Save Money on Upgrading Dragon

Paradoxically, I'm a professional writer, and also a lousy typist. I do most of my serious writing with the help of Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred, a voice recognition and dictation program that runs on my PC. Sadly, there's nothing as good for the Mac. Scansoft, the makers of Naturally Speaking, have just announced Version 8 of the program. Because it's a key tool for me, I'm interested in upgrading. Scansoft mailed me an offer to upgrade for $99 (that's from version 6 or 7 Preferred to Preferred 8). Scansoft also charges $10 for shipping, plus CA sales tax, which would put my total at around $116. Other retailers are selling the upgrade for about the same price. But Amazon has a better deal for upgraders: you can buy a new copy of Naturally Speaking Preferred 8 for $139.99, which gets you the retail box, including a microphone headset. From the same page, you can download a $50 rebate form. With free shipping and no sales tax, that puts you at $89.99. That will save me about $26.

To get the rebate, you'll need to send in the UPC barcode from the DNS 8 box, a photocopy of the Amazon receipt, and your original DNS 6 or 7 product CD. better yet, you're not limited to just Dragon; if you have IBM ViaVoice 9 or 10, or L&H Voice Xpress 5, you can get the same rebate.

Even if you've never bought speech recognition software before, you might be able to get DNS 8 for less than the retail price; I found several examples of packages that qualify for the rebate going cheap on eBay.

It's nice to be done

I've been gone for a while because I was on the Big Push to finish up Managing Your Personal Finances with Quicken: Visual QuickProject Guide. I've turned in the last chapter, and now all that remains is a bit of author review. But as far as I'm concerned, the book is done. Hooray!

Any Magic Cap users out there?

I am constantly amazed and impressed by the collective memory of our readers, so I'll pass on this query from Scott Knaster's blog: "Anybody else out there still using Magic Cap"?

If anyone is, here's a bonus link: the Magic Cap freeware page.

Optimized Firefox

This could be useful: Firefox optimized for the G4 and Firefox optimized for the G5.

XMLHttpRequest

I'm getting into working on the upcoming Dashboard book and so I need to decide: do I create a new category of posts for that book so that I can find them later (and a corresponding way to search by category), or do I create a new book blog? Let me know what you think in the comments.

And the link that triggered this thought: more than you wanted to know (but darn near everything that I want to know) about XMLHttpRequest.

Feedster Developer Contest

If I'm going to link to the Dashboard and Technorati developer contests (see the 8 November entry), I should link to this one, too: the Feedster Developer Contest. The deadline is December 5. The goal is, unsurprisingly, to do cool stuff with Feedster. The prizes are 12 iPod minis.

Thinking in a meta-fashion about this for a moment, there's a clear pattern here: the prizes for these contests are all either iPods or Apple store gift certificates. And that's all, even if you don't count the Apple contest. These contests are not just for Mac developers. Now, let's assume that these companies are run by smart people who know their developer communities (and as I know many of them, that's a good assumption). So, the best way to motivate developers, on any platform, is with Apple hardware? If this situation doesn't scare Microsoft, then they're just not paying attention.

Of course, MS is recently on record saying that Firefox is not a threat to IE, so I have to go with the "not paying attention" choice.

Go Beyond Safari

Ooooh, Tom, nice job in getting a link here in your latest Macworld feature: Go Beyond Safari. And to all who are coming from there, welcome!

Sadly, my plugs for this blog didn't make it into either of my now-online Software Bargains: Work the Web mini-reviews or my part of the December feature, Safari’s Hidden Powers: Mastering Tabbed Browsing and the Debug Menu (I think there's one more part I wrote, but it's not online as yet).

And for those of you keeping track, yes, after Tom's 17 + my 7 years of writing for Macworld, this is the first feature that has both our names on it. Oddly enough, I was just about done with my bits before Macworld called him about doing his, so no, we didn't work together on them—but it was cool seeing our stuff in print together.

Tom sez: The family that writes together uh.. bites together? No, that can't be right...

Powerbook G5

Today's giggle: the Powerbook G5. Just be careful about putting it in your lap, okay?

The BBEdit Song

How to know when your software has hit the big time, I guess. It's the BBEdit song, Editors at War, from Interrobang Cartel.

Announcing The Apple Dashboard Widget Contest

On the one hand: Announcing The Apple Dashboard Widget Contest:

The Apple Developer Connection is now accepting entries for the Apple Dashboard Widget Contest. This is a terrific opportunity to begin developing Widgets for Tiger and to receive recognition for your work. Entries will be judged on technical excellence, innovation, and ease of use. The developer of the winning Widget will receive public recognition along with an Apple 40GB iPod. The contest is open exclusively to Apple Developer Connection members whose memberships include access to pre-release versions of Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger. Submissions must be made between November 5 and November 30, 2004.

On the other hand: The Technorati Thanksgiving Developers Contest:

It's almost Thanksgiving and we think its time to give some thanks to you for all of your support. We're having our first contest for developers and its wide open for you to get creative with Technorati! There are no restrictions as to what you can develop... it can be an application, a plug-in, or whatever you dream up.

First place will receive a $2,500 gift certificate to the Apple Store.

The first five runners up will receive an Apple iSight or a $150 gift certificate to the Apple Store.

So now I'm thinking about how to write a Dashboard widget that uses the Technorati API... Hmmm...

And yes, I did notice that Apple's top prize has a value of $360 (developer price for the 40 Gb iPod) versus the $2500 top prize for the Technorati contest.