Google Adds Voice Search to iPhone
November 19th 2008 09:43
Category: Mobile Phones
It's been a long and drawn out effort to get home PCs to understand human speech, and well Google has done it for mobile phones. Their researchers have created a sophisticated voice recognition software for the iPhone.
Apple will make the application available as early as Friday through their iTunes store. The application is free, and allows you to put the phone to your ear and ask it nearly any question that you want. The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to the Google search engine. The searcresults are typically displayed in seconds.
This is a huge innovation for technology as we now have some basis of technology that allows a machine to understand nearly any phrase.
You should not have any problems using the application to help find driving directions and restaurant recommendations.
Yahoo and Microsoft already has voice services for cell phones, such Microsoft Tellme service that returns information for specifics like directions, maps, and movies and Yahoo's oneSearch with Voice is pretty flexible but not quite as accurate as Google's new software.
You will find that Google's application is not perfect and at times you may encounter gibberish. Google will not estimate how often the program is actually right, but they believe that it's useful enough for people who would rather speak instead of type on the iPhone's touchscreen.
Google admits that the program isn't perfect, but they are using this as one more means of world advertising. But, they do plan on increasing the accuracy of the program within the next 3 to 6 months.
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Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
Until they all get it perfected much more, I am happy to stick to using the key pad to transfer me to wherever I want to go.