Speech recognition ... Google search

[Geel_jire]

SAN FRANCISCO — Pushing ahead in the decades-long effort to get computers to understand human speech, Google researchers have added sophisticated voice recognition technology to the company’s search software for the Apple iPhone.

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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

 

Google’s voice search software works only with iPhones, but the company plans to make it available to other phones.

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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

 

Vic Gundotra, right, and Gummi Hafsteinsson, of Google, with an iPhone running the voice search.

 

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

 

The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

 

The ability to recognize just about any phrase from any person has long been the supreme goal of artificial intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural. Systems that can do this have recently started making their way into commercial products.

 

This is currently only available for the iphone .. but probably will be wide spread soon

 

 

story

[Cara.]

Systems that can do this have recently started making their way into commercial products.

Like my phone.

 

Phone: "Please say a number or name in your contact list."

 

Me: "Eedo Xamdi".

 

Phone: Long pause, whirring sound, a click of defeat. "Did you mean... Joseph? Er, Stephen? How about Emma, you haven't called her in a while. I bet you wanted to call Emma. I'll dial Emma's number."

 

Color me unimpressed.

[Geel_jire]

^ the focus is a bit different in this application the breakthrough is not purely voice recognition ... using it to conduct a search based on content and offer alternatives depending on other parameters is the beauty.

 

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can

place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

 

The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

the breakthrough here is search engine optimization and the innovative approach of using existing technologies already available on the iphone such as location awareness to provide better search results.

 

we are inching closer towards full "content search capability" .. I don't expect it to be tomorrow but these incremental advances will hopefully soon result in fully "content search" ability.

 

currently everyone has become so used to search engines working the way do .. that the content is being tailored to the limitations of current technology instead of the other way around.

 

now ... if you want your page or article to be easily searched you need to include 'tags' describing the contents of the page to make it easier for the search engine to index and search.

 

here is another step towards the end goal in this thread

 

the thread linked ^ here describes a search engine that uses 'natural language' to conduct the search .. now imagine marrying these two ideas.

 

sorry for the rant ... SEO is an interest of mine

[Geel_jire]

and here is another application where google tracks the spread of the flu