One interesting offering is its ViaVoice Dictation for Linux. It has been on the Windows platform for a while, and IBM recently decided to bring its speech recognition star to the Linux platform. I've always been interested in speech recognition technology. The technology has come a long way in the past few years, with ever more accurate recognition and improved voice training. But it always seems that we're still a few steps away from truly useful speech recognition.
Most people are disappointed when they try speech recognition for the first time.
They expect sci-fi quality voice transcription levels of recognition that require no training or customization. These tools are a solution in search of a problem. Sure, eventually Star Trek-like speech recognition will be available, but as it stands right now, the technology is more suited to narrow tasks such as dictation and simple computer control. So don't expect to throw away your keyboard and mouse and do all of your Web surfing and e-mail with your voice. I can still remember the first computer I used with speech recognition software.