If you've got an Android phone, try this: Hit the microphone icon on the home screen, then ask, "How many angstroms in a mile?" Use your normal speaking voice—don't speak slowly or strain to over-pronounce "angstrom." So long as you have a good Internet connection, the phone shouldn't take more than a second to recognize your question and shoot back a reply: 1.609344 × 1013.
This works with all kinds of queries. Say "what's 10 times 10 divided by 5 billion" and the phone will do math for you. Say "directions to McDonald's" or read out an address—even a vague one like "33rd and Sixth, NYC"—and Android will pull up a map showing where you want to go. It works for other languages, too: Android's Translate app (also available for the iPhone) will not only convert your English into spoken French (among several other languages) but also has a "conversation mode" that will translate the French waiter's response back into English. And if that's not enough, Android lets you dictate your e-mail and text messages, too.
If you've tried speech-recognition software in the past, you may be skeptical of Android's capabilities. Older speech software required you to talk in a stilted manner, and it was so prone to error that it was usually easier just to give up and type. Today's top-of-the-line systems—like software made by Dragon—don't ask you to talk funny, but they tend to be slow and use up a lot of your computer's power when deciphering your words. Google's system, on the other hand, offloads its processing to the Internet cloud. Everything you say to Android goes back to Google's data centers, where powerful servers apply statistical modeling to determine what you're saying. The process is fast, can be done from anywhere, and is uncannily accurate. You can speak normally (though if you want punctuation in your email, you've got to say "period" and "comma"), you can speak for as long as you'd like, and you can use the biggest words you can think of. It even works if you've got an accent.
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