By Peter Cohen, IDG News Service

MacSpeech has released iListen 1.8, an update to their Mac OS X speech recognition software. The new release is available at no cost to registered iListen 1.7x customers. iListen costs US$149, and is bundled with a headset.

iListen lets you control your Mac using a normal, conversational voice. You can use it for dictating letters, editing and formatting text, navigating, activating commands like print, cut, copy and paste and more.

iListen 1.8 has been updated for Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard." It supports commands in the new version of TextEdit included with Leopard, Safari 3 and the Finder itself. Enhancements have been made to the Voice Launcher for Leopard, and to the Web Favorites command set.

MacSpeech also notes that various reported issues have been corrected and other refinements have also been made.

iListen requires Mac OS X v10.4 or later.