Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sheddyian]

I am quite impressed with this.

I just happened to check if there was an update to Chrome on one of my Windows computers, and there was - and it's a major update (to version 27).

So I Googled to see what was new in version 27.

It's meant to be 5% faster.  Well that's good.

But it's got voice search.  Conversational voice search.

With a microphone enabled, you get a little microphone icon in the google search box.  Click it, grant permission, and then just say your search.  Your searches appear.

If its a popular search, with a straightforward answer, it speaks the answer back to you.

And you can ask further questions.

(this example from a blog I read about it) :

You : How old is President Obama?

Computer (speaking) : Barack Obama is 51 years old

You : how tall is he?

Computer Barack Obama is 1.58 metres tall.

Also try things like : what is 33 degrees celcius in farenheit

We truly are living in the future.

(To check you've got the latest version of Chrome, click the three lines on the right hand side of Chrome, then click about.  It'll update if needed.)

Ian

[GigabitEthernet]

I noticed this the other day too. It has been available on Chrome on the iPhone for a while and I suspect it is quite useful (not that I use it very much).

I have Siri on my iPhone (very similar to Google Voice Search) and I rarely use it either. It is clever that Siri will do differentiation and solve quadratic equations (although due to Siri using Wolfram Alpha rather than Apple technology to work out Maths problems - it's still clever nonetheless).

Great post by the way .

[sheddyian]

It's certainly a novelty - I agree I'm not sure exactly how useful it will actually turn out to be.

I have just read of a feature to wake it up "OK GOOGLE" but that's either a joke or it doesn't work.  I can see possible benefit if you don't have to click anything to ask a question, if you're working on something else and you want to know a date or a figure or the answer to a sum or something.

Ian

[jannugimes]

does it speed up search results?