Sweet! Google Adds Searching by Voice to iPhone Software
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.
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.
Both Yahoo and Microsoft already offer voice services for cellphones. The Microsoft Tellme service returns information in specific categories like directions, maps and movies. Yahoo’s oneSearch with Voice is more flexible but does not appear to be as accurate as Google’s offering. The Google system is far from perfect, and it can return queries that appear as gibberish. Google executives declined to estimate how often the service gets it right, but they said they believed it was easily accurate enough to be useful to people who wanted to avoid tapping out their queries on the iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard.
The service can be used to get restaurant recommendations and driving directions, look up contacts in the iPhone’s address book or just settle arguments in bars. The query “What is the best pizza restaurant in Noe Valley?” returns a list of three restaurants in that San Francisco neighborhood, each with starred reviews from Google users and links to click for phone numbers and directions.
- from NYTimes
Google CEO on Obama tech czar job: No thanks
Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Friday he would not serve as technology czar in Barack Obama’s administration if he was asked.
“I love working at Google and I’m very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no,” Schmidt said in response to a question from CNBC host Jim Cramer in an appearance on his television show.
Schmidt, who was one of the president-elect’s most high-profile supporters, was in Chicago Friday as part of Obama’s 17-person economic transition economic advisory board. The group met to discuss how to deal with the ongoing financial crisis.
Schmidt said he detected a sense of urgency in Obama, who he expects to “listen carefully” and act. The meeting was one of “great seriousness,” he said.
- from Reuters
Google Earth iPhone App! Coolness…
Google on Monday brought the popular Google Earth application to Apple’s iPhone, allowing users to fly around the globe with just a touch of the screen.
Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod Touch is available for free in 18 languages and 22 countries through the iTunes App Store, Google said in a posting on the official blog of the Mountain View, California-based company.
“With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between,” the posting said.
“It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain,” it added.
Just by touching the screen, a user can move from point to point around the world, zooming in or out by pinching the screen and tilting the device to get a 3D view of mountainous terrain.
The “My Location” feature instantly shows a user’s real world location while Google Local Search helps locate nearby places, businesses and landmarks.
More than eight million photos pictures of landmarks and scenery are integrated into the phone allowing users to take a “virtual tour” of the world.
The Google Earth application also includes links to Wikipedia articles.
- from AFP
Google already has customized some of its Web sites for display on the iPhone, but now the company also dived headlong onto Apple’s highly regarded mobile phone with a full-fledge application, a handheld version of its Google Earth geographical software.
Google Earth lets people virtually fly around a 3D view of the world made from satellite and aerial imagery mapped onto the planet’s mountains and valleys. The iPhone version reproduces this core experience, downloading imagery from Google’s servers as the perspective shifts and dotting the map with landmarks, photos, and other information.
“The idea of having Earth on a mobile device is something people dreamed of back to the Keyhole days and before,” said Peter Birch, Google Earth’s product manager, referring to the satellite imagery company Google acquired in 2004. “This is the first opportunity we’ve had to be able to deliver a great experience.”
Keyhole began its first version of what later became Google Earth in 2001, when computer horsepower and network capacity had not risen to their current levels. “A lot of that core engine can run on a device like this,” Birch said.
The free software started becoming available through Apple’s App store on Sunday. (Update 7:50 p.m. PDT: Apparently Australian App Store users get the first crack at this software, but it should be spreading to other regions “soon,” Google said.) It’s a free download in 20 countries, running in all 18 languages the iPhone supports.
- from CNet
McCain bad for Internet, says Googler who invented Internet
There are two acceptable political affiliations if you work at Google: Hyperlibertarian Paultard, or reflexively Democratic Obamamaniac. Vint Cerf, one of the guys who actually created the Internet back when it was a Pentagon-sponsored research project, and now works at Google as vice president in charge of being the guy who created the Internet, has put himself in the latter camp by officially endorsing Obama. Since Cerf is such a powerful voice, he might as well be speaking on behalf of Google itself. But the reason he’s throwing Google in the Obama camp is painfully shallow and self-serving. – from Valleywag
Another Google content play
Google is mounting another experiment in content distribution that might be even more ambitious than its recent launch of original animation from “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane.
The Internet giant quietly launched a video series Sept. 8 on its YouTube property called “Poptub” with Embassy Row, the production company run by “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” creator Michael Davies, and Pepsi.
As it did with MacFarlane’s “Cartoon Cavalcade of Comedy,” which became an instant hit on YouTube, Google plans to distribute “Poptub” on its Google Content Network, an ad network that provides the additional reach of hundreds of thousands of Web sites beyond YouTube.
But while “Cavalcade” is simply a collection of 50 shortform episodes, “Poptub” is intended as an “Entertainment Tonight” for the YouTube set that will yield thousands of episodes, not to mention a more curated point of entry to YouTube, which it has been criticized for lacking.
“For Seth, it’s about launching episodes on a weekly basis,” said Alexandra Levy, director of branded entertainment at Google. “With ‘Poptub,’ we’re creating an organic destination on YouTube meant to live there for a longer period.”
- from THR
Zzzz… Ask.com Revamps Search Engine
Ask.com has a record of coming up with interesting innovations that are often copied by others in the Internet search business. Yet those innovations have done little to help the company expand its share of the search audience. Ask.com remains a distant fourth in a market that is overwhelmingly dominated by Google.
That history is not stopping Ask.com from trying again. On Monday, the company is rolling out a revamped version of its search engine, the first major overhaul since Jim Safka replaced Jim Lanzone as chief executive in January. “We have rebuilt the Ask site from the ground up,” said Mr. Safka, who previously served as chief executive of Match.com.
In its latest iteration, Ask.com will deliver results not only from the Web, but also from so-called “structured” sources of data in certain categories like entertainment, health and jobs. The results are intended to deliver faster answers to certain queries, Mr. Safka said. For instance, a search for “Miley Cyrus” will include TV listings for the series “Hannah Montana” in which she stars.
The new Ask.com also includes an index of various question-and-answer sites from around the Web, including Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers, that proves effective at returning results for some queries posed as questions. “Some of the best content is coming from individuals, not necessarily from professional publishers,” Mr. Safka said.
- from Nytimes
It’s kinda hot to see official Sarah Palin banner ads on our site
VPILFy Sarah Palin is turning us on EVEN more. On many of our hot fake Sarah Palin photoshop pages, you may see actually John McCain Sarah Palin google banner ads. HOTT. It’s like she gets it, give us a stamp of approval. A cute little wink. She’s hot and she knows it…. Sure, she’s crazy, but Sarah is a true boner maker. Ya betcha!
Look above or click below to see example:
Welcome To Bizarro World – Google Takes A Leap Back To 2001
As part of its 10th birthday celebration, Google has opened the doors to an antiquated version of its search engine that dates back to 2001. The portal has all the trimmings from the old site, including the goofy logo (complete with exclamation point), a missing “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, and the not-so-modest claim of having indexed 1,326,920,000 web pages.
It’s cool to see things the way they were (though they haven’t changed all that much), but the real fun lies in running a few searches. Google’s blog post offers a few examples: The iPodreferred to a Document Processing System, and YouTube gets zero hits.
- from Techcrunch
The 25 Most Influential People on the Web
Each year, we turn to readers and BusinessWeek staff for the Best of the Web list, asking them to contribute names for a list of the Intern et’s movers and shakers. Take a look at the slide show to see which people have the most impact on the Web these days. – read at BusinessWeek
Steve Ballmer
Mitchell Baker
Jeff Bezos
Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
Jeff Clavier
Paul Graham
Arianna Huffington
Joi Ito
Steve Jobs
Jonathan Kaplan
Loic Le Meur
Jack Ma
Matt Mullenweg
Rupert Murdoch
Craig Newmark
Gabe Rivera
Kevin Rose
Sheryl Sandberg
Jon Stewart
Peter Thiel
Maria Thomas
Anssi Vanjoki
Jimmy Wales
Evan Williams
Jerry Yang
