How to Transcribe Voice Without a Keyboard
There is a way you can send written messages to friends in a social network or write updates in your personal planner using only your voice. If you make use of a free online transcription service, you can send messages to your personal email via voice dictation. You can even send them straight to friends without even having to log onto your computer. Getting started only takes a few minutes.
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Things You'll Need
- Telephone
- Computer access
- Email address
- Free transcription service account
Instructions
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Register online to receive free transcription services. Without having to pay charges, you can have voice dictation messages sent to your personal email by using the Jott transcription service. This service will allow you to send messages to yourself, or alternately to your friends in a special network. (To begin, you will need to follow prompts on the Jott homepage to input your telephone number and email address and to create a password.)
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Call a toll-free number to create messages. Before you begin your voice dictation, you will hear a pre-recorded voice ask, "Who do you want to Jott?" If you want a message sent directly to your personal email, say "Myself." Another option is to add the names in your social network to your Jott account. (Just add the friends ahead of time, and answer the friend's name when you are prompted by the pre-recorded voice.) Thus, this transcription service gives you the latitude to create a personal planner system or simply send messages for fun.
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Make a reminder or send your message directly. This feature highlights Jott's value as a personal planner. You may want a reminder message to be sent to your personal email a day before a scheduled event. If so, just draft a message with voice dictation, and have it filed away in Jott's system. Later, when the time comes, the message will be relayed as a reminder to you. However, if you aren't interested in creating a reminder, just respond "No" when Jott's pre-recorded voice asks "Want a reminder?"
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Log Into your email and open your new Jott message. While Jott is a handy transcription service, it will need up to 10 minutes to process your message. Sometimes, a message will arrive in your personal email a minute or two after you record it, but generally it takes a little longer. Along with the voice dictation, Jott also sends you a copy of your original recording, which can be accessed by pressing a sound icon below your message. If you are using Jott as a personal planner, the beauty is that you don't necessarily need to copy and paste from the email message to another document. Your email from Jott is already dated, and includes the sound recording.
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Check for errors and correct punctuation if necessary. For the most part, Jott is quite a reliable transcription service. It usually recognizes where to end and begin sentences and will even allow you to capitalize words in the middle of a sentence using voice dictation. (For example, if you wanted to write the word "president" with a capital "P." just speak out: "capital p,r,s,i,d,e,n,t.") If you plan to copy and paste a message from your personal email to a different document, you will want to proofread the Jott message. In addition to minor grammatical errors, Jott will also ocassionally substitute a word it can't decipher with another word (such as "illegible" for "incredible").
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Copy and paste the message into a larger document. If you are writing an essay, you can compose it through voice dictation using Jott. However, a small drawback about this transcription service is that it will only allow you to record messages 30 seconds or less in length. As a result, you must open several messages from your personal email and organize the information where you need it afterward. While short messages are O.K. if you're using Jott as a personal planner device, they could be a nuisance if you're trying to write a book. If you're sending Jott messages to friends in a social network, you may want to review the messages before automatically forwarding them, just to see if everything was transcribed properly. You may also want to add a remark or two to the messages before sending them. Whatever the case, this transcription service can be a real blessing if you have a heavy workload and don't have the time to sit chained to a computer.
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Tips & Warnings
Since Jott's messages include the recording of your original audio message in addition to its transcription, you may want to also use Jott as a means of filing away audio information. For example, if you hear a song on the radio that you like while you're driving your car, you could call Jott and create a message that will record a clip from the song. Later, when you open your email, you will find the message about the song and be able to hear the clip again. Perhaps some of the song's lyrics will also be understood and transcribed by Jott, but even if they aren't this is a pretty handy way to store the song in your memory.
Be careful about sending sensitive information over Jott. While it's not likely that your messages will be intercepted, you want to avoid all possibility of unintentionally releasing your Social Security Number or credit card numbers.
