Monday, April 11, 2005

More Zen...

The Zen Micro does a much better job of recording meetings than I first imagined: I recorded two long events Friday and Saturday (a group meeting and a group interview) and you can make out everything everybody says.

Not only that, but the ability to download an audio file to a computer makes transcription much easier -- more and better controls for playback, etc.

The thing I really want now is a program that provides a raw audio-file-to-text transcription, and I can't find one. That's a pretty nifty trick I'm talking about, and most of the people who are working on voice seem to view it as an input control or a way to turn text into a different kind of output (handy, for instance, if you drive a lot, and want to have your e-mail read to you on the road).

Audio-to-text seems to be more about accessibility now: a way for people who can't use a keyboard to write. That's a very different animal than what I need, and I represent a smaller market. Journalists, court and medical transcriptionists... maybe police and intelligence agencies. Who else needs the ability to turn their recordings into rough text documents?

Any suggestions out there?