Chrome 11 promises to bring several improvements to our browsing experience but perhaps the most exciting one is its speech-to-text capabilities. I was pretty excited about this new addition because, quite frankly, I'm lazy! Plus I'd feel less pathetic for spending so much time with my computer if I could at least talk to it. Also, Chrome 11 allows for some fancy 3D CSS but I'm not even going to go there.
This new version of Chrome also includes and redesigned icon, which I hate by the way. I liked when it had more of a three-dimensional look. Now I feel like it is kind of an eye sore in my dock.
Even after downloading Chrome 11, you can not yet use the speech-to-text capability. However, Google offers a demo page where you can try it out. I figured what better way to test the speech recognition than to just use it to write the rest of this post.
To test the waters, I say to Google Chrome 11, "Let's give it a shot!" And Chrome comes back with:
So far so good! Then I really dove in, "Speech-to-text is a key element to web browsing because offers assistance to those who are physically disabled, suffering from arthritis and other hand and wrist ailments, or are just plain lazy like myself." Chrome spit out:
I tried it again, this time speaking slower and clearer. Nothing. Then I tried another sentence, equal in length, but with more simple words. Nothing. So I came to a conclusion and I told Chrome exactly what I thought about it...
I think it's pretty clear now why Chrome 11 is just in beta... what is probably its most exciting feature is failing horribly. I hope this gets fixed up fast because I'm anxious to use it for real. I'm also excited to see what CSS developers can/are doing with the new GPU-accelerated 3D CSS. In the meantime, I'm probably uninstalling it so I can go back to the old icon.
