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Speech Recognition and Voice to Text

Text fields, comment boxes and and search input on Ning networks are not only numerous, they are getting better and better. While setting up several Ning 3.0 networks, I recently began using an online speech to quickly convert speech to text using the Dictation.io app by Amit of Labnol (presently compatible only with Chrome Browsers because it is the only current browser which supports the HTML Speech Input API).  And while there are many speech to text solutions out there these days, I find this one to be superior due to the ability to export the text to Google Drive or drop box. This app is also available as a Chrome App.

Add Speech to Text to Your Ning Network

Now, you can even add the voice recognition / speech to text functionality to your Ning site, allowing your members (who use Chrome) to add text to any text based field using using just their voice.  If they only use Chrome, they can basically throw their keyboard out the window. And all you need to do is add a tiny bit of code to your existing search form.

  1. <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search">
  2. <input type="text" name="q" size="30" x-webkit-speech/>
  3. <input type="submit" value="Google Search" />
  4. </form>
Try it here using Chrome:

Simply speak into the mic and when you are finished the audio is sent to Google servers where it gets transcribed and delivered as plain text. NOTE: The microphone icon will only be visible to users who are accessing your site through Chrome. If they are using a different browser, they’ll see the standard search box. (via Amit) Also note that although Ning 3.0 doesn't currently have sitewide search, but you can see a working demo from a Ning Member Page's search functionality.
speech to text
If you are adding your own search functionality, this should be easy to add to that search form code. And here is a mega-example of multiple search forms on a single page inside a Ning 2.0 network:

 

Bonus: You can Also Add Speech Recognition to Any Text Field (such as comments and feedback forms)


If you're thinking that you might like to voice-enable the comment forms or the email form of your website that accept long-form text, you can add the following code to the bottom Custom Code Box in the dashboard.

<script type="text/javascript">
  function transcribe(words) {
  document.getElementById("speech").value = words;
  document.getElementById("mic").value = "";
  document.getElementById("speech").focus();
}
</script>
 
<textarea cols="50" id="speech"></textarea>
<input id="mic"
onwebkitspeechchange="transcribe(this.value)" x-webkit-speech>

Hope this gets your gears going and inspires you to make your network truly unique and simple to use. Enjoy!

Many More Ning Tips and Tricks |  Ning Help

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Replies

  • NC for Hire

    looks like Creators stripped out the in post demo, but the examples should work.

  • Cool tip bro...have to check it out

This reply was deleted.
 

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