Last year, my older brother showed me a trick. Not really. It was actually a time-saving and productivity improvement so simple that it’s hard to believe I’d never seen or heard about it before. But that’s what happens when you typically ignore technology improvements and mosey about your day using antique tools.
I noticed him talking into his phone one day. “What the heck are you doing?,” I asked.
“Texting,” he replied.
“No you’re not. You need to type to do that.”
“No, you can speak into your phone and it prints the words into a text. Here, check it out.” And he spoke a message and I watched as the words materialized one by one.
It wasn’t perfect. “To” could be “too” or “two.” You had to check words like that at the end of a message or “except” could become “accept” or “effect” could come out as “affect.” And so on.
There were (are) many ways for the voice activation function to mess up. I found this out more and more after beginning to utilize it, and watching my productivity soar. This is one of the unsung negatives about smart phones: Men, and men with big hands in particular, are at a titanic disadvantage when it comes to tapping anything on their phones. Our sausage-like fingers often hit two keys at once since the phone screens are designed for 11-year-olds, causing you to go back over and over to correct your message and ensure it makes sense.
But, beyond the productivity improvement experienced from using voice activation, there is another massively important improvement it provides in your life: Making you laugh. This does not seem evident.
You need to start speaking into your phone quickly. Add commas and periods and question marks and exclamation points to your verbal commands to ensure proper punctuation. If you jabber fast enough, the message will get convoluted and what prints on the screen will bare only a small facsimile to what you said. This gets funny.
For example, if you rapidly stated, “Where’s the window that you said you were delivering to me yesterday question mark You said it would be here by Tuesday morning and I took the day off work to be here and no one has shown up and it’s 2 in the afternoon period.”
It could come out as, “Where’s the window you said you were deal liver to me yes sir? You said it would be Tuesday moor ring and I took the day off work to be here and no one has show upland it’s too bad laughter room.”
If you don’t check your texts after speaking, things like that would go out over the airwaves, and you’d get a response, “What the heck did you mean?”
You’d look at your message, crack up, then reply, “I meant Tuesday something else.” Which would translate to “I meant to say something else.”
This can go on forever. If you’re bored, it can your silly thing to do, sending texts to friends to confuse and amuse them. It works in getting responses, so if someone is ignoring you, go for the voice activation function to baffle them and get them to tap back.
You shouldn’t put too much effort into it though because you’re going to have to return to what popped up on the screen and make sure what you said was what you meant.
When that sentence above comes out as the following, you’ll know you’ve got voice activation down: “You should knit too much fort into the dough bee cause you’re go hinge to have to real turn what pooped up on the screen and make shore what you said was men tent.”
Now, stop laughing. It happens.
I noticed him talking into his phone one day. “What the heck are you doing?,” I asked.
“Texting,” he replied.
“No you’re not. You need to type to do that.”
“No, you can speak into your phone and it prints the words into a text. Here, check it out.” And he spoke a message and I watched as the words materialized one by one.
It wasn’t perfect. “To” could be “too” or “two.” You had to check words like that at the end of a message or “except” could become “accept” or “effect” could come out as “affect.” And so on.
There were (are) many ways for the voice activation function to mess up. I found this out more and more after beginning to utilize it, and watching my productivity soar. This is one of the unsung negatives about smart phones: Men, and men with big hands in particular, are at a titanic disadvantage when it comes to tapping anything on their phones. Our sausage-like fingers often hit two keys at once since the phone screens are designed for 11-year-olds, causing you to go back over and over to correct your message and ensure it makes sense.
But, beyond the productivity improvement experienced from using voice activation, there is another massively important improvement it provides in your life: Making you laugh. This does not seem evident.
You need to start speaking into your phone quickly. Add commas and periods and question marks and exclamation points to your verbal commands to ensure proper punctuation. If you jabber fast enough, the message will get convoluted and what prints on the screen will bare only a small facsimile to what you said. This gets funny.
For example, if you rapidly stated, “Where’s the window that you said you were delivering to me yesterday question mark You said it would be here by Tuesday morning and I took the day off work to be here and no one has shown up and it’s 2 in the afternoon period.”
It could come out as, “Where’s the window you said you were deal liver to me yes sir? You said it would be Tuesday moor ring and I took the day off work to be here and no one has show upland it’s too bad laughter room.”
If you don’t check your texts after speaking, things like that would go out over the airwaves, and you’d get a response, “What the heck did you mean?”
You’d look at your message, crack up, then reply, “I meant Tuesday something else.” Which would translate to “I meant to say something else.”
This can go on forever. If you’re bored, it can your silly thing to do, sending texts to friends to confuse and amuse them. It works in getting responses, so if someone is ignoring you, go for the voice activation function to baffle them and get them to tap back.
You shouldn’t put too much effort into it though because you’re going to have to return to what popped up on the screen and make sure what you said was what you meant.
When that sentence above comes out as the following, you’ll know you’ve got voice activation down: “You should knit too much fort into the dough bee cause you’re go hinge to have to real turn what pooped up on the screen and make shore what you said was men tent.”
Now, stop laughing. It happens.