Stupid Easy

 

If you're using OSX Mountain Lion (10.8), you'll know that Dictation and Speech had a nice upgrade. Now it actually works most of the time!

First of all - you can quickly customize enabling via Preferences. There's a couple of preset shortcuts to switch it on via a double keystroke. Tapping the selected key twice will bring up the dictation icon at your cursor location. After you finish speaking simply press the return key. If you want to cancel - just press the ESC key.

 

Dictation and Speech isn't useful for whole message dictation. On the other hand - dictating an IM or single sentence works really well.

So what's really to like? Spelling and Searching.

For spelling, imagine you're happily typing a message and get to a word that you're stuck on to the point that your hopefully-close-enough effort still isn't close enough. When this happens, get unstuck by tapping the shortcut key twice and simply speak the word. Speech and Dictation does a really great job of filling in the blank and you're on your way.

For searching, simply place your icon in the search bar of your preferred web browser, double-tab the shortcut and ask your question. Then tap the return key to initiate the search once the translation is complete.

Overall, Dictation and Speech often seems like an answer to an infrequently asked question. But when it's useful - it's really pretty cool!