Having installed Windows 7, I was keen to see whether the speech recognition function had improved.  I’m happy to report that the speech recognition function has indeed improved.  In fact I’m writing this post using the speech recognition function and I have to say from my perspective its accuracy and ease of use are greatly improved.

It works fairly well with Internet Explorer but I’m afraid to say that speech recognition works not at all with Firefox, which is disappointing but I suppose hardly surprising.  Voice recognition is probably a pretty complex thing!

What is noticeable is that the speech recognition seems to have improved enormously in its accuracy (of course having said that, it took me four or five goes to get “in its accuracy” right - oh the delicious irony). But apart from that I think the potential benefits of speech recognition are terrific.  It does seem that the ambient noise problem of earlier versions seem to have been somewhat overcome and this version is picking up very well on vocal signals rather than background noise.

The odd bit of traffic noise in the background will still make my speech recognition system think I have said something but rather than insert a word it will simply ask the question, “what did you say?”.  This is a much better solution than inserting gobbledigook.

But frankly, I never really had the time or patience to stick with speech recognition because even for this simple article I’ve probably spent about half an hour longer than I normally would have trying to correct all the mistakes that the speech recognition system has made.  One suspects that speech recognition is a little bit like typing in that you really need to train and then keep practicing regularly to really see results in accuracy and ease of use.

I’ve always thought speech recognition would be useful if if you suffer from RSI or some other injury that left you unable to type.  If you really needed to use it then you would have the patients to train and get it right.  But for me, for now, speech recognition seems to take longer than typing. I suppose if you’re willing to invest the time and effort then you may find that speech recognition holds the promise of easy navigation and simple and accurate text manipulation/editing it has always promoted.

And one more thing before I go, speech recognition in Windows 7does seem to be on a par with other software packages such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, which as you probably know, come at a premium in terms of price.

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If you have more than one Twitter account then hootsuite is a service that deserves a closer look. It enables you to set up mulitple accounts and tweet to those accounts in one go. hootsuite also enable users to have multiple logins to one Twitter account, meaning that you can have more than one editor for your tweets without having to use the same login.

You can manage users access to Twitter accounts and their role. It really is a neat idea. There is not much more to tell about this resource. It does what they say it will do and it does easily and with a minimum of fuss.

I guess at some stage they will start charging people for the service but at the moment it’s in beta and so its free. Get in early from some hootsuiting sweetness.

Give it a try at hootsuite.

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I’ve been looking at Twitter in more detail of late and you’ll see on this site some recent additions that take advantage of this technology.

Now you don’t need to have a browser open to keep up to date with the tweets that you’ve been following. twhirl is a program developed using Adobe AIR that you download onto your desktop (you’ll need to install Adobe AIR first) and they use to follow your favourite Twitterers or your favourite Twitter searches. You can also follow some other services like Twitter using this tool, although it doesn’t aggregate them – you’ll need a separate window for each one.

This tool is particularly useful if you like following live micro-blogging surrouding a particular issue or world event. Recently WEEver was following G20 developments on Worst Episode Ever and if you visit you’ll see it arranged through another neat tool called ScribbleLive.

twhirl gives you this functionality right on your desktop. It also has another great feature that sldes up tweets onto your desktop when the twhirl window is not showing – so you can keep up to date with tweets while you’re doing something else – that’s called multi-tasking or distracting depending on your point of view!

I think twhirl is a very good looking tool, well laid out and easy to use. If you are already familiar with Twitter I think you’ll find it a most useful interface. There are a number of other tools out there that I’ve tried but none were quite as intuitive and simple to use as twhirl.

If you wanted to aggregate a number of social networking sites and tools then twhirl isn’t probably what you’d choose, but if you rely on Twitter as your main tool then I think you should have a look at twhirl.

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Well, I’ve been using Windows 7 for some weeks now and thought that it was probably worth updating my original review. Overall I have to admit that the experience of Windows 7 remains positive.

The tablet PC function with Windows 7 does not seem to be too crash hot – but that is probably driver conflict issues with ASUS – you can use the pen on the screen but the R1F doesn’t detect when it is in tablet mode or notebook mode.

As don’t use tablet mode very much this isn’t a huge problem for me.

I am still impressed at the speed with which it boots up. I have put most of my favourite programs on the system and it doesn’t seem to be making too much of a difference. In Vista the whole laptop almost ground to a halt at boot up. But this seems to be going okay.

The overall speed of the system is reasonably good and a marked improvement on Vista. I haven’t suffered any crashes of the system, no freezing up. And occasionally a program will stop working – you can shut that program down without too much hassle and Windows 7 just keeps going.

Wireless and bluetooth seem to work fine. With the advent of the new version of Skype and Windows 7 I can finally use my bluetooth headphones as a headset for voice calls. This worked straight off the bat – with Vista it took a long time of fiddling around and testing to get the headset to work for one minute.

I’m getting used to all the different ways to interact with items on the desktop and whilst running programs – finding the shortcuts to doing things. This is kind of neat and there is always something else to discover by accident. I think this is a nice way of making the experience a discovery  – although I imagine some folk will just hate it.

All in all I’m pleased to report that the experience is so far still superior to Vista. I won’t be going back. Windows 7 has sold me on that front.

I’ll keep ‘betaing’ away with Windows 7 but I reckon its an OS that Microsoft users can rightly be looking forward to – especially if you’ve been lumped with a Vista system.

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I have heard a lot about a thing called Meebo for the last 8 months or so. As is the situation with new tech I hadn’t really had a chance to check it out. I knew it was something to do with social networking, but wasn’t really sure. Well having now found a moment to look into it, it is to do with social networking, but more importantly it offers a way to aggregate all of those annoying, different instant messaging accounts you have into one web-based solution.

I have to admit, it’s a really neat solutions. And not just for instant messaging but it seems for chat rooms too. Users don’t need to be logged into Meebo to take advantage of the chatting functions – now this is a huge benefit as it means that people can just participate as a guest if they don’t like logging in and signing into something that they might only use occasionally.For those of us who do use these things for business or pleasure it means that we can interact with folk online without too much hassle. I’ve got Facebook, Windows Live and Google Talk all in front of me at a glance – so I can see who’s online and who’s available for a quick chat.

Meebo also provides widgets to embed functionality into other websites – check out my own IM widget on the sidebar of this site. If I’m around, you can IM me as a guest or logged in. Quite cool.

The only thing missing is a Skype IM function. I’d love to see that at some stage – then Meebo would be the perfect solution.

The other important thing to note is you don’t need to install any software on your computer if you don’t wish too. I’ve installed a Firefox add-on that makes it all quite cool.

So give Meebo a try. I think you’ll find it most useful.

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Well, it’s here. Windows 7 (beta). Is it any good? Yes and no! I have to say, after some positive reviews of Vista on this site when it was introduced a couple of years ago (is it really that long, maybe not, it just feels that long) I have to admit to being a little cautious to make a call on Windows 7.

But… first impressions are positive. It did install without fault on my laptop, a R1F from Asus. No obvious driver problems. Installation took about 20 minutes (I installed on a partition so I can run Vista still).

I’m cautiously optimistic.The look and feel of Windows 7 has much in common with Vista but feels less cluttered and better layed out. The status bar is neat and clean. And finally the damn nagging can be turned off – these are the dialogues that always pop up in Vista asking if you’re sure you want to do this or that. Happily those nags are gone.

The system boots up quickly and shuts down quickly. However, so did Vista when it was first installed so I’m afraid to say the jury is still out on that one. Microsoft have lost much credit with Vista and so I’m not prepared to just say ‘it loads faster’ and be confident that will always be the case. In fact since I have installed a couple of other programs – Skype and some others – there has been a slight slow down in booting time.

The Aero windows look much better and there is some added functionality as far as seeing your desktop, or what windows are open from the status bar. These are quite handy. It would be good if you could see your tabs in Firefox or IE in this view but you can only see each individual window. But the views are useful.

I haven’t loaded a heap of software onto the system, but the programs that are on there all run pretty well. There is a neat function when you install that let’s you choose the compatibility mode for applications. I had difficulty installing driver and software for the MX Air Mouse – I simply asked it to run in Vista compatibility mode and voila – all operational. That is pretty cool.

I haven’t explored this feature too much but it may be very useful for running old software in the new operating environment.

I haven’t experienced any crashes yet, very happy about that. I haven’t used any Office Suite programs with the system yet either so can’t report on that.

But to be honest and cautiously optimistic, I think Windows 7 could be a signficant development for Windows. Vista was really a bit of disaster – visually nice but under the bonnet there were serious problems. Windows 7 seems to have addressed much of these problems.

Wireless connections are faultless and so far I haven’t encountered the frustrating drop-outs and loss of connection that plagued Vista.

I’m having some problems with speaker drivers with this laptop, but you can’t really blame Windows 7 for that. And one of the finally resolved issues is with bluetooth headphones – they all work just fine. This appears to be a vast improvement over Vista – bluetooth seems very robust.

So all in all, the first impression of Windows 7 is positive. Fingers-crossed that it delivers what it promises. And fingers crossed we never have to go through the Vista debacle again.

I have read some comments that Windows 7 is really just a fix for Vista and to be honest I think there is some validity in that view. But you can be sure that Microsoft won’t treat it as an service pack for Vista and will charge us all an arm and a leg for the upgrade. Still, at least this time we can feel reasonably confident that we’ll be getting our money’s worth – touch wood.

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WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1 has been released and it’s a very good looking upgrade. The dashboard is much better laid out, as are all admin pages with the menu now running down a pane on the left of the screen.

It incorporates new functionality but with what I find is still a familiar interface. It’s very clever the way the WordPress team has been able to update the admin side of things without making if feel completely alien. The new icons are great and the look and feel of the admin area is pleasant. You can configure your dashboard to show only the modules that you find useful on the dashboard – that’s a neat feature.

All in all it feels easy to use and shouldn’t be confusing for new users of the system. So if you’re using WordPress, be on the look out for the release of 2.7.

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This has been driving me crazy for a while and I have found a solution thanks to the good contributors at this link:

Google Maps does not work in Firefox 3.0.

Simply turn off your Skype Firefox Plugin and all will be fine.

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Google has released a new browser called Chrome. I have test run it for the last day and it’s a reasonably impressive offering. It seems designed to be a forerunner for the development of complex web applications – it has a seamless interface with Google Gears.

It lacks the add-ons and extensions of Firefox 3 and it is unclear at the moment what the plans for such things are. It has been developed using similar software to Apple’s Safari but is only available for windows at this stage.

It has a wonderfully simple interface and looks minimal and neat on the screen. There is not a lot of clutter in the design yet most functions are self-evident and easy to find.

The address box is the most interesting innovation, combining both a place to enter URLs as well as search terms. Based on your browsing history and Google search a number of options will appear in a drop-down list – you can choose to go straight to a URL or go to a Google search page. You can also determine what your default search engine will be if you don’t like Google search.

The pages load extremely quickly and from what I can determine, most sites render very well using this browser.

It will be interesting to see where this browser will fall. I suspect it’s designed more to take market share from Internet Explorer than from Firefox. Google will be appealing to those who use IE pretty much as is. That market doesn’t really want to use add-ons and wants a browser from a brand they trust. So it’s just possible that Google are onto something here.

It also depends on their plans for web applications. If they can tie Chrome into the package for web applications then they might just make some significant in-roads into Microsoft’s browser market.

And beyond all of this, I think it’s good to have another serious player in the browser market to drive innovation. So between Firefox, Opera, Safari, Microsoft, Chrome and a few others we should see some interesting developments in the world of browsers over the next couple of years.

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The Firefox 3 download record attempt will officially begin on June 18 in Australia at 3.00am (EST). This URL http://tinyurl.com/4e7fv5 provides the timezone details for people. The 24 hour period is counted from US Pacific time on 17 June, which for most of us on this side of the world will mean downloading won’t start until the following day.

Happy downloading.

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