Google introduces Australian accent for maps, Android app questions
I’ve Been Everywhere, Man anthem is trending Down Under in the past couple of days. A one-minute music video posted by Google Australia on YouTube, a reloaded version of Geoff Mack’s classic, is the in-thing to be precise. In one day, it has garnered over 21K views.
The video announces the latest add-on, the Aussie accent for maps and Android app questions on Google, to ensure a better and perfect pathfinder for the native language speakers of Australia.
The update has brought loads of cheer to people for getting a familiar voice to take them anywhere from Indooroopilly to Kiribilli. Going by techbuzz, the introduction expects a 30-fold increase in the application of the voice utility from texting.
Expert Australian linguists had guided Google to get the pronounciation and intonation part right. It promises to bring place names and slang words right in Aussie accent. In other words, this can be called Google’s answer to Apple’s Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface), the natural language user interface’s 2014 modification.
iPhone users are now able to switch from seven different palatable accents including those from New Zealand and Singapore.
Quoting Mashable Australia, a Google spokesperson has said, “People are starting to talk to their mobile devices more regularly — in fact, mobile voice searches have more than doubled in the past year alone.”
Explaining further, this means, voice search can do more good for search engine optimisation (a significant visibility factor) in future with more and more people preferring smart phones and tablets over desktop and laptops by each passing year.
Recognising faces too
The handy smart phone is on a transformation path to become even smarter. Google is experimenting on incorporating face-recognition in its smart phones so that real time identification of faces and objects take place with no interference from remote data centres over the Web. With the built-in facility, a user can search through the photos with better speed and accuracy by typing out the names of the objects.
The search giant has joined hands with chip designer Movidius for adopting deep learning in the devices. Google had an early association with the firm towards creation of three-dimensional map of indoor spaces.
