I have been playing around with this method for a while now, and in a pinch it actually works really well. I have been using dragon naturally speaking to create content by running a wire from my headphone jack to my mic plug, now don't laugh. I really didn't think it was going to work. I listened to a couple minutes of a seminar on internet marketing, one of the famous ones. I speak clearly and don't have an accent of any kind so I read a page to Dragon in as close to the speed and style of the guy giving the seminar, then let it run all night. I came back and had several hundred pages of text. The beauty of it is that no matter what, its going to be in English because the speech to text program doesn't type garbage. I was amazed. The content is great, a hundred times better than markov crap. Its close enough to be totally on subject and readable.

I thought it might be a fluke. So I followed the same process with a series of videos on SEO. Same thing, hundreds of pages, loaded with keywords and phrases.

The content is good enough that I set it up to auto post to a blog and its been going strong everyday for 2 months now.

This has opened up all kinds of ideas for creating content that is rich in whatever keywords I am looking for at the time.

It sounds silly, but I have to say, it has worked far better than I ever imagined it would. If you are on a budget or you just don't feel like dealing with a content company, you should definitely give it a shot.

After reading this post, I am really aware of what a shitty poster I am, if you want to know more about how to do this, let me know and I will try to explain it a little better.

Buzzkill,
If you've got your version of dragon naturally speaking to work that efficiently...then kewl. HOWEVER I have found that since you have to train it--using your voice--that when I did the same idea 4 months ago, unless the guy spoke clearly and slowly enough, that all kinds of crap got typed. Many times they were real words, just not the words in the context I was looking for. For example:
The sentence
"Who do ya think you're kiddin' with that prior sentence" come out...
"Hoodia think you're kitten with that pry her sentence."

Takes some time to go back and edit...but not a bad idea overall.

That's a great idea. That would be good for some of my brainstorming and having it typed out for me automatically. I heard of the program but never gave it serious thought. I'm about to go to the site now and try it out....Whoops I have to go and buy a microphone first. Thanks for the idea.

Dragon is excellent. For me anyway. Maybe its from prior acting, I don't know. I tried it with dan kennedy who has a really odd choppy way of speaking, then again with SEO videos from lynda with this guy who speaks really fast. I created new profiles for both, read one paragraph and got incredible results. I also did it with a seduction audio book. All the voices were completely different, the accuracy was probably around 85-90%. The only problem was when the guy said SEO it wrote SCO but a quick search and replace fixed that. Those were all tests that I would be nervous about using because the text was accurate enough to get in some copywrite trouble. Maybe I am lucky, but I think it is worth a shot. The problem comes when the voice changes. I of course had dreams of leaving it on the E! channel and grabbing all that celeb crap but that wont work. Too bad public television doesnt have celebrity gossip shows, or hours of some guy droning on about Viagra. Oh well. The software is excellent for random thoughts as well, and if you are patient you can get it to control your computer with voice so its like have an extra pair of hands. Speaking of, I am starting to think I have too much time on my hands.

Get a headset, youll be glad you did. Also, dont use it when youre drunk, there wont be much difference in what appears on the screen.

I have a headset and a microphone somewhere in here, just can't find them so I'll just buy a new one. Actually I was reading on the site bluetooth headsets work, maybe I'll try it out with my cell phone's bluetooth (wonder if it will work? I have it paired to work on my computer and I can use it on messengers).

Someone recommended this http://www.naturalreaders.com/ , I'm running the free version. It speaks out the text on your computer. It's the exact opposite of Dragon Naturally Speaking. I'm going to use it for some projects in the future.

Now that you've mentioned Dragon, I'm going to be using both of these in my arsenal. I have a few different ideas for both of these programs. I think this would be cool for some custom YouTube video projects.

Be careful that they dont start talking to each other when youre out of the room. You might find yourself out of a job.

Buzzkill,
Glad you got your software trained. My only wish is if Dragon would work with audio files and I wouldnt have to use the headphones and mike. When I record now I wear my headset and speak into another table mic that way I record the audio and make the text at the same time. If I could just get it to do the text part from pre-recorded stuff...why we'd all be bazillionaires!

Not sure I get what youre saying. I am using it with audio files. I read it a paragraph in as close to the voice that the audio file is in, then connect the audio out to the audio in and let it go. This must sound stupid and unbelievable to people, but it really does work well, and waking up to 12k words is sweet. The only punctuation it can do is periods and commas. Also, its not smart enough to know when a new paragraph has started but who cares. With blog posts of 200 words I break that into 4 paragraphs and it looks normal and reads well.

So are you saying it will take the text off a wav file or
mp3 and convert it right off that audio?

Woah!!!! This is powerful shit. If you can pull it off of pre-recorded stuff that would be great. How can you do it in a voice that is close though? Are you just repeating in the same tone and speed of voice (actual voice not mattering)? How do you connect your audio out into audio in? For example I have my surround sound connected in my audio out, how would the surround sound be able to work in the audio in section, it has no microphone? Would a headset be what's needed to do this? I read on the site that you can pre-record stuff and play it later so the compatibility to read files is already built in.

I just realized I don't even need that free natural reader program I posted above because Dragon already has that feature built in.

Taken from their feature list http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeak...d/features.asp :

Dictate Into More Handheld Devices
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 also supports handheld digital recorders and other PDAs that record in .wma and .mp3 format for deferred transcription.

OK...I see my first difference is I own ViaVoice from IBM. Let me check the malual to see what it does...beuz from what VZE2YQTM says "Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 also supports handheld digital recorders and other PDAs that record in .wma and .mp3 format for deferred transcription."..then it should indeed take it off audio recorded. Both are made by IBM so mine should

That is exactly what I am saying. Some audio files have worked right away, a couple I have mimicked (for some reason I cant spell that) the reader for 3 minutes.