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Google - do you speak the Queen's English?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 18 Nov 08, 15:20 GMT

Apologies for mentioning another Google product so soon after the last one - but its Voice Search service could be a real winner. Only trouble is, it doesn't work unless you speak with a San Francisco accent.

Google has chosen to launch mobile voice search first on Apple's iPhone rather than on its own Android platform - which is either a breathtakingly open and platform-neutral gesture or a tacit admittance that this isn't quite the finished product, so let's smooth out the wrinkles on their platform, not ours.

You install the application on the phone and are then directed to a handy video explaining how it works. It explains that the search will also find local information without you needing to say where you are - so if you say "movies tonight" it will find local San Francisco cinemas. Or presumably London films for me.

You simply tap on voice search, then speak into the phone. The search engine thinks for a few seconds and then delivers its results - and in my case they are in pure gibberish. My first search was for "next train, West Ealing to Paddington." It delivered me some useful information about "neck strain" - but no train times. "Barts and East London National Health Service trust" came out as "bulk terminal service trucks".

Then I tried repeatedly to search for my colleague Robert Peston - up came some results on Robert Haxton , Robert Hester and Rupert Sheldrake. Other searches for names proved equally fruitless (you can imagine what it did with "Rory Cellan-Jones")and when I said "Nikesh Arora" - he's Google's European boss - the message said "Don't get that." The only two names it recognised first time were Steve Jobs and Jerry Yang - it' obviously speaks fluent Silicon Valley.

It was only when I offered up some easier queries about nearby restaurants and films that this smart new idea proved at all useful. My search provided phone numbers for local cinemas and restaurants, with Google working out that I was in West London.

Now Google does stress that its voice search application works best with commands spoken in a "North American" accent, but even when I tried my best West Coast twang, the voice engine simply flung its arms up and shrugged its shoulders in despair. Voice search has the potential to be a killer app for new smartphones - after all we're far more comfortable with shouting into our phones rather than tapping at their keyboards. But if it's to take off in the UK, it's going to have to learn to speak our language.

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Close to you?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 18 Nov 08, 11:17 GMT

I wrote this piece for the BBC's in-house newspaper Ariel. But it feels appropriate to reproduce it here because it's about you - the audience - and whether broadcasters who try to get closer to you by using tools like blogs or social networks are wasting their time.

Are broadcasters who use social media tools - Facebook, Twitter, blogs - really getting closer to the audience? Or are they just on an ego trip? That was the theme of a discussion at the recent Radio at The Edge conference and, as one of the panel which debated this weighty issue, I can confidently say yes - and oh definitely.

As Fi Glover got the debate underway I found myself being barracked by another panellist, the comedian and radio presenter Iain Lee, for "Twittering" live from the stage. I will admit that Twitter, which involves sending out short messages to a circle of "followers", is fast becoming an addiction. To someone who has hitherto had little contact with the audience, apart from the odd insulting letter, it's very satisfying to receive instant feedback. Around 1,300 follow me on Twitter, and they are a very engaged audience, with strong views on technology and ideas about how it should be covered.

When I said in a "Tweet" last week that I was looking into addiction to online games I immediately got useful replies, including one which sent me to a psychiatrist at the Tavistock who became the key figure in my story. Then, minutes after I did the story on Today, I got more Twitter messages attacking me for being unfair to gamers. I was then able to point them at a blog post I'd written with more detail and that became a forum for a vigorous debate about the pros and cons of online games.

So a social network and a blog provided a lot of added value and did indeed get me "closer" to the audience. But which audience? The 1,300 people in my Twitter community know a lot about technology but if I devote too much time to them, then I'm in danger of letting down millions of viewers and listeners who will never go near a social network. Then there's the fact that small pressure groups can hijack these networks - open source software groups are well-organised but should I listen to them more than Windows or Mac users?

And there's another danger in the process of self-revelation that Twitter in particular involves. A writer from an internet scandal-sheet who was at the Radio At The Edge debate wrote "the more of themselves media people reveal, the more the public sees them as clueless, self-referential and narcissistic." He then went and searched my Twitter updates and found plenty of embarrassingly banal messages, including this one:"Just had my first go at washing the dog - she's looking at me with big sad eyes." Evidence, according to the writer, of "your licence fee at work".

I still think that experimenting with everything from social networks to YouTube to blogs is a useful way for broadcasters to get into conversation with the audience. But better keep the dog out of it.

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