Google on Friday is expected to release version two of its mobile search application for the iPhone. The new version works much like the old one, letting users query Google outside of the mobile Safari Web browser, as well as search through contacts and narrow down results by their current location. The big change is the addition of search-by-voice, which lets you skip the keyboard entirely.
Google has found a really neat way to distinguish between voice and keyboard input. Using the phone's accelerometer and proximity sensors, it can tell when you're lifting the phone up to your face. Once you do, all that's left to do is speak, and your voice will get processed then turned into a query similar to what's been done with Google's GOOG-411 service--including suggestions of what it thought you said. This works for both Web searches and contacts, which makes the application double as a voice-powered contact search. You cannot, however, dial a result without clicking on it.
It's worth noting a few companies have already beat Google to the punch with voice-activated search tools. Excuse Me Services has two applications: Say Who and Say Where, which let you dial contacts and search for local Web services using nothing more than your voice. Say Where in particular is the more interesting of the two since it can use voice queries to find directions, gas stations, restaurants and traffic maps.
Also, early Monday rival Yahoo launched voice support for its OneSearch product, however instead of using internally-built technology it uses Vlingo for the the voice recognition and processing.
The updated, voice-ready version of Google's application will be available on Android and Blackberry devices in the coming months. iPhone users with the application already installed will find the updated version in the updates tab of the app store.
Update: A few folks, including Microsoft were nice enough to remind me via e-mail about voice search service TellMe which I forgot to mention.
Update 2: As of 4:50 PM PST the update has still not gone out through the app store. However there is now a demo video of how it works:
Google's much-rumored online storage service should be available in a few months, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal late on Monday that cites unnamed sources.
The service would allow people to store any kind of data on Google servers and access it from any computer with an Internet connection. An unspecified amount of storage would be offered for free with additional amounts available for a fee, the report said.
Google spokespeople did not return calls seeking comment on the report. A spokeswoman for the search company reached by the newspaper declined to comment on any specific plans but said "storage is an important component of making Web (applications) fit easily into consumers' and business users' lives."
The news is hardly new and certainly not surprising. Rumors of a hosted storage offering from Google, dubbed "Gdrive," have circulated for a while.
The move would raise the stakes in Google's rivalry with Microsoft, whose productivity applications rule the desktop world. Google has been releasing hosted e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, calendar, and other programs that compete with Microsoft. While consumers are attracted to the online services of Google's, corporations have yet to sign up for security and functionality reasons.
Microsoft offers a hosted storage offering of its own, which it renamed Windows Live SkyDrive this summer and has readied Office Live Workspace, a free online tool for viewing, sharing and storing, but not editing, Office documents online.
Google executives espouse a digital world where people can access their data from anywhere in what is called "cloud computing."
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