Voice Recognition is now in Google Chrome

In the latest version of Chrome, version 25, Google has introduced voice recognition feature. Now, instead of typing a text, you can speak it, wherever you can see a microphone icon. The prerequisite for the voice recognition tool is that you must have a microphone associated with your computer. You should also have the latest Chrome version 25, beta. In this beta version, Google has introduced a new Java script Web Speech API. So, if you are a web developer, you can even include this Web Search API, wherever you want. It enables the user to provide the input by speaking instead of typing. This Web Search API has the flexibility of having different speaking languages e.g. American English, British English, Indian English etc.

 

Glen Shires, a google engineer, wrote "So, in the near future you'll be able to talk apps doing into all sorts of things". It means that the developers now can implement the Web API to enable all kinds of voice commands to their applications. Thus, it may change entire ball game of the web applications going forward.

 

Coming back to our original context, we can use this voice recognition feature to compose a mail, write an article or for any other requirements. Though, there are other voice recognition tools, none of them is available free of cost. Where as Google is bringing this facility to you without any additional cost and without any special software installation. Also, most of the other tools are oriented to US English and hence sometimes, the other English speakers find it difficult to use these softwares. Where as in the latest chrome version, Chrome is having the option of different english flavor and hence, it should be well adopted world wide.

 

 

So what do you need to do to use this tool to type on behalf of you. Google has provided a site for "Web Speech API demonstration".

 

1. Click on this link to go to the demo site

2. Choose your language and country. For example, if you are Indian and want to speak in English, just select English in the first drop down and India in the second drop down.

3. Now, Click on the microphone and begin speaking for as long as you want. At the end of your speech, again click on the microphone to stop it recording.In case, you keep silent without stopping it, it will automatically stop after few seconds.

4. Now you can either copy the text or send mail.

 

Photo of Microphone - Courtesy Audio-TechnicaUK on Flickr