Talking to your computer
Hee hee. I hadn't paid much attention to "Speakable Items" in OS X before, but Will asked about it and BDan explained how to see what it can do: first turn it on using System Preferences ("Speech" category), then hold down the Escape key for about a second and then (still holding it down) say "Open Speech Commands Window". Nifty!
It doesn't do full speech recognition, of course. But I have it set up now so that if I say "Computer, switch to Eudora," it switches to Eudora. Or "Computer, File menu. Computer, Paste." (Saying "Computer" first is an optional preference; I imagine I'll turn it off soon, but for now I'm tickled by the skiffyness of it.)
Now all I need is some text-editing commands; it would be nifty if I could tell it to move the insertion point using the arrow keys and the tab key. And even niftier if I could spell words and have it type them, even if it didn't do full speech recognition.
I doubt I'll use it much, especially not at work. But "Computer, switch to Safari" is slightly more reliable (and thus, probably slightly faster on average) than several of my other methods of switching apps.
