresponding window to become active.

Native dictation

Entering text into a document using voice has become easier, whether we use a desktop app like Microsoft Office, or a web-based editor, like Google Docs.
In the former example, Microsoft Office does not include voice dictation, however it is possible to summon Windows Speech Recognition using Cortana, to enable dictation in any selected app on screen.
In the case of Google Chrome, or other browsers, many websites that support text input, like Google Docs, or any number of rich-text toolbars found on on blog sites, or other services, have the ability to accept voice input, through a microphone icon.
For instance, Wordpress, and other blog sites allow users to click on the microphone icon in the toolbar of an available rich-text editor box, to let users enter text into a textbox using their voice.
Google Drive has made this process even easier, by providing a keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+S, which allows voice dictation within a text document.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11

Image
DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11 – How DX12 will transform PC  gaming on Windows 10 DIRECTX 12 VS DIRECTX 11 – WHY DOES IT MATTER? Windows 10  has arrived and, along with integrated Cortana, Xbox One game streaming and a fancy new web browser, one of its key features is DirectX 12, the latest version of the operating system’s gaming API. A software layer that sits between the hardware that powers our computers and the software that runs on them,  DirectX is at the heart of the vast majority of games that run on Windows.  The other major gaming API is OpenGL, which as its name suggests is an open source API. Both offer very similar key functions, but it’s DirectX that tends to be at the heart of most bigger games. Microsoft talks up the amazing new capabilities for every new release of DirectX, but with DirectX 12 it really does have some key new features, at least when it comes to improving performance. It also has some new effects tools and functions for making games look bett
Read more

Android N's "Freeform Windows"

Last week, we wrote about the " freeform window " mode in the Android N Developer Preview. Brief mentions in the developer documents and hints in the code pointed to Android someday displaying apps in resizable floating windows, just like in a desktop OS. Freeform window mode isn't normally accessible in the current dev preview, but shortly after the post, we were contacted by reader  Zhuowei Zhang  with instructions on how to make it work. We'll get to the instructions, but first let's talk about what's actually here. Freeform window mode is just what we imagined. It's a dead ringer for  Remix OS —multiple Android apps floating around inside windows—and it might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system . It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you'll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the left of the "X" button that pops up after a second or two, there will be a s
Read more

The Chord Mojo turns good headphones into great ones

Image
The best gadget you never knew you wanted Audio processing isn’t sexy. Better sound doesn’t lend itself to easy marketing through numbers or pretty posters, and so many companies treat it as an afterthought when designing their products. The  blissful ignorance  of "good enough" audio pervades the world of consumer technology, leaving only a niche of audio enthusiasts supporting a few boutique hi-fi manufacturers. Things have been like this for quite some time, but recently a new gadget was introduced that bridges the gap between the many and the few, and its name is the  Chord Mojo . The Mojo is an audio processor and amplifier that’s smaller than a pack of cards yet delivers the awesome performance of much larger rivals. Honestly, I think its size works to its disadvantage because it looks like, and is, a portable unit you can plug into your phone and use off its 10-hour battery. By audiophile standards, it’s almost  too  practical. But those same aud
Read more