Earlier this week, I made a really great discovery. I found myself dashing from one meeting to another, on the other side of town, and needing to send a text message (SMS) at the same time. So something’s gotta give, right? Either I pull over to send a text message – and stand a chance of being late to my next meeting - or I wait until I get where I’m going and take a chance on the text message missing its “effectivity window” with a client.
A dangerous driver. Photo from iStockPhoto
But I found a better alternative.
Why did I have to send a text message to someone urgently? It was because not everyone who requires communication is in a position to accept a phone call. This has become a fact of life. Consider project teams, managers, board members, etc., who are required to be present and participative, either physically or remotely, in various types of meetings. Just because someone is sequestered in a meeting does not mean that they don’t need to have additional input, and sometimes urgently.
The Best Alternative
Let’s revisit my options for sending that urgent text message:
- Pull off the road to the send the text message;
- Continue to my next meeting and then send the text message;
- Attempt to send the text message while driving; (no!)
- Record my message and then have a voice-to-text app send my text message for me (!)
Before I talk about Alternative #4, I want to make it clear that Alternative #3 is not viable: texting while driving is just as dangerous as reading a book or a Kindle while driving and I don’t recommend it to anyone.
Dragon Dictation by Nuance Communications for the iPhone. This is the best alternative. Costs? I’ve forgotten already. But in my opinion, anything shy of ten bucks is a steal. The way I found this product in the first place was through my wife. She uses and loves Dragon NaturallySpeaking for dictation in her office and in her home office. It has cut her dictation time in half and has also reduced the amount of time she must invest to prepare grant proposals.
So when I saw this Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone, I decided to try it. I disliked the app at first and thought that it might become a colossal waste of effort. But within a couple of updates after I downloaded the app in the first place, this software worked well; and has some nifty features.
Result?
I recorded my text message with Dragon Dictation, clicked the Done button and then requested that it send the translated text as a text message. My client’s cell number was already in my contact list. Ta da! It took four button clicks to make it happen.
After I reached my destination, I also discovered that I could post to our company’s Facebook page or to one of our Twitter accounts with the same amount of ease. I love technology!
Jeff Hayes is Principal at AlignTech Solutions.
Follow @jeff_hayes
