David Pogue just reviewed Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, and found it had a 98.9% accuracy rate with no training. It seems that Speech Recognition Software has finally reached the point where it is becoming something that most of us can really benefit from. Even if you can type 60wpm, speaking is going to be a lot faster.
The Preferred edition of NaturallySpeaking (about $200) has a feature that lets you provide dictation from recorded audio. The accuracy rate is not quite as high and this does require some training of the program, but this potentially opens a new area: transcribing podcasts.
Being able to transcribe a podcast is going to depend on the quality of the recording and how clearly people speak. You can get a pretty high quality recording using Skype though. Skype has much higher sound quality than a regular telephone recording.
To record Skype calls, check out HotRecorder.
If you go to Google and search for “Record Skype” you’ll find all sorts of complicated suggestions, mostly on old pages. I tried getting calls to record using the freeware program Audacity and a plantronics USB headset. I couldn’t get it to work, but HotRecorder worked immediately with no configuration.
I just tried recording a conference call with Skype where two people were connected directly via Skype and one was on a landline. It worked perfectly.