This. Is. So. Cool.
Posted by: andy in technology, tags: google, iPhone, technology, voice recognition
I wouldn’t really describe myself as being an Apple fanboy, and I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m an iPhone fanboy, I know it has a fair few failings, but I’m afraid that you’re going to have to let me gush for just a minute about the shiny slab of magic in my pocket.
This morning I downloaded the updated version of the Google Mobile app (here’s an iTunes link if you want to check it out yourself) to my phone because I’d heard quite a lot of buzz about it. That buzz related to being able to conduct searches using voice recognition. I’ve never found voice recognition software to be particularly accurate, and if you ever see me in public Googling with my voice rather than tapping away at the keyboard you have my permission to strangle me until I can no longer conduct voice searches which will almost certainly be based around pop culture facts just so that I can settle bets amongst my friends.
On a quick side note, having an iPhone has almost become a threat. If I’m sat in the pub with my friends and someone says something slightly dubious, like, for example “when scared, a squid will balloon to twice its size and turn red,” all I have to do is mutter “I have an iPhone” and all of a sudden their confidence and bravado will be shattered, because people now believe Google results more than their own memories. Hopefully, as smartphones become more prevalent in society, there will be less BS spoken in bars around the world, though being the guy that just sits there fact checking what people are saying all-night between sips on your beer is hardly a good way to be the life and soul of the party. Also, I try and keep my iPhone in my pocket as much as possible when I’ve had a drink or two, because as we’ve discussed before, drinking and e-mails do not mix.
I don’t believe that the ability to search the internet is someone that will catch on too quickly (maybe one day when everyone is comfortable with using those stupid bluetooth microphones), but I think its pretty amazing that ‘we’ seem to have reached a point in technological evolution where we can do things that were in science fiction not so long ago. Imagine if you told someone in the 80s that in about twenty years time that they would be able to pull a phone out of their pocket (that wouldn’t be the same size and weight as a brick) speak into it, without speaking to someone else, and the answer to your query would then be displayed on a screen, how do you think they’d react? Oh, and then you told them that the phone could also hold and play hundreds of hours of music and video. Hell, when I was a kid, I was impressed that ‘they’ could get Tetris to fit onto a wristwatch!
Oh, and in case you missed it, a spider has gone missing on the International Space Station, and that is a genuine story, not the set up to a low budget scifi movie.
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