When Will Software Transcribe Whole Docs?

Gawker has an odd little piece that somehow tries to make a point about male journalists getting hot interns to transcribe interviews for them -- a practice which sounds appealing but doesn't seem to apply to any universes I've visited.

More to the point, what I've really wanted as a journalist for the past decade has been technology that can take my digital audio file from an interview and transcribe it -- accurately -- in the time it takes me to get a cup of coffee and a Krispy Kreme. Yet despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on voice-recognition research in labs all over the world, this is still not possible. No software seems to be able to listen to two or more people talking, understand every word, and accurately write it down.

Not that there's no progress. Vonage offers a voicemail-to-text service that some people are using as a kind of personal memo service. A company called Nuance has a voice-to-text message service. So this can work in short bursts with one voice talking. But I'm still hoping that for that elusive automated transcribing service.

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