Nuance has just launched a huge new addition to their “Dragon” line of dictation software for OS X. Dragon Express puts speech recognition tools (such as voice commands) right in your menu bar, bringing Siri-like functionality to Mac OS X.
Many have speculated that Nuance is one of the main technologies powering Siri’s speech recognition, as well as iOS 5’s built-in dictation feature, so a new version of Dragon tailored to using voice commands on the Mac is big news.
Simply using a keyboard shortcut or clicking the menu bar icon tells the app you’re ready to speak, and the app can perform a variety of tasks, such a sending email, doing a Google search, tweeting, or updating your Facebook status, and can even be used to dictate text into Pages, MS Word for Mac, or any other app that accepts text input.
For those who haven’t tried voice recognition on the Mac yet, Dragon Express provides an affordable opportunity. Dragon Express is available now for $49.99 on the Mac App Store ($49.99, Link).