The world is full of text-to-speech devices.  Kindle broke ground on that commercially, and software to turn your written content into a pithy robotic voice is a dime-a-dozen.

But what if you wanna go the other direction?  Well, now.  Speech-to-text seems to be a lot harder!  There are plenty of COSTLY transcription services, and most of them involve paying a human to listen and tap out the words on a keyboard.

LET AI DO IT

Now, there’s DeepGram. I have NOT tried DeepGram yet, but I’m profoundly intrigued to see if someone has actually cracked this nut without resorting to a human being the translator.  I use Dragon Naturally Speaking in the newsroom to transcribe interviews, but the software is expensive, and in that case, *I* am the human interface to speak into the program what I hear in my headphones.

Deepgram claims: “…fast and free AI powered speech-to-text, sound search, web editor built for humans, and an API for machines…”

From the DeepGram Blog of Oct 10, the instructions are:

1. Drag and drop to upload any audio file
2. Search by sound, not just the text, to find exactly what you’re looking for
3. Edit using the transcript editor to make it perfect
4. Use the transcription for closed captions, meeting notes, and boosting SEO

Is your brain clicking away at the possibilities like mine?

WHAT THE HECK IS .heic?

The other tool I’ve found, rectifies what I consider to be an unforgivable shortcoming in Google pics.  That’s not like Google.  They make it so easy to use GDrive, and all the attendant docs, sheets, and other apps, that it seems inconceivable that downloading a picture stored in Google photos results in an .heic file…not .jpg or .png.  Download a Google doc, and you can choose to save it as MS’s .doc file or Adobe’s .pdf file.  But download a Google pic, and you get….heic?

Well somebody beat me to the frustration of that, and launched https://heictojpg.com.  Just what it says.  Upload an .heic file, and it translates it to .jpg just like that!

…and here’s another one: just as dirt-simple to use as you’d find anywhere:  HEIC to JPG Converter.

You’re welcome!

CourVO