Nuance Mobile Dictation beats Ben Cook, the world’s fast texter, in text message race

Remember the text message race I wrote about the other week? Man vs machine? Well, it took place.

Nuance‘s Mobile Dictation system trounced the competition with a 16.32 seconds time. Here’s the gossip:

In a classic match-up of man vs. machine, Ben Cook, recently crowned the world champion of text messaging, raced against Nuance Mobile Dictation, the speech recognition technology that allows mobile phone users to create text messages using speech. Cook, a teen from Utah, holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest entry of a 160-character standardized message on a mobile device: “The razor toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.” Cook’s previous triple tap record for the standard message stood at 42.22 seconds. Nuance Mobile Dictation crushed the world record time, completing the message in 16.32 seconds.

Gosh, that’s quite a difference.

Don’t worry Ben. You’re still the best human texter in my eyes 😉

There should be some videos of the event around shortly so if I can get them, I’ll put’em up.

I was wondering how the race would go. I haven’t been impressed with voice recognition in the past. The last thing you need when you’re sat there trying to race Ben is the system to write ‘tooths’ instead of ‘toothed’ — and leave you sat there repeating ‘correction’ or ‘backspace’ in your best clear, stern voice, while Ben’s already sat there finished. Not so with Nuance’s Mobile Dictation system. I’m gonna check it out. It’ll work on Windows Mobile and Symbian — more details here.