Over Christmas, I bought myself a small gift that would have proven impossible to describe to my family: Dragon Naturally Speaking. Naturally Speaking is a natural language voice recognition system which is integrated with Microsoft Office tools and other popular applications. As a customer of Nuance's Paperport, I had chance to pick Naturally Speaking up for $49, so, with dreams of turning my computer into a responsive voice-command device, I ordered the product and began to play around with it.
The base Naturally Speaking package is more of a taste of voice recognition than flexible software you can use to control all your applications. The Pro version with flexibility to create new commands and text was about $700 on Nuance's web site, which put it well out of the range of my wallet - especially since I had no idea how well it worked.
After setting up and training the software, I began trying to use it, with mixed results. Dictation can be quick if you enunciate well and improves with training if you're willing to put in the effort. At the same time, though, you say "scratch that" a lot and it takes a bit to get used to doing things like controlling the cursor.
What I was really hoping to do, though, was quickly process email and RSS feeds, applying a GTD approach to designate whether an email needs to be archived, trashed, collected for processing, etc. I use flags and categories in Outlook for this, and have mapped those over to Omea so I can go back and forth between them (more on this in a future blog post).
Naturally Speaking has some ability to do this type of thing out-of-the box, but it has no built-in compatibility with Omea. Outlook support in the base Naturally Speaking edition covers the basics, but not a lot of what I have to do.
Fortunately, a solution offered itself in a freeware scripting framework called Vocola. Vocola uses the Python scripting language and some additional natural language libraries to control Dragon Naturally Speaking.
After installing the needed Python scripting support and other libraries, I found myself amazed at how well Vocola's support matched what I needed to do. In many respects, Omea was easier to control and command than Outlook, since Jetbrains has built in so many keystroke commands to help navigate through Omea.
It's really rare that you can find a software product so seemingly well-designed for exactly what it is you want to do. For me, Omea Pro is one of them, and Vocola for Dragon Naturally Speaking is another. Both are freeware.
Creating your own scripts with Vocola/Python to control Naturally Speaking is a very simple task even if you have just a rudimentary knowledge of programming. With DNS running, you can simply say "Edit Voice Commands" in an application and a text editor will pop up with the voice commands for that app. Save changes to the text file, and then say "Load Voice Commands", and DNS will be able to use the commands just programmed for that application.
For Omea, I have crafted just a handful of voice commands to prove out the concept. I have been real happy with the results so far. Here is my Omea voice command file to date:
# Voice commands for omeapro
# Email or Flagged Items View
Clear Flag = {CTRL+0};
Flag It = {CTRL+1};
Mark Read = {ALT+E}r;
Archive = {ALT+E}R{CTRL+SHIFT+V}Curr{Enter};
Categorize = {CTRL+Y};
Reply = {CTRL+R};
Newsgroups = {CTRL+ALT+N};
Delete = {DEL};
Forward = {CTRL+SHIFT+F};
The word on the left is what you say into the microphone for DNS to understand, and the keystrokes on the right are processed. As you can see, so far all I've done is set up simple commands to operate Omea by voice. Using Python, there's far more possible than just keystroke macros.
The "Archive" command is one that is closest to where I want to go with this. This command is for emails which are not actionable, but which I want to keep around for reference and find perhaps later via Google Desktop Search or Omea.
NOTE ON EMAIL: As I've adopted GTD, I find that I don't folder mail other than to stuff it in a area called "Current Month" and then archive it by month and year. I long ago gave up trying to organize mail via folders and now simply use Google Desktop Search to find anything at a later time. Omea's ability to find email by contact is the other primary means I have to pull an email out of storage. Even tagging mail is beyond my time constraints with the volume that I get on a daily basis.
The "Archive" command above marks an email read and moves it out of my In-Box to the Current Month folder. At the end of each month, I move that big bundle of mail to another Outlook Data File for archiving.
Having gotten control of Omea by voice, the question then becomes "Is it any more efficient than using the keyboard?".
At this point, I really don't think I've proven to myself that using voice is any more efficient. That may be a matter of training DNS more so that I don't have to repeat commands or correct dictation. The nice thing about having this option, though, is that using voice commands gives you a nice break from being hunched over a keyboard all day, and it can be good from an ergonomic point of view. Being able to kick back in your chair and get things done just by talking at your computer for a bit is a needed change-of-pace when you get a constant stream of email like I do.
I'm going to continue to experiment with DNS, Omea, and Outlook, and will hopefully have some updated Vocola command files to share in the future.
We received some welcome news about the future of Omea in early December from Jetbrains. Michael Gerasimov, posting for the Jetbrains Omea Team, told us the following:
Dear Omea users,
After collecting your opinions and having long internal
discussions, we have finally decided to move both Omea Reader and Omea Pro
into the open source domain.
This will definitely take some time, but the
first step has already been made - from now on, Omea Pro is available free
of charge!
Thank you for your input, and you are welcome to contribute to
Omea Pro development when it goes open-source.
I feel a little bit of personal responsibility for causing some of those long discussions. Early in November, I was extremely frustrated with my inability to dig out of a deep well of to-dos and scattered information. I had been forced to back off my use of Omea Pro because I was uncertain of its future and didn't want to continue to invest time organizing information in a tool that might be a dead end. After weeks of searching (fruitlessly) for something similar, I finally went a little nutso on the Omea discussion group. The following post got more reaction than I thought it would, and expresses my frustration at the time:
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I'm convinced that Omea Pro was developed just to torment me.
It's the best information management product I've ever seen, tightly tied to
market-dominant tools where it makes sense, but with a unifying classification
structure and workspaces that allow one to successfully navigate the torrent of
information that pours in on a daily basis.
I've searched all over for products which would allow me to manage the
information overload that comes with my business, and I found Omea over a year
ago after going through product after product which didn't meet my needs.
Onfolio, Outlook, Clear Context, Ultra Recall, etc, etc... all met with a brief
flurry of excitement and then found wanting.
When I found Omea Pro, I thought I had finally discovered the promised land.
Sure, there wasn't a calendar, but it tied to my file structure and email tools
and allowed me to pull together all the disparate elements of information I need
to do my job into nicely segmentable workspaces. It helped me turn noise into a
signal, chaos into order. Information management nirvana was at hand.
But, no, development resources were pulled so that Jetbrains could focus on
other niches. It looks like some developers still work on the product when they
can, but it's been placed far down on their priority list.
So, I can view the promised land, but can not live there. I've had to abandon
Omea Pro not because it's somehow inferior to other available tools, but because
I don't have confidence that it will be carried into the future. I check these
newsgroups every couple of weeks, hoping to see some indication that Jetbrains
has decided to invest in the product and that an even-cooler Omea Pro 3.0 is on
the way.
But no, there's nothing, other than unanswered questions.
(Sigh)
I've seen the future, and it says "Outlook 2007" on it. The future sucks.
The post got about 20 responses, which is pretty high for the jetbrains.omea.pro newsgroup, and apparently helped kick off some activity on the Omea front at Jetbrains. With Omea heading toward the land of open source, it's time for me to bone up on C# and put my time where my newsgroups posts are, and start to see if I can help nudge this tremendous application forward. The future suddenly looks more productive and fun.