Not a great surprise, voice search has been available on iPhones for 2-3 years at least, and on Android phones for around a year.  Microsoft have been ramping up their voice services with the launch of Kinect, announcing more voice control services including voice driven Bing search.

Having been a long time Android user and a frequent Kinect gamer, I can honestly say these voice services have never added anything to either of the experiences they are offered with.

In 18 months of owning an Android phone I think I’ve used the voice search twice.  It doesn’t offer anything I can’t do with a keyboard, and faster if the voice recognition gets my speech wrong (usually the case).  In public it generally makes you look quite odd, and in office environments just isn’t practical.

For Kinect, it’s quicker and easier to use a control pad to navigate my xbox.  They’ll usually be other people present or music on, and talking isn’t a very useful or efficient way to interact with the machine.  I do things faster, more reliably, and easier with a control pad.

What does voice command really add to the experience? It certainly adds a ‘cool’ factor (lasting for about 4 minutes), but after that it generally becomes a pain.  I don’t see it having a future across many servies, including this Google announcement.

Until voice recognition becomes perfect, I don’t see a place for it in modern life.  Until it can perfectly interpret all my natural speech, allowing me to write a blog post such as this in the time it takes to speak the words, then I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere

When that day comes, the way we interact with computer devices will change forever.  Productivity across workplaces will be revolutionised and the world will be quite a different place.

The ‘Google Conversion Professional‘ qualification is by far the hardest to attain out of all of those released so far, and cannot be achieved by an individual – this is a company level certification.

In order to qualify for this, you must have at a minimum:

• Be qualified as a GAAC
• Be qualified as a WOAC
• Have 3 Google Advertising Professional employees
• Have 3 Analytics IQ employees
• Have 5 employees working in this area

And on and on. There are a couple of other requirements (case studies, 1 new case study per quarter, training attendance) but these are the key certifications needed.

There are a few companies who have got this already, it’s not an easy achievement and I can imagine it will take quite a dedicated effort to get all these covered off AND the case study production and requirements. It reminds we of working toward a new piece of epic gear in World of Warcraft for some reason, having the list of everything to complete and then slowly working toward it over a month or two.

I think it’s hard to say how valuable this will be, from what I can tell currently, the only people that really know about it are the companies trying to achieve it – not the clients who are looking for conversion services, so I’m not sure how much business benefit it would bring.  I have seen these accreditations used to good effect during trade show for example, where qualified vendors stand out from the crowd.  I’m just not sure how valuable they are for day to day business, when you factor in the massive business cost involved in achieving and maintaining all of these requirements.

After taking part in a Google survey several weeks ago with the chance to win some Googley prizes, it’s turned out I’ve won! A nice Google bag was waiting for me this morning, with some excellent treats.  The prizes were:

Google Bag – I’ve already got a red one, now a blue to go with it.

Google Elements Pen – Very nice, chrome pen in a black Google case.

Google Mouse – Wireless notebook mouse with the wireless adapter housed inside the mouse when not in use.  Very smart and feels like it should last, will be using this when out and about.

Google Flash Stick – A 1 GB Flash stick to use when out and about with obligatory lanyard

Google T-Shirt – A blue ‘greenconcept’ tee made from 70% bamboo, with the Google logo across the front in white.  I’ll probably be eBay’ing this as its in a medium

Google Notepad – A contemporary branded A5 notepad.

Google ???? – A small strange device (top left in the picture), it appears to be made by Neutrogena (branding on bottom).  It takes one AA battery, though doesn’t seem to do anything when powered up and switched on.  Any ideas? It was in the parcel along with the everything else…

I think I might play the National Lottery this weekend the way things have been going.