One of the top items this Christmas is going to be the Parrot Minikit Slim Limited Edition.  If you need a handsfree speakerphone for your car, this is the one you should get.  Granted if you want something that looks a little less girly, don’t the limited edition.  The other ones are just black, but work just as good.  This sleek speakerphone works great in your car.  You can easily put it on the visor of your car and forget about it.  It easily adapts to your environment and can even easily fit into your pocket.  Now, this is so easy to use.  As long as your phone as bluetooth, the Parrot will automatically synchronize its phonebook with your mobile phone.  Now, it has an awesome text to speech function which allows you to just say who you want to call.  You don’t even need to train it!  If there are several numbers for that person, you just need to specify by saying home, mobile, etc.  You can even record a shortcut for your contacts, so you can call them even quicker.  I love that it is extremely hard to tell where the microphone is, and it doesn’t have any speakers!  The sound from this is awesome.  The other really cool thing is that you can use up to 5 phones with this, and it has multi speaker voice recognition.

If you know anyone without a bluetooth handsfree speakerphone, you have to buy them this for Christmas.  It is so much easier to use than a headset and it looks nice too.

Why do I love Dragon Naturally Speaking? Let me count the ways . . . .

Ok, so the video doesn’t tell you all ways I love Dragon Naturally Speaking. However, it does show you how easy it is to use the software. Literally, all you have to do is plug in a noise canceling headset to your computer and download the software. You place your cursor where you want to type and away you go. Now, you do have to train the software to your voice. I tend to talk fast, so it had to correct for that. Plus, if you find that it is typing same wrong word, you can train it on that specific word. This isn’t rocket science to figure out (which is good because I have a tendency to NOT read the books or pdf files that comes with software).

I was able to create that video while my kids were up and playing at my feet (and you can tell when they grabbed my leg, because the video starts wobbling. You can also hear them a little too.) However, I did want to show that you can still be involved in doing other things and be able to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This more than triples my typing speed when I am typing and dealing with my kids (Take the Dragon NaturallySpeaking typing test if you don’t know what your typing speed is). I am actually writing this blog post using the software too. Here is the official video on how this all works:

As I stated in my video, I am finding that I can get a lot more in the little snippets of time I have during the day plus I am able to get way more done at night. I love being able to go to bed before midnight. I love being able to answer emails and do blog posts when I have Will sitting on my lap drinking from his sippy and watching cartoons. I have five blogs, so being able to write more content in less time is a huge plus for me. Plus, anyone who knows me, knows I have no problems talking. I am able to do my freelance work and reports using this also. I will be recommending this to my boss. Beside blogging, I have used it to make my daily lists of what I have to do each day plus some grocery shopping lists too! I am not the only one who thinks it is great, check out this New York Times Review.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is really for anyone who works on a computer. If you talk faster than you type, you need this. If you want to be more efficient in your work, you need this. If you just want a new toy to play with, you DEFINITELY need this. Time is money, and the time you save from using Dragon NaturallySpeaking makes it worth every penny.