Voice Search on Android (and Location Enabled Search)

This Google Mobile Blog just announced  the most useful mobile feature I have heard of for a while. Here is  a long quote from Jeff Hamilton's post:

You can start searching by voice with just the touch of a button. On the home screen search widget, look for the microphone button right next to the search box and the search button. Press that button, wait for the "Speak now" prompt, and then say your query. You'll soon see search results formatted for the Android browser.

Also, whenever you're in the Android browser, just press the "Menu" button and tap "Search". You'll see the same microphone button there too.

This makes doing successive voice-triggered searches -- and mobile web surfing -- easy and fast. Try speaking your favorite web sites, then tapping on the top search results to get to them.

Note that you can use the "Voice Dialer" app, which you can find on the main app menu, to search for your contacts with your voice to make a call. Or, simply long-press the green call button and follow the prompts on the splash screen.

This sounds really useful and it should drive mobile phone usage forward, especially when combined with location enabled search.

Latitude is a new feature of Google Maps for mobile, as well as an iGoogle gadget, that allows you to share your location with your friends and to see their approximate locations, if they choose to share them with you. You can use your Google account to sign in and easily invite friends to Latitude  from your existing list of contacts or by entering their email addresses. Google Talk is integrated with Latitude, so you and your friends can update your status messages and profile photos on the go and see what everyone is up to. You can also call, SMS, IM, or email each other within the app.

We've gone to great lengths to put this on as many smartphone devices as possible from day one so that most of the people you know will be able to use Latitude right away. There are two primary ways to use Latitude right now:

On your mobile phone: visit google.com/latitude from your phone's mobile browser to download Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. We currently support most of the popular smartphone platforms: Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile, and we are hoping to see Latitude on the iPhone soon. It will be available through Google Mobile App, and you'll just need to download or update the app from the App store to find Latitude in the Apps tab.

On your computer: go to http://google.com/latitude from your browser and add the Latitude gadget to your iGoogle homepage. What's neat is that if you've installed Google Gears or if you're using Google Chrome, you can choose to automatically share your location from your laptop or desktop computer -- no smartphone required!

See also

• Google Latitude keeps tabs on friends' locations
  

Speech Recognition Providers

• The most established speech recognition company is Nuance  and one of their popular products is Dragon.
  
• CMU Sphinx is a popular public domain system.
• Microsoft speech recognition which seems to based on their Tellme acquisition  in 2007.