This week Google launched an enhanced Google search App for the iPhone which includes a speech to text search. According to the New York Times in this article, “Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.
The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location. ”

I’ve just tested it and asked it “How far is it to JFK airport”, and it came back with a reply about some airport in Michigan!. That is once problem the speech to text search application has run into – English spoken with an accent which is not American – see “Google launches voice activated search for iPhone - can’t understand British accents“. I’ve always maintained that I don’t have an accent, but everyone else around me does!

After writing about Netbooks, and how wonderful they are, I feel that I need to add a word of caution. This is especially so since I’ve noticed a lot of interest in the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook. It could be because it is a lot more configurable than other Netbooks. In typical Dell style the consumer is given a lot of configuration options, although not as many as a standard notebook.

Although times are tough, and the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook looks like a real bargain in comparison with other laptops, it helps to remember the target market of the Del Mini 9. It is targeted at people who already have a primary Notebook, and is intended for use as a secondary notebook. If you are going to do anything more than web browsing or emailing then you will quickly find that the hardware is just not up to it.

You can pick up a Dell Inspiron 1525 Notebook for not too much more than the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook. It is larger and heavier than the Mini 9, but it is a far more capable machine.

Released in September this year, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was Dell’s answer to the popular Asus Eee PC Series of Notebooks. The Mini Notebook uses an Intel 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, similar to most recent Netbooks.
The Dell Mini 9 It is available with either the Ubuntu Linux Operating System, or Windows XP Home Edition.

The specifications are as follows:
512MB or 1GB Ram Max,
8GB Solid State Drive or 16GB Solid State Drive
No internal optical drive.
Webcam

The Screen size is 8.9 inches diagonally, and the weight 6.2 pounds. As with most Netbooks, the Dell has 3 USB ports for attaching external devices like DVD Writers and external hard drives. It also has an SD Card slot, which from my experience with Netbooks, provides an easy way to copy data onto or off the notebook.

Then there is the built is Ethernet card and 802.11b and 802.11g wireless. This way the Netbook can be connected to the Cloud.

Touch screen interfaces for smartphones are definitely the in thing with cellphones now, especially since Apple wowed users with the iPhone and took a sizable chunk of the cellphone market in a short period of time.

Yet there are still some “old but good” cellphones around which are very usable.

The smartphone under the spotlight is the Nokia E61. This smartphone lacks a camera to make it more friendly for corporate environments.  It runs Symbian OS 9.1, Series 60 third edition, The phone has a candy bar design and a full QWERTY keyboard. The cellphone is quite wide, but fortunately not too thick. It features a generous size screen (320×240 pixel resolution), which is not a touchscreen, obviating the need for a stylus. Instead there is a mini joystick right under the screen. The menu system would be familiar to anyone used to the S60 series OS. Personally I found myself hunting around in sub-menus to find a particular  Wi-Fi option. Once used to the menu layout, navigating around the phone becomes a lot easier.

CNET’s review says the Nokia E61 “boasts a vibrant and sharp screen” . . . “ a full array of wireless options (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, UMTS)The Symbian smart phone also has good call quality, a speakerphone, the ability to view and edit Office documents, and robust e-mail capabilities.“

On Wednesday this week the Google Phone, also called the T-Mobile G1, was finally released. Two of my blogging colleagues have already mentioned the T-Mobile G1. It is one of the many iPhone competitors, but more importantly, it comes from Google, a company to be reckoned with.

As Dian mentioned at GottaHave: “The G1 runs best on T-Mobile’s 3G network“. So the G1 is the phone, and 3G is the name of the network – in fact it refers to a 3rd Generation data network. The previous generation data network was called EDGE, and not 2G, which just adds to the confusion.

Of course, the G1 is not the only 3G phone around. There’s the AT&T Tilt, 3G iPhone and the Palm Treo Pro Smartphone along with a whole long list of other cellphones.

Reviews of the T-Mobile G1 Google phone have been mixed, with some reviewers saying that the phone is only for “early adopters”. They do admit though that it is only the first Google Android phone – that is the first phone to feature Google’s Android Operating System. Unlike the Operating System on the iPhone, Android is “Open” – The Android Developer community has a large say about the applications on the G1, not Google.

I’ve just got back from a much-needed vacation. Prior to leaving,  I had heard the horror stories about iPhone users getting massive bills after accidentally leaving data roaming on while traveling overseas, so I phoned AT&T Customer Support. After all, the cruise we were taking had ports of call mainly in Canada. According to Customer Support, I could make or receive calls on the cruise ship itself, but that would cost me $2.49 per minute. Even if I received a call and didn’t answer it, I would still get charged. The same applied for Visual Voicemail. Onshore in Canada, it would cost less to make a call : 79c a minute, but data roaming was still expensive.

I took my iPhone with me anyway, as it is a cellphone after all. In the packing space allotted for my gadgets I also took a few handheld gaming consoles, including a Sony PSP (an underrated device, according to PC World) and a Nintendo DS. Of course I took my main handheld computer, an aging Palm Tungsten C, as well as its designated replacement.

I really missed having the full functionality of the iPhone. Since most of the cruise was spent out of the US, I didn’t turn it on often, and when I did, data roaming was off, and it was in “flight mode”. Wi-Fi was available in the public lounges of the cruise ship, but that was not cheap either.

The first thing I did after getting back from vacation was to turn on the iPhone with all data services activated.

While was paging through the latest catalog from Best Buy, I came across some very interesting digital cameras. Now digital cameras are not really my thing unless I’m actually shopping for one, which I’m not. What caught my eye about these cameras was how tough they were. The first one, an Olympus Stylus 8.0 Megapixel Digital Camera is shockproof up to 5 feet, waterproof down to 10 feet and freeze proof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Its larger sibling, the Olympus Stylus 10.1MP Digital Camera is shockproof up to 6 foot 8, waterproof down to 33 feet and freeze proof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also crush proof up to 220 pounds.

This got me thinking about Notebooks, and whether there were any tough ones. The Panasonic Toughbook came to mind. Even though other manufacturers also make ruggedized laptops, the Toughbook are the ones that come to mind when thinking of a heavy-duty portable computer.

The Panasonic Toughbook W7 is an Ultraportable ruggedized laptop. The Toughbook W7 is rated to survive a 1-foot fall, which doesn’t sound like much compared to the cameras mentioned above, but laptops are generally full of moving parts and have delicate LCD screens.

There are probably only a handful of cellphones available with hot swappable batteries. The Palm Centro isn’t one of them. Granted, this cute smartphone has a user-replaceable battery, something the iPhone lacks. (It also has copy and paste which the iPhone sorely lacks, but that is another story).

The Centro’s ancestor, the Treo 680 definitely doesn’t have a hot swappable battery. Every time you pull out the battery it does a soft reset - a reboot which takes about a minute. In fact, that is the only way to do a soft reset. Now on my Treo 680 this doesn’t bother me, because it is the designated replacement for my electronic brain, a Tungsten C. It just so happens that since it is unlocked I occasionally put in a SIM card so I can make calls.

A hot swappable battery is more of a requirement for a business notebook, or an older PDA which relies on AA batteries. With the Sony Clie PEG-S300 you had fifteen seconds to change the battery before the data was lost.

That’s Opera. It has some advanced features, but just doesn’t seem to gain market share. Possibly the Windows version has too many features, overwhelming the user with what appears to be a steep learning curve?. (I would hesitate to recommend “Opera Web Browser for Dummies” until I’ve read it myself) Up until version 5 Opera was trial-ware; it had an ad-supported free version and a paid full version. Although I know it is a superior browser, and have it installed on some of my machines, I seldom use it. Where I do use it is on Mobile devices where the only other browser is Pocket Internet Explorer. Opera runs on a myriad of mobile platforms, ranging from handhelds to smartphones and even cellphones. Here Opera really excels.

Opera Mobile, which is targeted at smartphones and PDAs is not free. On some smartphones the price of the smartphone includes the Opera Browser, but on most PDAs it costs extra.There is also a version of Opera called Opera Mini. This will run on any device which has a the Java Platform, Micro Edition installed.

Occasionally I run Opera, but then I go back to Firefox version 3. I also occasionally run  Google’s Chrome browser, it looks promising.

Prior to deciding on a 3G iPhone, I briefly considered the AT&T Tilt. It is a Windows Mobile Professional device, previously known as a Pocket PC cellphone (or Windows Mobile Pocket PC Edition). They are usually relatively big, but also quite powerful. The Tilt has almost the processing power of the HP iPaq 110 Classic Pocket PC. Hewlett-Packard has a long history of making Windows Mobile devices, both Pocket PCs and smartphones.

This leads me to the predecessors of the Pocket PC. Without going into the whole history of Windows PDAs, I’ll just highlight two of them.

The Handheld PC, an example of which is the HP Jornada 600 and 700 series, are Windows CE devices. They are clamshell devices with color screens and keyboards. They vary in size from about third to half the size of the Asus EeePC, and run Windows CE version 2 or 3, which looks a lot like Windows 95, with the familiar Start Menu. They even have a Windows key on the keyboard.

Prior to Windows CE, HP introduced a Palmtop computer known as the HP 200LX (see the Wikipedia article here). The HP 200LX was 100% MS-Dos compatible. It has is also a clamshell with a monochrome display and qwerty keyboard. It runs on AA batteries . The 200LX is available with 1, 2 or 4 MB of memory, and more memory can be added with Type I CompactFlash cards. Since DOS programs are small the memory is sufficient.