Plover

I have been using Plover for about six years now, and I have to say, I am a HUGE fan of this program! What it is is a program that will allow you to use either a steno machine or one of the appropriate computer keyboards -- usually the kind gamers use -- to use either the dictionary it comes with or one of your own to write into any program you can type into with a regular keyboard. Steno isn't like typing, exactly. For instance, if you were to type "for instance" on a regular keyboard, you would have to hit all of those letters one at a time. If you were using steno, you would press -- at the same time --TPR-EUPBS. Breaking that down, the first three letters equate to the word "for," which, of course, leaves the rest to make up "instance." Not to worry ... that's what the lessons are for! Chances are good many reading this will be lost already, but suffice to say this is basically a slimmed down version of the same kind of software that court reporters, captioners, and CART providers use, which can cost anywhere from $2500 to $5,000 ... all for the low, low price of ... free! Yes, it is missing a few bells and whistles, but it definitely gets the job done, with the added benefit of being able to run on my Mac, without my having to run Windows, which is HUGE for this Mac user ... and yes, it runs on both Windows and Linux as well. If you're a writer, web developer, computer programmer, or just somebody who types a lot, you should definitely look into steno. You can find FREE lessons on the Open Steno Project website, and everybody is very helpful to new users in the Google group.