ctrl.altered.mind

I was watching an old (June 2005, I think) interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on the Charlie Rose Show. Amongst the other points of discussion that are quite interesting, I especially liked the part where Schmidt asks Rose:

“Have you ever searched for your name on Google?”

Rose: “Yes”

Schmidt: “Did you get more than one result?”

Rose: “Yes”

Schmidt (smiling): “Well that’s a bug.”

Google Video Link

According to this ElectricNews article, Google has received a patent for technology that could develop into a new voice-assisted search method. Users could then google for information through voice-queries instead of text-based ones.

This could build up into a really amazing feature for Google Talk. The concept of having a module that actively looks for the “google ” phrase in a speech conversation and pulls up a browser window with search results, is beautiful. Coupled with a command to say, open a new tab in Firefox, a Google Talk user could pull up tons of (relevant) information before finishing a VoIP conversation.

The article mentions that the patent was filed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin along with three associates; two of the other named inventors in the patent are Alexander Franz and Brian Milch, who co-authored an academic paper, entitled “Searching the Web by Voice” back in 2002.