It was gratifying to read that Google are shipping Dave Burke, one of their senior UK programmers to their headquarters near San Francisco in order to work on better mobile voice command software for Google search on Android.

Mobile Voice Command for Google Search on iPhone

I didn’t even know that I had mobile voice command on my iPhone until my partner started shouting into his Android and was asked to explain himself.

Searching on my iphone, I found the Google app installed as standard and, when clicking, I had all the regular functionality of a Google search on my PC, with the options for Everything, Places, Images, etc.

If you look to the top right of the screen where you would normally type in the search term, there is a little microphone symbol. Click that and speak your request.

Mobile Voice Command and Essex Girls

As with all such voice recognition software, it is not totally reliable… and, especially for someone like me with a high pitched squeak that only dogs can understand, sometimes it’s quicker to type – even with one finger!

I’ve always struggled with such devices. I am continually arguing with the bluetooth device in my car because it just makes up the numbers I am calling out to it and has me dialling all sorts of strangers.

I was part of the beta testing programme for VoiceIt, a WordPress plugin that was designed to save time by letting you speak your posts. If I spoke very slowly and precisely it could make a fairly good fist of translating what I was saying onto the screen but I type considerably faster than that so, for me, it was just not effective time management.

My partner, who has a louder deeper voice, has considerably more success but even he struggles sometimes to get the correct search term on his phone because of his slight Birmingham accent.

So any improvements that Dave Burke can make to this element of mobile search will be gratefully received – especially if he can persuade whatever algorithm controls it to understand Essex girls.

Mobile Voice Command - how high is your success rate?

Originally posted 2011-10-27 03:01:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2012 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Mobile Phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.