Voice Enabled Emails
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Personal communication is one area of modern day life that has undergone a dramatic change over the last few years. You only have to venture outside to see any number of people with their mobile phones or Bluetooth headsets firmly attached to their ears as they engage in what seems like one-way conversations. Another example of this modern trend is the rise in the popularity of email against other forms of personal communication. It is this latter communication method that forms the basis of a product entitled Speak-to-Mail from CoolSoft LLC.
Speak-to-Mail 1.0, as you might expect from its title, allows users to create emails through the use of voice rather than typing away at the keyboard. The product can work in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Netscape.
As with its companion product, SpeakToText, this voice-enabled email enhancer makes use of Microsoft SAPI 5.1 speech recognition engine to handle the speech-to-text conversion. Some training, involving reading selected passages, will be required so that a user-profile can be built up and produce a more accurate performance from the software. This should take around 30 minutes for the average user. If you already have a program that makes use of this technology, such as the previously mentioned SpeakToText, then there will be no need for any training as the user-profile will already be in existence.
For the purpose of this review, Outlook Express 6 was selected as the email client. While Speak-to-Mail retains the splash screen used by Outlook Express, it replaces the main interface with its own version. This is rather chunky and gives a more console-style appearance to the email client. Outlook Express is still there and appears in its minimise form on the system tray.
The interface is divided into three main areas. On the left is a scrollable list of contacts. The entries in this list can be sorted either by first or last name. Situated on the right are the standard fields used by emails along with the message area. Beneath this are a number of large-style buttons for carrying out various tasks.
Colour is used on the various buttons and field markers to indicate how each one can be used. The colour yellow means that only voice-activation will work for that feature. Green is used to indicate that either voice or mouse controls are suitable while grey limits the user to mouse only.
While we are all familiar with the basic format and information required for sending emails, Speak-to-Mail expects the user to be conversant with the voice commands that will instigate various tasks. For example to remove portions of text you need to say scratch that while entering a number as a numeral, rather a word, requires you to preface the number with the command forcenum. More detailed explanations about these and other information about commands can be found in the supplied PDF version of the User Manual. Fortunately by placing your mouse cursor over many of the buttons found in this program will reveal advice about the voice command needed to activate it.
Getting into the habit of using voice commands within this application does take a getting use to but can be worth the effort. With certain words, especially contact names and specific technical terms, you will need to use the Train option which involves typing the word or phrase and then record yourself saying it.
Entering data in the various fields, composing your message, adding a pre-defined signature and sending your email are all possible within Speak-to-Mail but one task you can not carry out is editing your address book. For that you will need to use Outlook Express by first shutting down Speak-to-Mail and then maximising Outlook Express from the system bar.
With the inability to add or edit entries in your contact list from within Speak-to-Mail and one of its control buttons bringing up an advert for another CoolSoft product makes me think that some extra work needs to be carried out on this title. Perhaps waiting for version 2 would be a better bet. The price of this product, without a headset microphone, is $15.
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