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Innovation

Weekend Gadget Guidance: Control PowerPoint presentations with your voice

Not too many people have taken advantage of the speech recognition capabilities that Windows has, but this one might just change your work life forever.Blogger and Microsoft employee Rob Chambers offers a handful of free macros you can add to your Speech Macros folder to execute any time.
Written by Andrew Nusca, Contributor

Not too many people have taken advantage of the speech recognition capabilities that Windows has, but this one might just change your work life forever.

Blogger and Microsoft employee Rob Chambers offers a handful of free macros you can add to your Speech Macros folder to execute any time. But one macro in particular seems so incredibly cubicle-cool: a Next Slide macro that advances a PowerPoint presentation when you say "next slide" and goes back when you say "previous slide."

Chambers has other cool tricks up his sleeve -- for example, a Tell Me the Weather Forecast macro that reads you the forecast when you say, for example, "What is the weather like in Chicago?" -- but the ability to control your own slide presentation (look Ma, no hands!) just gives off loads of "I-know-what-I'm-doing" vibes to the higher-ups.

To get started, all you have to do is install WSR Macros and put the macro files in your Speech Macros folder. It's that easy.

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