krolg said . "no kidding, does it really work that well?"
yeah ...

A "sound poem" for Piazza Angelio, Barga (LU) Italy February 1999
QUOTE
This is a site specific installation originally commissioned for Piazza Angelio but which has since grown into a piece of work involving most of Barga Vecchia. A computer, voice recognition software and a microphone were installed in the Osteria Angelio for one evening. The ambient sounds of people talking , drinking and eating within the Osteria were recorded, translated and printed onto paper sheets. The American voice recognition software had great difficulty coping with the mainly Italian voices, the music and the general ambient background sounds. What was finally printed onto the paper was a series of seemingly unrelated English words but if looked at in a lighter vein could be quite easily read as a kind of mixture between Dada and Haiku poetry. This generated text forms the basis for the sound poem. --- you can see these sound poems
here[Yeah a decade ago the software was clunky, brittle and just downright THICK.
It took me a couple of months to teach my computer to understand my voice - even then I had to work in a closed room with no interruptions ... somebody walking into the room would close the browser or start up the printer or stuff like that.
In ten years they have made giant leaps and the software that I have been using this past 4 months is just about as good as it get get for the moment .. Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5 ... works for chat, forums, writing docs, skype, articles on wp .. more or less everything.
ciao
db
P.S It does need a fairly fast machine to work well ...one of the big disappointments this month is that my beloved eeepc 900 is just too much of a toy to handle it ... which is a REAL PAIN