Use a PDA as a Voice Recorder?

Learn the limitations, dos, and don'ts of this PDA feature.

James A. Martin

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Feature: Using a Pocket PC as a Voice Recorder

Being bored once in a meeting is bad enough. Being bored twice--by the same meeting--is downright excruciating.

Yet that's what happens when, after sitting through a tedious confab, you then must listen to a recording of the snoozefest to ensure you wrote down all the key details. Why, oh why, can't you just record the meeting with a digital gadget, later connect said gadget to your computer, and then let the computer transcribe the recording while you go to a movie?

That's the question, more or less, many of you have asked me in the year since I wrote two columns about digital voice recorders: "Digital Voice Recorders" and "More on Voice Recorders." This week, having asked my computer to transcribe a digital voice recording of a meeting, I'll answer that question.

Don't Take a Meeting

Based on my experience, asking your PC to accurately transcribe a recording of a meeting is like asking Beyonce to sing like Pavarotti.

In my informal tests, I recorded a meeting with my business partner Nick. Separately, I recorded several memos on my own. I made the recordings on a Dell Axim X50v Pocket PC.

FYI: Most Pocket PCs, and some Palm OS devices, include built-in microphones and voice recording software. (You're less likely to find these features on a PDA/phone combination device, like the PalmOne Treo 650.) With a PDA, you can easily record ideas or memos while driving, walking, or doing anything else that makes writing notes improbable or unsafe. It's a cool and often underused PDA feature.

For my test recordings, I used ScanSoft's Pocket PC recording utility, which is included in the company's Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 speech recognition software. Dragon Naturally Speaking is the leading PC speech recognition software; I've used it for years and recommend it. For more information, read our review, "First Look: Voice Rec Gets Better"; you can also go to ScanSoft's Web site.

After syncing the PDA with my Windows notebook, I launched Dragon Naturally Speaking and transcribed the recordings. As I expected, the software transcribed only about 25 percent of the meeting accurately. My memos, however, were transcribed into text with an accuracy rate of at least 90 percent--and sometimes even higher.

It's Not You--It's Them

Unless you're Sally Field's character in Sybil, there are other people besides yourself in the meetings you attend. And that's a problem for speech recognition software.

For accuracy's sake, you must train the software to understand your particular way of speaking. Without that training, the software can only guess at what's being said. And when it must guess, speech recognition software--even such top-notch programs as Dragon Naturally Speaking--often gets it wrong. For example, when you say "eat," untrained software may transcribe it as "feet." All your "ands" come out as "ins," your "therefores" become "where fors," and every "but" becomes "bit." Pretty soon, you've got a lot of gibberish.

As a result, to accurately transcribe what was said in a meeting, the speech recognition software would have to be trained in advance by each attendee. Logistically, that's just not probable.

The Good News

Nonetheless, a portable digital voice recorder that's compatible with a speech recognition program still offers advantages to mobile professionals.

For instance, Dragon Naturally Speaking begins to recognize your speech after about 10 minutes of training. The more you use the software, the more it understands you, and that increases recognition accuracy.

Best of all, Dragon Naturally Speaking is compatible with a number of portable digital recording devices. In addition to working with Pocket PCs, the PC software can transcribe recordings made on most Olympus and Sony digital recorders and a few Panasonic models.

ScanSoft offers a list of compatible devices online. The list isn't up to date, however. For instance, the only compatible Dell PDA listed as I write this is the now-discontinued Dell Axim X3. But, as I mentioned, I used ScanSoft's voice recording utility on an Axim X50v, Dell's most recent model, and it worked quite well.

Palm OS device owners are mostly out of luck, for now. According to ScanSoft's Web site, the Palm Tungsten T and T2 are the only Palm OS devices compatible with Dragon Naturally Speaking. A ScanSoft spokesperson confirmed the information and said the company was working to improve its support for Palm OS devices but could not say when more such devices would be supported.

Caveats and Tips

Tweak Your Settings: You may need to adjust your Pocket PC settings to ensure Dragon Naturally Speaking transcribes recordings properly. First, on your PDA, go to Settings, System, Microphone. Use the slider bar to change the microphone gain setting to low. (Too high a setting can capture too much background noise, which decreases recognition accuracy.) Then go to Settings, Personal, Input, Options, Voice Recording Format. Select "11,025 Hz, 16 Bit, Mono (22KB/s)" for voice recording format to ensure compatibility with Dragon Naturally Speaking.

More Training Needed: If you're like me, you've already trained Dragon Naturally Speaking to recognize your voice by talking into a microphone on your PC. But for best results, you'll still need to train the software to understand your voice recordings made on a Pocket PC or other device. That means reading a training document into your portable recorder for 10 minutes or more. It's an extra step, but it's worth it.

Don't Keep Files: Delete unneeded recordings on your Pocket PC or other portable device as soon as possible, because they consume a lot of storage space. For instance, a 49-second recording I made was over 1MB in size.

Formatting Tips: Don't expect your recordings to be transcribed into fully formatted text. Unless you take certain steps, your transcription will be one long paragraph. For example, if you say the word "period" at the end of a sentence, Dragon Naturally Speaking will add a period there, and the phrase that follows will be capitalized. Similarly, if you say "New paragraph" during your dictation, its text will be formatted accordingly when transcribed.

Requests to Readers

I've got a couple questions for you.

First, do you use speech recognition software? If so, do you use it to transcribe recordings made on a portable digital recording device? Send your experiences, tips, and insights to me via e-mail.

Second, do you have notebook insurance? Two years ago, I asked readers who had insured their notebooks with Safeware, which specializes in notebook insurance policies, to report on their experiences. Unfortunately, to date I've only received two replies. Both were favorable, however.

Since then, I've had countless e-mails from readers asking if I've heard from other any Safeware policy holders. So I'm asking you, dear readers, to once again speak up. If you've insured your notebook with Safeware or any other company, and you've had to file a claim, please e-mail me about your experiences. Were you satisfied with the outcome? If so, why? If not, why not?

Mobile Computing News, Reviews, & Tips

Reader Tip: Reduce Clutter With Iogear Cables

"I travel to off-the-beaten-path scuba dive destinations for digital underwater photography. Every piece of electronic gear, including notebooks, needs to...be as light and small as possible," writes Richard Todd of Salinas, California, in response to my February column about traveling light.

Cables and power cords can quickly add bulk, Richard notes, and when he traveled with coils of cables, airport security often wanted a closer look at them. So he now travels with Iogear's ReelQuick compact, retractable FireWire and USB cables. "They reel up to tiny spools," he writes, "take up precious little room in my bag, weigh a fraction of full-sized cables, and they seem to cast an x-ray image that's less alarming [to airport checkpoint security] than most cables."

I haven't used Iogear cables, so I can't verify Richard's statements. But if you're interested, you can read about them at Iogear's site; they're about $20 each.

Reader Tip: New Ways to Use Old Notebooks

"Our two old notebooks aren't worth selling, but they still work, so we set them up as 'multimedia stations' in our home," writes Thomas Gaida of Cologne, Germany, in response to my column about how to dispose of an old notebook.

Thomas's old notebooks "work great in the kitchen or den" for playing CDs and Internet radio; for looking up recipes; and for displaying digital photos during parties. And during long trips, Thomas says "we copy movies to the notebooks and give them to the kids for entertainment." Great ideas, Thomas--but keep those batteries recharged or you'll have some grumpy kids on your hands.

First Look: Canon's Portable Printer Is a Solid Traveling Companion

Canon's $250 Pixma IP90 portable photo printer weighs 4 pounds, prints faster than many desktop inkjet printers, and produces good-looking text documents, says PC World reviewer Paul Jasper. Although color and gray-scale photos printed on photo paper looked slightly blurry, the overall quality was good--especially for a portable printer.

For the latest prices, check our Product Finder.

Online Backup Review: Free Streamload Service--What's Not to Like?

Streamload, an online storage service, offers free backups on the Internet, lets you easily share favorite media files with others, and has an easy-to-use interface, writes PC World's Tom Mainelli.

Streamload provides up to 10GB of free storage, provided you download no more than 100MB per month from your account. After that, you are charged according to the amount of data you access. If you only use the service to back up files you don't need often, your charges will be minimal. For instance, for $4 per month, you can download up to 1GB per month; $10 gets you 10GB/month; and so on.

For more online backup options, read my columns on the subject: "Online Backup Services" and "Online Backup, the Sequel."

PDA Review: GPS on a Pocket PC

PC World's Yardena Arar took Garmin's new IQue M5, a Pocket PC with built-in Global Positioning System technology, for a spin. Denny was impressed by the PDA's comfortable weight (under 6 ounces) and attractive design. And the device comes with a windshield mount and car power port charger. But pinpointing specific coordinates on a map was neither easy nor intuitive. And the learning curve required to master the gadget is fairly steep.

You can check our Product Finder for the latest prices.

Wireless News: A 7-Megapixel Camera Phone

Pretty soon you won't be able to tell the difference between digital camera and cell phone images, if Samsung's latest wireless handset is any indication of where the technology is headed.

Samsung recently showed off the SCH-V770, a cell phone with a 7-megapixel camera built in. At first glance, the device resembles a digital still camera, thanks to its 3X optical zoom lens, flash, and 2-inch color display for viewing images. The camera phone also offers manual focus, user-controlled focal length, shutter speed, and other controls.

There's no word yet as to when the camera phone will be sold, or for how much.

Suggestion Box

Is there a particularly cool mobile computing product or service I've missed? Got a spare story idea in your back pocket? Tell me about it.