Mac 101

July 20, 2009 in Reviews by Bob Faulhaber

Would you like voice recognition on your iPhone, but don’t have the new iPhone 3GS? Vocalia 2.0 from Creaceed brings voice recognition to older generation iPhones, along with the second generation iPod Touch.

Vocalia is a speech recognition tool that allows users to simply say a contacts name and Vocalia will search through the contact list to find the name or names closest to the one spoken. Vocalia uses phonetics so you do not have to “train” the software with your voice or pronunciations.

When you start the application the first time, it will scan and phonetizize the contact list. When ready you will be presented with the purple Vocalia “eye”

Simply pronounce the name of the contact and Vocalia will search its database and present the closest match. If there is one match, such as when we said “Home”, you will be presented with the contact information, allowing you to touch the number to initiate a call. If however, there are several matches when we just used the contact’s first name. “Jim”, Vocalia presented us with a list of possible matches.

Vocalia does a very good job on sound pickup and voice recognition and your results will depend on background noise. We were to use the application with the iPhone sitting on our desk in a quiet office. Vocalia was easily able to recognize the contact’s name and present us with the correct contact information.

Another feature in the application is the ability to edit the phonetizations and even add nicknames to contact records.

We also tested Vocalia’s iPod functions, which allows you to say an artist name and Vocalia will display information for that artist, allowing you to select All Songs, particular Albums or individual songs. iPod mode is initiated by selecting the iPod menu item and the Vocalia “eye” will be brown.

Vocalia also allows you to import Safari bookmarks and use voice commands to open bookmarks in Safari.

We were very impressed with Vocalia’s voice recognition and ability to correctly identify contacts and artist names in iPod mode. As mentioned previously, background noise can affect accuracy, we had minor problems when testing outdoors with some wind noise, but indoors Vocalia performed flawlessly for us.

Vocalia 2.0 is available in the App Store for $3.99 and if you want to add voice recognition to your older generation iPhone or second generation iPod Touch, this will provide you with that ability.

July 17, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Bob Faulhaber

Are you tired of bouncing dock icons when you launch a new application? There’s a simple way to get rid of this feature if you find it annoying.

July 15, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Bob Faulhaber

Tips & Tricks: Make a Widget From a Web Page

Is there information on a particular website that you’d like at your fingertips, but don’t want to have to open Safari everytime? You can create a Dashboard Widget that provides you with that information.

July 14, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Mark

Dashboard.app in OS X is a memory and CPU hog, even in the latest Snow Leopard. Although improved on with the use of grand central dispatch. If you dont use your Dashboard, you might find this command useful to save some CPU utilization, memory, and battery life on your Mac.

July 13, 2009 in Reviews by Bob Faulhaber

One of the handy features that was released in Leopard was Quick Look, which provided a preview technology that displayed more descriptive thumbnails.

July 10, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Bob Faulhaber

Does your iTunes Library list songs that iTunes says it can’t find? Here’s a simple way, using an available script to solve the problem.

July 9, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Mark

Forget Google Image to find App Icons, OS X Leopard has a handy feature which lets you copy full quality app icons using Preview.app.

July 8, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Bob Faulhaber

Do you like to keep your folders arranged in a certain order? Using the default “Arrange by” option works file to arrange files once with any new files just getting added at the end.

July 7, 2009 in How-To by Mark

This is a general tutorial on how to setup your corporate exchange email on the iPhone. The instructions are the same no matter if you have a 1st Gen, 3G or 3GS iPhone. However the Copy Paste signature wont be available unless you have iPhone OS 3.0.

July 6, 2009 in Reviews by Bob Faulhaber

Both Stacks and Trash get some new functionality and features, with Trash bringing back a feature from OS 9, while Stacks introduces folder navigation.