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Source: New York Times
Read Article

Note: after writing this, Nuance put out an update that allows you to remove your contact listings from their servers and also not put them on in the first place. Problem is, whenever I download this update, it downloads 1.0.1 again and tells me I still haven’t updated the app (see my “App Store Woes” post).

From David Pogue, the author:

I tried out Dragon Dictation, a new, free…app for the iPhone from Nuance. You tap a big central Record button–and you talk. (You still have to speak the punctuation and say “new paragraph” when you want a line break.) When you tap Done, the typed transcription of what you said appears on the screen.

My brother emailed me a week or so ago and informed me of this application. I myself tried it out. It’s surprisingly accurate; I mean, it does mess up sometimes, but it’ll even give you other suggestions that, at the very worst, come quite close to what you said. It’s also (at least for now) still a free download on the App Store, so it’s a must grab. This article is actually about the privacy concerns of the application. Some users have been bothered by the fact that the application sends your audio to Nuance’s servers to transcribe it, and that the program takes the first and last names of your contacts for the purpose of recognizing these names when they are said. Pogue states that despite the power of this application, there are 1000+ one-star reviews of it. For one, reviewers on the App Store are pretty poor reviewers; they see one bad thing and think the whole application’s useless (and feel like it’s a justified way to review something) or will fill up their review with Emoji that serve no purpose but to make the review colorful. Regarding privacy concerns, Pogue says:

What I don’t understand is: Why don’t these same people worry that Verizon or AT&T is listening in to their cellphone calls every single day? Why don’t they worry that MasterCard is peeking into their buying habits? How do they know Microsoft and Apple aren’t slurping down private documents off the hard drive and laughing their heads off?

I mean, if you’re gonna be paranoid, at least be rational about it.

I find this to be a great point and one that would hopefully quell some concerns about Nuance’s practices.

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