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A demonstration of how you can use OS X's built in Speech Recognition to control your Mac.
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[Music]
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hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how you can bring serial likee
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functionality to your Mac with OS 10's
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built-in speakable items so speech
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technology is all the rage these days
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especially with the iPhone
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4S and many are asking when Siri will
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come to the Mac little do most Mac users
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know OS 10 already includes some type
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type of voice control system not quite
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as advanced as Siri but it can do a lot
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of the functions Siri can do and it can
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also do several that Siri can so to set
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this up and enable it all you're going
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to have to do is go up to your Apple
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logo menu and select system preferences
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inside of system preferences you're
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going to want to click on the speech Tab
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and here you can see speech recognition
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and text to speech and then right below
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that you have speakable items you can
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turn that on or off so if we turn that
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on you can see right here this little
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microphone pop up
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and it looks vaguely similar to the Siri
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interface in a way so you have a couple
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different settings here and of course
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you can tweak what microphone you're
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using if you use an external one you can
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do that as well now you can also see
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there's a listening key and this is
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because there's two different ways to
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have the computer to listen to your
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voice so you can either listen only
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while the key is pressed or listen
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continuously with a keyword or the
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keyword can also be
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optional now I found that if you use a
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keyword you can say something like Siri
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what what time is it it's 6:56 and it'll
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tell you so you can use a keyword and
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then it'll be listening continuously now
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if you CH choose the keyword to be
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optional and you don't have to say it I
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found that just by talking know playing
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music even just noises will sometimes
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trigger the speakable items so I found
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that it's best to either have a keyword
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which can be a little bit annoying at
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times I always have to say the keyword
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or my favorite is to listen only when
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key is pressed and that is by default
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escape and of course you can change that
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right here so in this case you can see
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the microphone is inactive until I hold
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down the Escape key and then it starts
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listening now under the commands tab you
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can see all these different command sets
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and I have them all selected to get the
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most functionality you're going to want
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to have these selected now once you have
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this little microphone floating here you
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might say that's a little bit annoying
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to always have sitting there so if you
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just double click on it it'll slide
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right down into your Dock and you can
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see it still works when it's in my dock
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so I can still say something like what
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time is it it's 6:58
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and it knows uh so now there's no
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immediately obvious way to see what kind
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of commands you can tell it but if you
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select this little triangle right here
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you can open speech commands window
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alternately you can also say show me
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what to say and it'll open up the window
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as well these are all the different
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commands you can say and there's all
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these different just tons of different
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commands so if I want I can say
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something like empty the trash empty the
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trash and I can hit empty trash and it's
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going to empty the trash for me just
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like that so there's just tons of
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commands you can read through them once
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you kind of know them it's easy that you
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don't really have to have the speech
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commands window but once again you can
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always just say show me what to say and
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it'll tell you and of course up at the
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top here you have your speech command
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history of what you've said so one of my
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favorite things is the commands with an
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address book and these commands are a
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lot like some of the stuff Siri does so
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for example I can have something like
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iCal open here and if I look under the
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address book commands I can say
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something like meet with Michael steber
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at 12: a.m. on
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Wednesday Wednesday November 16th 11 has
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been added to your calendar so it's
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going to give me this little
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announcement or whatever and then you
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can see right in IAL it's made a new
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event for me and it says meet with
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Michael ster on Wednesday November 16th
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at 12:00 a.m. so I can also email things
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to people so let's say I was on a web
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page and I saw something interesting and
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I just copied it in this case I'm just
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doing it and texted it but it's the same
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thing and I wanted to email this text to
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somebody well whatever is on your
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clipboard you can email so I can say
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something like mail this to Michael
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steber mail this to Micha message to
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Michael steber with your selection and
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you can see that it will open up a new
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mail window and it'll automatically fill
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out to who it's from and you can put in
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your own subject line
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and then it pasted the text that I had
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copied so it it'll do that all for you
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now these commands can go on and on and
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on and you can see here under front
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window it gives you the types of
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commands you would use for the front
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window so if I select iel you can see
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the things change and I can say
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something like add event add event and I
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can do stuff like that if I'm in text
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edit I can say bold bold and it bolds
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the text there's just all these
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different things and once you learn the
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commands and you just kind of look
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through them it's very easy to follow I
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can say open my
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browser and it'll pop me over to my
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browser where I can even select stuff
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for my bookmarks so I can say apple
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apple and I'll load up the Apple
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homepage so that's just some of the
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stuff you can do with speakable items
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which comes bundled with Mac OS 10 and
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can really bring that Siri experience
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over to your Mac at least to some extent
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and of course if you want to tweak
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things even more you can go under text
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to speech and you can change your system
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voices the default is Alex but you can
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choose from all these female voices as
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well as some other male ones and with
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that you can really personalize
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speakable items and get it to do exactly
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what you want so there you go there's
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how to use speakable items in Mac OS 10
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to bring serug functionality overare Mac
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if you have anything that you'd like to
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see me do a howto on make sure to send
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me an email I hope you found this video
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useful and thank you for watching
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