Main Monthly Meeting - July 2005

VOICE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE & PICASA2

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Tuesday 5 July 2005

7:30 PM

Manning Clarke Centre, Theatre 3

Australian National University

The next Main Monthly Meeting will be held on Tuesday 5th July 2005 commencing at 7:30 pm in the Manning Clark Centre, Lecture Theatre 3, Australian National University, Acton. View the ANU map showing the location of the Manning Clark Centre (facility 26A), Lecture Theatre 3.

The monthly meetings are free. Members, friends and the public are invited to attend. Don’t rush home after the meeting! Stay for coffee, tea, biscuits and good company. It’s all free! Renew acquaintances, meet new people and ask those questions you didn’t get a chance to ask at the meeting! Membership inquiries and renewals are welcomed too! Email inquiries to: pcug.mmm@pcug.org.au or phone 02-6287-2922.

JULY 2005 – "VOICE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE" & "PICASA2"

This month, Deborah Bayley from Voice Perfect will discuss and demonstrate the capabilities of Dragon Naturally Speaking software. This voice recognition software can "create documents and e-mail, write reports and fill out forms,without having to type at all." Speak to your PC and the typing is done for you! The software can "create documents over three times faster than typing, and provides protection against repetitive strain injuries." It is fully integrated in the Microsoft Office applications Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Simply dictate into a PC! There is also a text-to-speech option to read e-mail and documents aloud! This demonstration should be interesting because most people speak faster than 120 words a minute but type fewer than 40 words a minute.

In the second presentation for the evening, PCUG member Mike Boesen will present "Picasa2" a freeware application from Google which can be used for the management and editing of digital pictures. It is described by Google at: http://www.picasa.com/features/index.php. According to Google: "Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized. Picasa also makes advanced
editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures - you can email, print photos at home, make gift CDs, instantly share via HelloT, and even post pictures on your own blog."

Mike has been using Picasa2 since its release. He will demonstrate its main functions and in particular will explain how it can be used to imbed and use IPTC-compliant keywords and captions within JPG picture files, show how it can make quick fixes to pictures, and demonstrate how it a can be used to very easily assemble, resize and write a collection of pictures to a CD as a slide show. This is a follow-on presentation from the excellent June monthly meeting so be sure not to miss it!

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