New KnowBrainer Forum Intro
Preamble: Having just released a new version of KnowBrainer 2006 and UniVoice that will work with NaturallySpeaking Preferred 9, this seemed like a good time to introduce a new KnowBrainer/UniVoice Speech Recognition Forum. I'd like to thank Skip Taylor for making this forum possible.
Introduction: My name is Lunis Orcutt and I created the first third-party command software for DragonDictate in 1993 while Al Gore was creating the Internet 
. KnowBrainer was designed to help level the playing field for the physically disabled and I started actively marketing this command software, after converting it to NaturallySpeaking Ver. 2, in 1996 but ran into a major obstacle; the manufacturer. Unfortunately I was never able to convince the manufacturers (Dragon Systems/L & H/ScanSoft/Nuance) to add command capability to the consumer product line or lower the pricing on the professional product line so that those who needed it the most could afford it. Since it was obvious that the manufacturer wasn't going to budge and I am not a programmer, I sought outside assistance and eventually came up with KnowBrainer 2005 which worked in all versions of NaturallySpeaking. Nuance managed to defeat our short victory when they released Preferred 9 which effectively blocked our previous command product but fortunately we were able to overcome these obstacles and have even begun work on a new version of KnowBrainer that will hopefully support the Microsoft Windows Vista speech engine.
The reason why we are making this announcement is because until 01/07/2007 previous versions of KnowBrainer only supported the professional versions of NaturallySpeaking. For those who cannot afford or justify the purchase one of the professional versions of NaturallySpeaking, there is finally an affordable alternative.
Short definition of KnowBrainer 2006 = third-party command product that includes 10,000+ prefab commands for NaturallySpeaking and introduces an Advanced-Scripting Command Browser for creating and editing personal commands which is especially beneficial for users of Preferred 9 because KnowBrainer allows the creation of Advanced-Scripting macros, which formally was only available in the professional versions of NaturallySpeaking.
Short definition of UniVoice = pretrained non-gender specific non-age specific NaturallySpeaking user file which typically offers higher accuracy than a trained user file, requires no training and can be used universally (even with digital recorders). John Ames is the developer of UniVoice and this posting was dictated with UniVoice.
John and I will be monitoring and answering KnowBrainer and UniVoice questions on this new forum so please feel free to ask questions.
I'm sure others are curious
I'm sure others are curious as well, how are you getting the KnowBrainer Software to work with naturallyspeaking nine preferred?
Is this via a special licensing agreement with Nuance, via the NatLink APIs, or some other mechanism altogether?
-- Scott W
Speech resources at SpeechWiki
Try QuickSwitch at Applied Recognition today
I can tell you that
I can tell you that we did not use SDK because Nuance doesn't permit it. The only way Nuance would consider licensing Preferred 9 to KnowBrainer is if we purchased runtime licensing and changed the name because when you add KnowBrainer to Preferred 9, it's a little too close to Pro 9 for Nuance to be comfortable with so rest assured, we received no assistance from them. We did not use NatLink or Vocola either but I am not a programmer and I do not know the precise mechanism that my programming team used. What I can tell you is that this type of information is going to remain proprietary with our company because I spent about $40,000, out of my own pocket, to make this happen and we are going to need to recover some developmental costs.
In the early 90s I was in the music business and started using command software to automate my recording studio. When I saw the potential of command software, specifically DragonDictate, I attempted to convince both Kurzweil (later L & H) and Dragon Systems (later L & H/ScanSoft/Nuance) to make their software affordable. At one point, Dragon Systems was actually beginning to listen to my recommendations but after they developed NaturallySpeaking, command technology was put on the back burner. I soon realized that the speech recognition companies were focused in the wrong direction and I decided if I couldn't change their mind that I would try to find a third-party way to make it happen.
I went into business over a decade ago to “affordably” deliver command technology to the physically disabled who otherwise couldn't afford to purchase the premium versions of NaturallySpeaking. There were a lot of ups and downs but every time I came close, the manufacturer raised the bar so that complete hands-free speech recognition was always a bit out of reach to the people who needed it the most. I make about 75% of my living from physicians, 10% from attorneys, 5% from the physically disabled and 10% miscellaneous. I'm actually aiming at the physically disabled market but for the most part, only insurance companies and state run vocational rehab centers can afford to purchase NaturallySpeaking Pro 9 with KnowBrainer 2006. The same holds true for disabled military personnel. I'm hoping KnowBrainer 2006 REV D will put an end to all that because FINALLY, it will work with Preferred 9 and hopefully soon open the door to the Microsoft Vista speech engine as well.
Although ViaVoice did a deplorable job on their macro building tools, at least they included them in an affordable package. ViaVoice development was discontinued many years ago and I'm hoping that Preferred 9 and KnowBrainer will fill that hole and offer a price value point between the Preferred 9 $200 SRP pricing and the Pro 9 $900 SRP pricing.
KnowBrainer Support Staff - Lunis Orcutt
Dictated with DNS 9, KnowBrainer and UniVoice
KnowBrainer wrote:
ViaVoice development was discontinued many years ago and I'm hoping that Preferred 9 and KnowBrainer will fill that hole and offer a price value point between the Preferred 9 $200 SRP pricing and the Pro 9 $900 SRP
To set the record right, ViaVoice was last developed in July 2004 when VV 10.5 was subsequently issued.
I totally disagree with KnowBrainer that " ViaVoice did a deplorable job on their macro building tools ". The VV macro building tools are very simple to use, and any macro can be made if the keystrokes are known, and can also be made with a mouse cursor provided that the location of the mouse is consistently accurate.
VV 10.5 is well comparable to DNS 8 Professional (and possibly even 9 Professional concerning which I have no knowledge), but at a price which is approximately one third of the cost of DNS Professional.
One cannot compare DNS Preferred with VV, where DNS Preferred requires the additional tools of Vocola, et al, to give comparable functionality.
The fact that VV has not been further developed is not an indictment, since it will carry out practically all functions that DNS will, and certainly has sufficient functionality for the average user without having to add additional tools.
Quentin
>>> To set the record right,
>>>
To set the record right, ViaVoice was last developed in July 2004 when VV 10.5 was subsequently issued.
ViaVoice 10.5 wasn't an actual upgrade; it was merely a patch for ViaVoice 10 which wasn't compatible with Windows XP SP 1 or 2. It should have been labeled Ver. 10.1 which was released by Nuance who has absolutely no interest in promoting it. ViaVoice competes directly with Preferred. IBM threw in the proverbial towel when Microsoft donated the code to enable NaturallySpeaking 7 Select-&-Say throughout Microsoft Office. I personally suspect that development of ViaVoice officially ended in 2003 and actually ended sooner when IBM sold the distribution rights to Nuance for few shares of stock. Nuance may not even add support for ViaVoice in Windows Vista.
>>> I totally disagree with KnowBrainer that " ViaVoice did a deplorable job on their macro building tools
From your answer it's obvious that you have never used the macro building tools in any professional version of NaturallySpeaking. Otherwise you wouldn't have made that ridiculous claim. We spent less than a week working with the ViaVoice Command Browser because there was so little to work with and we thought we must have missed something so we called the developers in Scotland who verified our findings.
Our Brief IBM History:
In 2001 IBM asked us (KnowBrainer was part of another speech recognition company during that year) to port our KnowBrainer command software into ViaVoice 8 and we started working on the project. As we examined the ViaVoice Command Browser we were literally shocked at the lack of capability. The 1991 DragonDictate product offered significantly more command capability than ViaVoice. The only macro option in ViaVoice was a macro recorder that could do nothing more than record every keystroke and mouse movement. There is certainly no easier way to create a macro but even by DragonDictate definitions, it was a joke. This macro recorder feature was eventually implemented in the professional versions of NaturallySpeaking but it's considered to be an industry joke. We know of no licensed/certified NaturallySpeaking vendors who recommend using the macro recorder and that pretty much tells you all you need to know. To elaborate our point, KnowBrainer 4 (5 versions back) included a command called Next Paragraph which is designed to move the cursor to the end of the current line or paragraph, strike the {Enter} Key twice, left align the text (in case you were working on a title) and force the first letter of the next word to begin with a capital letter (a command feature, like numerous others, not supported by ViaVoice). The command consisted of 5 movements and even when using specialized macro keys, to force the command to deploy faster, ViaVoice recorded it in real time which meant that it took over 5 seconds to move the cursor the distance of 1 inch. The KnowBrainer/NaturallySpeaking command took less than 1 second. We showed our findings to IBM and told them that unless they could develop real macro software, we couldn't support them. Eventually ViaVoice added the option to speed up macros which helped but isn't exactly ideal because complex commands require pauses. We also dislike the fact that there was no listing command support. Example: What if you needed a command that could page up or down 100 times. In NaturallySpeaking or KnowBrainer it would take a single listing command. In ViaVoice it would require 200 commands. Ouch!
Let me put it another way: Our company processes, charges and ships orders with a single command. We have to launch browsers, answer yes or no questions (like as to whether or not the credit card went through) and answer about 40 shipping questions before the shipping label will print and our customer will be e-mailed their shipping notification. Much of the command can be deployed rapidly but we also have to add wait times to give the browser time to redraw when it changes the page. Bottom line: If we wrote the command in ViaVoice it would probably take about 10 to 15 minutes to deploy but we could do the work manually in about 5 minutes. In NaturallySpeaking the macro only takes about 2 or 3 minutes.
The only thing that we can possibly agree on is the value of ViaVoice which can be purchased for as little as $30 on the Internet. We would certainly agree that ViaVoice’s macro capabilities far surpass those of NaturallySpeaking Preferred but other than simplicity, you really can't compare ViaVoice macros with those of NaturallySpeaking Professional, KnowBrainer or Vocola.
I also beg to differ with you on ViaVoice’s accuracy. I think it's a fine speech recognition product but I found Ver. 10 to only be about as accurate as Ver. 7 of NaturallySpeaking at best and that was when ViaVoice was discontinued. With only one exception that we could find, every PC magazine that compared ViaVoice to NaturallySpeaking rated NaturallySpeaking's Ver. 7 accuracy over ViaVoice 10. In our tests we found DNS Ver. 8 to be at least 23% more accurate and DNS 9 to be yet another 15% more accurate over DNS 7. When you do the math you'll find DNS 9 to be about 40% more accurate than ViaVoice 10 and when we add UniVoice to the equation, we can gain an additional 15% boost in accuracy which translates into double accuracy or... game over! We appreciate your enthusiasm for ViaVoice but like DragonDictate, that product is now a dinosaur.
KnowBrainer Support Staff - Lunis Orcutt
Dictated with DNS 9, KnowBrainer and UniVoice