Though overwhelmed and overworked, music educators can juggle administrative and teaching duties better now than ever before with new time-saving tools. Cell phones and PDAs with telephone capabilities are the norm for busy people. But there are many more technological options to consider to lighten the workload. For this two-part series, I’ve selected some exciting tools to put on your Christmas wish list: business card management; voice-recognition-to-print software; optical character recognition; creative screen dumps, and multimedia file management.

Voice-Recognition Technology
Ever wish you could take care of administrative tasks while driving a car or flying in an airplane, without the hassle of transporting a computer? Voice recognition technology is in its prime and ready for you. New digital voice recorders fit in the palm of your hand and link high-powered voice recognition software to your computer. The accuracy, performance, and ease-of-use of Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 voice recognition software by Nuance makes it a great solution for busy professionals. With the off-the-shelf version, which includes a headset microphone, users can dictate, edit, and control applications all by voice in programs like America Online, Mozilla Firefox, Corel WordPerfect, and Microsoft’s Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer. Dragon Naturally Speaking can convert speech to text recognition at a speed of up to 160 words per minute. This software has proven itself in the corporate world and is ready for music educators. It is even possible to create special macro commands to perform complex tasks on the computer with a spoken word or phrase.

An additional factor that needs to be considered in tandem with speech recognition software is the selection of a digital voice recorder that has the correct audio file compression for Dragon voice-to-print software. Sony has created a family of digital voice recorders that save the audio files into a format conducive to accurate voice recognition. Dragon has also prepared a special version of their voice recognition software especially for portable digital voice recorders, and this software is bundled with a number of Sony digital voice recorder models. With the two together, recorder and voice-to-print software, you can dictate just about anywhere for automatic transcription at a later time. When you get back to your office, just connect your recorder to your PC-compatible computer and the supplied software can convert your dictation into text. The newer digital voice recorders by Sony can store over 100 hours of recording time. Whether you just want to make notes for yourself or boost your productivity, the pricing is a steal with four models varying from $39.95 to $69.95. The more advanced models designed to work with voice to print software are priced from $149.95. Busy directors can take care of school business at the office, at home or in between. If you have a support staff that can perform the voice to print process for you, you can even e-mail the files and have them converted into text without even returning to your office. I recommend investigating this shortcut at www.nuance.com.

Optical Character Recognition
For those of us that don’t have a secretary, OCR (optical character recognition) is scanning technology that makes it possible to digitally convert documents and forms into many PC applications for editing and duplication. OCR technology has improved to the point that 99 percent accuracy is common. Not only is it possible to save documents in more than 25 formats – including PowerPoint, Excel, and others – for further editing, but by saving them in a PDF that includes PDF Create and converter, the documents can be posted on a Web site without having to worry about HTML formatting. The very best OCR software is OmniPage Professional, version 16 by Nuance. I have been a user since their version 7.0. The secret is not just in the scanning accuracy, but better formatting means better editing plus incredible speed. For documents with poor print quality, a scanner enhancement technology (SET) improves the quality of scanned documents, faxes, and copies. Straightening, despeckling, and color conversion ensure you get the results you require. Try OCR to to convert a lengthy band or orchestra manual to a word processing document and you will understand why this technology is a must have application for every office. And you don’t need a high-resolution scanner for OCR work. A scanner under $100 is more than capable. Favorite brands include Epson and Canon because of their uncompressed TIFF files.

The latest release of OmniPage delivers a 27 percent increase in overall document conversion accuracy over previous versions and works up to 46 percent faster. With the addition of new parallel processing algorithms, OmniPage Professional 16 becomes the world’s first OCR application specifically designed for a multi-core processor computer. The integration of PaperPort enables users to set up quick navigation links inside OmniPage that instantly jump to pre-selected folders when opening or saving a file to the desktop. PaperPort will open directly to the designated save folder, making it possible to see the converted document in context with the folder’s other contents. PaperPort Folder Notes can even be set to automatically add important keywords and notations to PDF and Word documents for more robust indexing – perfect for searching with all popular search tools including Windows, Yahoo, and Google Desktop Search. Digital cameras can be used with the innovative new 3DC technology that automatically adjusts for skew, waves and 3-D perspective. OmniPage is the first to support Microsoft XPS, which is the new “electronic paper” standard, much like PDF, for document sharing and archiving within Microsoft Windows. Convert PDF to XPS or vice versa. Believe it or not, OmniPage can convert from 119 different foreign languages! Visit the Web site (www.nuance.com/omnipage/languages/) for more details.

Time Management of Business Cards
Music educators develop an extensive networking system from their encounters with administrators, college recruiters, parents, travel and festival reps, sales people, and other professional contacts. And while business cards are the best connection, keeping track of them can be a losing battle. CardScan is a quick and easy way to catalog business cards into database management software, plus access them at any time with PDAs and cell phones.

CardScan is a dedicated business card scanner with pass-thru USB port connection. Once scanned, this unique database software makes the information available to view, edit, and print. No more wasting time and energy entering individual information for each business card. The scanning hardware is very compact, amazingly accurate and portable, powered by the computer’s USB port. Their scanning software accurately reads the card and places the name, title, company, address, phone numbers, URLs, and e-mail address into the correct fields. Press the HotSync button and CardScan can synchronizes with a PDA or other third-party software such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Palm, Windows Mobile devices, iPods, smart phones, ACT!, Lotus Notes, GoldMine and other PIM contact managers.

CardScan consolidates all contact data (not just business cards) using drag-and-drop from e-mail, Web sites and other electronic files. It intelligently categorizes contacts, searches, sorts, dupes, prints labels, maps addresses and much more. There’s even a free online back up to find contact data, access contacts from a browser by password, and update information. My favorite of their three models is their CardScan Executive, which is a full-featured contact manager and desktop business card scanner. It scans in just three seconds and even manages your international contacts because it reads French, Spanish, German and Portuguese. You can try it for 30 days, risk-free. For more info, go to www.cardscan.com. 

Incredible Screen Dumps
Ever try to piece together materials from the Internet into your teaching materials or Web pages where formatting and artwork are critical? Both Mac and Windows operating systems can capture screen shots, but their layout options are rather limited, especially in terms of editing the final document. An easy solution is to try a sophisticated screen-dumping program. For the Windows platform, look no further than SnagIt by TechSmith [www.techsmith.com], which can bring professional looking multi-screen pages to presentations or Web pages. SnagIt will also capture up to two gigabytes of video. It’s simple to use and very powerful and allows users to bring in only the information they need.

With SnagIt, anything on the screen can be selected and captured, then easily altered to add text, arrows, or effects. The screen capture can be saved to a file or shared immediately by e-mail or IM. There are four powerful screen capturing uses: the first is to capture an entire screen; the second is to capture any part of the screen; the third usage is to capture an article, image, or Web page directly from the screen; and the last is to capture windows, menus, icons, and regions from any application that runs on the PC. The SnagIt image editor makes it easy to add creative and professional touches to screen captures. Transform images with a full-featured paint tools palette, a variety of edge effects, and practical options for color and size adjustment.

For Mac, the best choice is Snaps Pro [www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/], which I use for all my screen capture needs. Snaps Pro also has a video capture version, which is great for creating exciting tutorials. Snaps Pro is like owning both Snagit (a great screenshot capturing application) and Camtasia (a great multimedia presentation product).

Multimedia Management
In the area of a multimedia shortcuts, Easy Media Creator 9 Suite by Roxio (www.roxio.com) is a one-of-a-kind product with 35+ integrated applications, making it a “super-suite.” Multimedia areas covered include video, photos, music and audio, system backup and restore, DVD player & encoder, Pro DVD authoring, media duplication and conversion, and more. It specializes in importing, capturing, editing, copying, burning, exporting, and viewing multimedia data. Easy Media Creator 9 Suite goes beyond mere applications, as it can handle advance usage and supports a wide range of file formats. In video, it supports AVI, DV-AVI, MPEG-1/2, MPEG2-HD, IFO/VOB, DivX, DivX-HD, Xvid, DVR-MS, TiVo, ASF, DV, MOV, WMV, and QT. In audio, it supports MP3, WAV, WMA, Dolby Digital AC-3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MPEG-1/2, AAC, and M4A.  On more than one occasion, I’ve found the Creator 9 Suite to be the only software I own which can read my brand-new digital camera movie files, and convert them to readable file – something my $999.99 video editing software can’t do! That’s how important managing these file formats can be.

Looking for an even more powerful multimedia suite? Roxio also has a deluxe suite (Creator 9 Deluxe Suite) which offers five true pro-level applications fully integrated: SoundSoap (noise reduction); SightSpeed Pro (one-year video/voice calling subscription); DivX Pro (create/publish superior quality DivX video files); DVD Styles (20 additional pro-designed menu styles); and Dazzle Card (analog-to-digital video converter). Consequently, this multimedia suite is very powerful and priced accordingly.

Another all-in-one multimedia utility application that can help maximize a digital music experience is Cakewalk Pyro 5.  This application can make MP3s and manages digital music collection.  It can also digitize and restore LPs or cassettes as well as record Internet broadcasts, burn and share mix CDs, archive important data files, and create backup copies of CDs and data DVDs.  It accomplishes this all by using Quick Tabs in a straightforward manner and, amazingly, is priced under $30.00.

More Special Multimedia Tools
Camtasia Studio by TechSmith is the complete professional solution for recording, editing and sharing high-quality screen video on the Web, CD-ROMs, and portable media players, including iPods.  Easily record the screen, PowerPoint, multiple audio tracks, and Web-cam video to create compelling training videos, screencasts, and presentations without ever leaving your desk. With the power of interactive Camtasia Studio videos, you can deliver high-quality content anytime, to even your most remote audience.  Its power is amazing.  For a sample using multimedia presentations to promote a music program or career can be found online [www.kuzmich2.com/Camtasia_Videoconferencing/Intro.html].

Microsoft GIF Animator is a great freeware application used by computer graphics animators for the purpose of creating animated GIF image files. This software runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system.  Until recently, Microsoft GIF Animator was available for free on the Web from Microsoft, but is now being packaged with other image editing software. You can also get GIF Animator if you have a MSDN subscription.  It can also be used as video conversion software.  For an example of how Animated GIF web presentations work, go to my Web site [www.kuzmich.com].  To grab a free download of this GIF animator, hurry to www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/13212.

Ulead PhotoImpact 12 [www.ulead.com/pi] is a complete image-editing suite that also includes an animated GIF maker with even more whistles and bells than Microsoft GIF Animator.  In addition, it offers powerful yet easy-to-use tools which allow users to share photos, greeting cards, labels, calendars, prints, email and more.  High-end image editing features found in PhotoImpact 12 include a complete set of powerful tools to satisfy the demands of users, such as: auto white balance control; reduce noise; and SmartRemove Scene Compositor.