Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forApril 23rd, 2004 | back to home

23 April 2004
Filed under:Interesting facts,Software reviews at1:18 am

Microsoft is offering a “preview (beta) version of the software”:http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/prodinfo/sp1/default.mspx for free download. Here’s “what OneNote offers”:http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/prodinfo/sp1/guide.mspx. It claims to be ‘a single place for users to electronically capture and organize typed and handwritten notes, audio recordings, graphics, and other rich media’ – sounds a bit like “NVivo”:http://www.qsr.com.au/products/productoverview/product_overview.htm the qualititative data analysis software I have been using recently. As you’d expect it is a lot more glossy in feel and more consistent with Windows conventions than NVivo but is unlikely to have the kind of depth of ‘serious academic functionality’ NVivo provides. Still I am looking forward to kicking it around. I wonder when this preview edition will expire? It is not clear whether the software will expire at all. Certainly there is nothing that tells you when you install it.

As a bonus I find that with this new version of OneNote I can use the Microsoft speech recognition software that was installed when I installed Unreal Tournament (it would not work with my old copy of Microsoft Word). I am finding it works remarkably well so far.

Does anyone know where I can get some documentation on how to use Microsoft’s voice recognition software? (Things like how do I indicate I want to use punctuation?) There doesn’t seem to be any that was installed when I installed the game.

Thanks to Steve Hatch for the link