Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 has just been released

From improved accuracy and faster performance, to an intuitive user interface with a rich Help system, powerful new voice commands and an enhanced correction and adaptation process, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 has been redesigned to be FASTER, BETTER and SMARTER.

Our First Impressions using Dragon 11:

From our testing, we have also found Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 to be more compatible, able to work with more programs then Dragon version 10.  There is also no comparison with the major leap in Dragon 11's increased accuracy.

A good example is right here. We are dictating this review with Dragon 11, directly into this web editing program.  Dragon is indicating with its new feature, (to be described below), that Dragon 11 is fully compatible with this editing program.  Yesterday, we tried to dictate into this same web editor with Dragon 10.  Dragon 10 was not able to even type into this editor.  Dragon 11 is now allowing us to enter text, fully edit and use all Dragon's features in this same editor.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 is a major step forward in the quality of its recognition! Right out-of-the-box, after the initial training, we all found Dragon to be much more accurate than our previous "trained" Dragon 10 profile, which we had tuned and corrected for years. We found NaturallySpeaking 10 provided excellent recognition, but Dragon 11 blows away Dragon 10's capabilities, and appears flawless.

Look at all these new and improved features!

The Dragon user interface now offers a new onscreen Sidebar, that shows you usage tips as well as many available commands for the program you are currently using. It’s now easier to discover, remember and access important Dragon features and options.

New Recognition Analytics continuously monitor audio quality your usage and alerts you when there is an audio issue, to help you achieve your best accuracy. More than ever, Dragon 11 lets you focus on your thoughts and work, rather than on the mouse, keyboard or computer.

Dragon 11 is more accurate out of the box than version 10, and uses state-of-the-art technology. Thanks to improvements at various levels, corrections are faster to make, and quickly become less necessary. Version 11 “learns” better than any previous version, including learning from your existing documents and dictation, as well as from corrections you make via the keyboard.

Dragon 11 responds faster to your voice commands and also introduces new time-saving commands that consolidate multiple mouse clicks and keystrokes. It’s faster and easier to open applications, get to a particular window, move within a window, send email, create appointments, search the Web, and more – all by voice. So now you can get even more done faster on your computer

Improved Accuracy

Reduced Word Recognition Errors: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 significantly improves recognition accuracy and can reduce recognition errors up to 15% compared with Dragon 10. This means Dragon 11 will recognize your speech more accurately right out of the box, so you will spend less time correcting recognition errors.

Smart Configuration: Dragon 11 runs on a variety of hardware, from small netbooks to high-powered servers. Dragon automatically detects hardware resources and sets itself up to provide the best possible performance. Dragon’s state-of-the-art technology takes advantage of advances in hardware and runs in multiple-threads automatically when multi-core hardware is detected to achieve better recognition performance.

Easy Scheduling of Accuracy Tuning: This automatic process plays a large role in improving your accuracy from your own usage.  Dragon now can adapt to your use, based on what dictations and corrections you do. This adaption or tuning, must be run at a time when the computer is on, but you are not dictating. In version 11, you can schedule the Accuracy Tuning function to adapt your voice profile, at a time and frequency that fit into your schedule.

Recognition Analytics: Because a significant percentage of misrecognitions can be caused by simple audio quality issues such as incorrect microphone connection or placement, background noise and Bluetooth microphone out of range or low on battery, Dragon now automatically detects poor audio input; it then alerts you (in various ways depending on the issue), offering advice to remedy the situation. This keeps Dragon operating for you at the best audio possible, which makes sure your transcriptions are provided with the greatest possible accuracy.

Faster Recognition Response for Commands and Dictation
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11, has improved the recognition response time significantly. It is also faster than previous editions when controlling your program by voice or executing your voice commands that perform actions within applications (e.g., "insert page break," "make that red," etc.)

New User Interface
Dragon did usage studies, and found you can be more productive without showing the previous versions “Results Box”, which showed your dictation as you were speaking.  In Dragon Version 11, it quickly processes your speech in the background, showing you a discreet indicator showing it is processing. This new method encourages your continuous speech, an important factor for accuracy and productivity.

You will no longer be distracted by watching the preliminary recognition results pooling and changing within the Results box before text is inserted into the document. If you like, you can set Dragon to display it back as it traditionally had, if you liked that feature.

New Dragon Sidebar: Dragon 11 can display a list of commands and tips, in a strip along the right of your screen.  This helps you remember, and discover new commands that are available to you.  These include global commands (including mouse commands), application-specific commands and custom-created commands, as well as tips. These items change as you change applications and change functions within your programs. The Dragon 11 Sidebar is a thin, resizable and dockable window that can be placed anywhere on the Windows desktop. In addition, the Sidebar lets you print its contents, for your reference.

Richer Help system: The redesigned Accuracy Center (accessible from the Help menu) now gathers all important tools and options, with brief descriptions of key items. The Help system also incorporates new tips and illustrations.  There is a redesigned Tutorial, consisting of short videos and easy access to related details such as a glossary of key terms. Finding relevant information is faster and easier thanks also to icon links on the Dragon Sidebar and contextual links on dialog boxes – as well as Dragon 11 help, now allows you to ask for the specific feature you would like help on.  You could say, (“Search Dragon Help for…”.

Dragon now has a more usable toolbar (the DragonBar): The naming and organization of items on the DragonBar now allow you to discover and quickly access important but often-overlooked Dragon features, such as the Vocabulary Editor, the analysis of specific documents, scheduled tasks, and recognition modes (Dictation Mode, Numbers Mode, etc.). Now docked to the top of the screen by default, the DragonBar gathers in one area all its indicators: icons and written messages.

Text Control Indicator on the DragonBar: NaturallySpeaking 11 now allows you to easily see if the software you are using is completely compatible with Dragon. There is now a checkmark icon on the DragonBar, that lights up and indicates when Dragon currently has "Full Text Control". Formerly called “Select-and-Say”, “Full Text Control” shows your ability to use commands that interact with words within your text (“Select…”, “Correct…”, “Delete…”, “Insert Before…”. When Dragon does not have “Full Text Control”, Dragon dims this checkmark icon and writes a message in the DragonBar; that you may with to dictate via Dragon’s Dictation Box which gives access to Dragon’s full capabilities to edit and correct text (as in previous versions).

Improved Correcting and Editing
Dragon 11 has created a new way that it handles multiple matches to a command you give. Now when you say a voice commands to select, correct, edit or format a word or phrase and there are multiple matches in your document, Dragon displays a number next to each match. You can choose which number word you wish to apply your command to.  That saves you time by directly and quickly choosing which word you wanted to act on. This also applies to the commands “delete…”, “copy…”, “insert before…”, and more.

Dragon 11 now learns from all Corrections: In the past, corrections entered using the keyboard were not incorporated into your user profile. Now when you dictate something and you use the keyboard and mouse to correct a misrecognition, Dragon takes the correction you make, and adapts your user profile, improving your accuracy.

Enhanced Correction Menu: The Correction Menu now suggests more alternate recognitions by default and let you quickly add phrases to your vocabulary, or to prevent an undesired word from being recognized. (Words that have been deleted from the Vocabulary can be restored if desired, and can now be seen from the Vocabulary Editor’s Display list.)

More usable Spelling Window: Formerly named “Spell Dialog”, this window, that allows you to type or spell a word or name Dragon was not able to transcribe. If one of the alternatives shown in its list is almost correct, you can now say “modify #” then you can either type or voice spell the correct letters. As before, you can also double-click a desired alternative, or say “choose #”.

Time-Saving Voice Commands

More Dragon Voice Shortcuts: Dragon 11 includes more commands than ever to consolidate multiple mouse clicks and keystrokes into a direct voice command that can be spoken anytime -- no matter what is active on the screen. You can now use the "search [website] for [XYZ]" commands to make precise searches in Facebook.com, Twitter and Bing. Dragon 11 also lets you say searches in its onw Help topics (“Search Dragon Help for [XYZ]”, and includes new voice shortcuts that make it faster and easier to manage email, tasks and meetings.

Navigating the Computer Desktop: Dragon now supports more voice commands to show common Windows elements including the desktop and Control Panel, or folders such as My Documents and My Pictures. New commands let you effortlessly switch to a specific window if you have multiple windows open.  Dragon displays a numbered list for each application open, so you can just say the number of the window you want to open. In addition, Dragon 11 allows shorter names for starting popular applications (e.g., "start Microsoft Word" instead of “start Microsoft Office Word 2007”.

Navigating Documents: Dragon 11 allows you to scroll up or down pages within programs including Word, Outlook, Excel, and more, with the same command wordings such as “Start scrolling down,” “Speed up” and “Stop scrolling”, to smoothly scroll text up the screen as you review it.

More Precise Keyword Searching: For its search shortcut commands, Dragon 11 now applies its auto formatting rules to the dictated search keywords (the XYZ in “Search … for XYZ”. In addition, it gives you the option to edit or augment the search string before launching the search (without this option, you must say the entire search command in one utterance: Dragon will launch the search as soon as it hears a pause). These enhancements can save you a lot of time, since the more precise your search string, the faster you find exactly what you need.

Getting Started with Dragon is Faster and Easier

Faster and Easier to Create a User Profile: User profile creation has been redesigned to be simple and conversational. The process now offers information about why each step is needed and helps you make optimal choices. Setting up a microphone and new audio sources, are more clear and straightforward.

Local Settings: During user profile creation, you can now select your region of the world so that Dragon 11 can automatically use regional formatting for words, dates, currency, etc.

New Text Options to “Train” Dragon: Dragon 11 provides simplified training texts designed to make your reading experience easier and more informative.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 is now easier to use with a Digital Voice Recorder. 

Initial Training Time Reduced for Recorders: Creating a new user profile for a digital recorder, or adding a digital recorder as a new audio source for an existing user profile, is now much faster. The minimum reading time required to train Dragon with a recorder has been reduced from 15 to 4 minutes.

More Digital Formats accepted: Dragon 11 can now accept .dss and .ds2 digital formats directly. Files recorded using these digital speech recording formats (found on recorders from Olympus, Grundig and Philips) previously required conversion prior to transcription.

Improved Playback of your voice Smoother fast-forward and rewind behaviors are now available and users now have options to control speed and volume.

Enhanced Hardware and Software Support

Netbook Computers: You can now view a Dragon user interface tutorials, helping you to use Dragon with netbook (mini notebook) computers.

Office 2010 Compatibility: Dragon 11 is completely compatible with Microsoft Office 2010 applications. Full Text Control, Menu Tracking and Natural Language Commands are supported for Word 2010, Outlook 2010 and Excel 2010 allowing you to take full advantage of Dragon dictation and command controls with these new applications.

OpenOffice Writer: Dragon support includes dictation, correction, selection and playback.

Additional Usability Enhancements
The option to require you to say “Click” before saying a link for surfing the Web, is now enabled by default.  That makes sure that while you are in a Web page, you don’t experience unexpected actions when you say a name that is also a link name on the page you are viewing.

Enhanced Open User Dialog for Large Sites (Available in the Professional, Medical and Legal versions): Displays profiles in a tree structure for faster access to multiple profiles"