OCR - Optical Character Recognition.
Often ships with the scanner you buy, but can purchased separately.
Practically all software allows you to create and manipulate things. Word processors allow you to create and manipulate documents. Excel allows you to create and manipulate spreadsheets. Powerpoint allows you create and manipulate slide shows. Access allows you create and manipulate databases. There is a huge range of other software that allows you to create and manipulate things.
Sound eXchange is a piece of software which allows you to manipulate files. The decibels produced by the program are only limited by the speakers you have attached to your computer.
Translation software allows you to translate from one language to another. Babylon is a very good translation software.
Computer Software
The one software that is a must for any photographer is Adobe Photoshop. This software allows you to manipulate images.
The computer allows you to play sound. It also can help you manipulate sound to create sound effects.
A mouse.
system software and application software
The Dragon speech recognition software allows someone to control their computer by using their voice. It allows you to complete a variety of computer tasks.
terminal emulation
Software is the instructions and the data that a computer operates on (and that allows a computer to operate at all). Software is that part of a computer that you can't kick.
dbms