Found "MY" better way for reports

Note to all, this reflects MY situation, needs and personality. I'm ain't sayin's its the bestest for you'se
: )

After work yesterday I had two shops at a mall downtown. Now, the traffic out of downtown is miserable until around 6 or 6:30, so I set in my mind I would do my shops, buy some shoes, maybe get haircut and linger around until 6:30 then mosey on out avoiding traffic he!!.

My shops finished fast, I bought my shoes quickly and couldn't get in to get my hair cut. So at 5:45 I was sitting in the mall wondering what I was going to do. Then I had a brainstorm; "Why not finish my reports on my iPad?"

I didn't want to do it in the middle of the mall, so I went to the truck, climbed in and logged on.

Thanks to the iPad's speech-to-text ability, the narratives went really quickly and I finished the reports much sooner than I would have at home. I thought about why that might be and I figured there were fewer distractions sitting in the parking lot than at my desk. Also, I can speak faster than type so the narrative went faster as well.

So that's my new "thing", now. I'll write up the report on my iPad immediately after the shop, submit it and be done with it.

-Always looking for good productivity hacks!-

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Mike T
Looking for shops in Western Canada

"Life is good because the alternative is forever "

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I love the idea of using the voice recognition feature .

OH MAN. I need to get an ipad.

Quick, who shops Apple, and how much is the reimbursement?

(seriously, though. I have an iPhone and already use it as a shop tool. I could sync it with an iPad and make things super easy.)

Sigh ,,,my Ipad is 1st gen, with no recording capability. It still works too well to replace. Great idea, though! I am glad you found a helper tool.

This sounds like a wonderful idea. Does this only work with ipads or do some of the cheaper knockoffs have this feature? I would love to use voice recognition if it works well as I type realllllly slowly. But I am a New Yorker first so I talk fast. Also, can you generally get the free wifi from out in the parking lot or would you need to invest in an internet connection service?

I've been doing this over about a year now (using the voice recognition on my iPad, not necessarily in the parking lot). Makes those lengthy narrative shops a breeze!!!

I believe many modern smart phones/tablets will have this capability.

As for wi-fi, generally it reaches out to parking lots, but it depends on the size of the lot.
If you can't get wifi, narrating your shop into your device will at least save typing.
You can then copy/paste when you get back to home.

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Mike T
Looking for shops in Western Canada

"Life is good because the alternative is forever "

Mike, how do you handle the punctuation? I've tried it, and Dragon, but speaking my narrative and adding the punctuation either slows me down or I loose my train of thought. I'm sure there's a bit of a learning curve.

Yes, there is a learning curve. However, I am typing this through text to speech. It requires you to fully think about what you want to say, and keep the sentences short. However it's much easier to do it this way I find. Sometimes mistakes are made and I must manually type the correction, but that's not too bad. I'm really starting to like this as it is so much easier.

Edit; punctuation is handled by saying the punctuation you want. "Comma" give you a ",".

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Mike T
Looking for shops in Western Canada

"Life is good because the alternative is forever "

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2014 03:04AM by miketfse.

miketfse Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------
>
> Edit; punctuation is handled by saying the
> punctuation you want. "Comma" give you a ",".

That's the curve. I have no problem inserting punctuation when I type a narrative, it's the having to say it, along with my narrative, that slows me down. I guess I could just dictate it and add the punctuation when I proof read it. Or, I just need to practice.

So, like many others, I save the longer narrative for when I get home to my desk top.

I am a complete idiot when it comes to electronic devices beyond a desktop pc. Can you download/upload (as I do not even know which one you would do) the questionnaire to your hand held device and then dictate the answers into some other location on the device while the questionnaire is open on the screen? Or do you print it out? I like to save paper and the world so I just write down critical things I need to remember but need the actual questions to do the narrative. I would want to do this for narratives long and short. It would really be nice on a hotel shop where perhaps you could sit by the pool and just dictate....many times there is no one else at the pool to overhear especially here in sunny southern calif where it is pool sitting weather most of the year.

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Found "MY" better way for reports

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